treasury to draw it forth filled with gold. Critics have said
that La Quintinye's ability stopped with the preparation of the soil,
and with the design of the garden, rather than with the actual
cultivation, but at all events it was he who made the garden possible.

La Quintinye adopted Arnauld d'Andilly's method of planting fruit trees
_en espalier_ by training them against a wall-like background, and to
accomplish this divided the garden plot, which covered an area of eight
hectares (twenty acres), into a great number of subdivisions enclosed by
walls, in order to multiply to as great an extent as possible the
available space to be used for the _espaliers_. Again, these same walls
served to shelter certain varieties which were planted close against
them. If this Potager du Roy was not actually the first garden of its
class so laid out, it was certainly one of the most extensive and the
most successful up to that time.

The great terraces of at least two metres in width surrounded the
central garden, leaving a free area for the latter which approximated
three hectares.

These terraces were divided into twenty-eight compartments, forming nine
distinct varieties of gardens.

The celebrated gardener of Louis XIV sought not only to obtain fruits
and vegetables of a superior quality and an abundant quantity, but was
the first among his kind to produce early vegetables, or _primeurs_, in
any considerable quantity, and, by a process of forced culture, he was
able to put upon the table of the monarch asparagus in December, lettuce
in January, cauliflower in March and strawberries in April. All these
may be found at the Paris markets to-day, and at these seasons, but the
growing of _primeurs_ for the Paris markets has become a great industry
since the time it was first begun at Versailles.

Of asparagus La Quintinye said, "It is a vegetable that only kings can
ever hope to eat."

The Potager du Roy was begun in 1678, and completed in 1683. It cost,
all told, one million one hundred and seventy thousand nine hundred and
eighty-three _livres_ of which four hundred and sixty-seven thousand
three hundred and sixty-four went for constructions in brick and stone,
walls, enclosures and drains. Its annual maintenance (1685) amounted to
twenty thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine _livres_. The effort proved
one of great benefit to its creator, for La Quintinye, at the completion
of this work, received further commissions of a lik