Ark trees and forests. There was
always a certain air of self-satisfaction about it, as there is, to-day,
when the Parisian hordes come out to see the waters play, and the
sight-seers marvel at the mock splendour and the scraps of history doled
out for their delectation by none-too-painstaking guardians.

In spite of all this, no sober-minded student of art or history will
ever consider Versailles, the palace and the park, as other than a
superb and a spectacular demonstration of the taste of the times in
which it was planned, built and lived in.

Versailles was begun in 1624 by Louis XIII, who built here a humble
hunting-lodge for the disciples of Saint Hubert of whom he was the royal
head. So humble an erection was it that the monarch referred to it
simply as a "_petite maison_" and paid for it out of his own pocket, a
rare enough proceeding at that epoch.

The critical Bassompierre called it a "_chetif chateau_," and
Saint-Simon referred to it as a "house of cards." Manifestly, then, it
was no great thing. It was, however, a comfortable country-house,
surrounded by a garden and a more ample park.

It was not Lemercier, the presiding genius of the Louvre at this time,
but an unknown by the name of Le Roy, whom Louis XIII chose as his
architect.

Boyceau traced the original _parterres_ with a central basin at a
crossroads of two wide avenues. Each of the four compartments thus made
was ornamented with _broderies_ and trimmed hedges, and the open spaces
were ingeniously filled with parti-coloured sands, or earth. A
_parterre_ of flowers immediately adjoined the palace and rudimentary
alleys and avenues stretched off towards the wood. Although designed by
Boyceau, this work was actually executed by his nephew, Jacques de
Menours, who, with difficulty, collected his pay. His books of account
showed that in five years, from 1631 to 1636, he had drawn but once a
year a sum varying from fifteen hundred to four thousand _livres_ while
in the same period the king had spent on the rest of the work at
Versailles two hundred and thirty-eight thousand _livres_, thirty-two
_sols_, six _deniers_, nearly one million one hundred thousand francs of
the money of to-day.

The first of the outdoor embellishments of the palace at Versailles is
the great Cour Royale, or the Cour d'Honneur, which opens out behind the
long range of iron gates facing upon the Place d'Armes. At the foot of
this entrance court is an extension called the