Cour de Marbre. This Cour
de Marbre, on January 5, 1757, was the scene of the infamous attack on
Louis XV by Damiens, just as the king was starting out for the Trianon.

A thick redingote saved the king's life; but for "this mere pin-prick,"
according to Voltaire, the monarch went immediately to bed, and five
times in succession sought absolution for his sins. Sins lay heavy even
on royal heads in those days.

Damiens was but a thick-witted, superstitious valet, who, more or less
persecuted by the noble employers with whom he had been in service at
various times, sought to avenge himself, not on them, but on their king,
as the figurehead of all that was rotten in the social hierarchy. Louis,
heretofore known as the "Bien Aime," had become suddenly unpopular
because of the disastrous war against England and Germany, and his
prodigal dissipation of public moneys.

Stretching out behind the palace are the famous gardens, the
_parterres_, the _tapis vert_, the fountains and the grand canal, with
the park of the Trianons off to the right.

Good fortune came to Louis XIV when he found Andre Le Notre, for it was
he and no other who traced the general lines of the garden of the
Versailles which was to be. He laid a generous hand upon the park and
forest which had surrounded the manor of Louis XIII, and extended the
garden to the furthermost limits of his ingenuity. Modifications were
rapid, and from 1664 the _parterres_ and the greensward took on entirely
new forms and effects. The Parterre des Reservoirs became the Parterre
du Nord, and an alley of four rows of lindens enclosed the park on all
sides. The Parterre a Fleurs, or the Jardin du Roy, between the chateau
and the Orangerie, was laid out anew.

By the following year the park began to take on the homogeneity which
it had hitherto lacked. The great Rondeau, as it was called, and which
became later the Bassin du Dragon, was excavated, and the Jardin Bas, or
the Nouveau Parterre, with an oval depression, was also planned.

[Illustration: _Cour de Marbre, Versailles_]

At one end of the park was the celebrated Menagerie du Roy, where the
rare and exotic animals collected by the monarch had "a palace more
magnificent than the home of any other dumb animals in the world." This
was the first period of formal garden construction at Versailles, and it
was also the period when the first great impetus was given to sculptural
decoration.

In 1679, following a journey in It