s it be the crowds which
make the going and coming so uncomfortable.

The Orangerie lies just below the terrace of the Parterre du Midi, and a
thousand or more non-bearing orange trees are scattered about. They are
descendants of fifteenth century ancestors, it is claimed--but
doubtfully.

The great basin of water known as the Eaux des Suisses was excavated by
the Swiss Guard of Louis XIV to serve the useful purpose of irrigating
the Potager du Roy, and as a decorative effect of great value to that
part of the garden upon which faces the fourteen-hundred-foot front of
the palace.

Still farther off towards the Bois de Satory, after crossing the Tapis
Vert, lie the famous Bassins de Latone and Apollon, the Bassin du
Miroir and, finally, the Grand Canal, with one transverse branch leading
to the Menagerie (now the government stud-farm) and the other to the
Trianons.

The satellite palaces known as the Grand and Petit Trianons are, like
the Palace of Versailles itself, of such an abounding historical
interest that it were futile to attempt more than a mere intimation of
their comparative rank and aspect.

The rather sprawling, one-story, horseshoe-shaped villa built by Louis
XIV for Madame de Maintenon, and known as the Grand Trianon, was an
architectural conception of Mansart's.

It is worth remarking that the Grand Trianon, to-day, is in a more
nearly perfect state than it has been for long past, for the
restorations lately made have removed certain interpolations manifestly
out of place.

It is due to M. de Nolhac, the Conservateur du Musee de Versailles, that
this happy amelioration has been brought about and that Mansart's
admirable work is again as it was in the days of Madame de Maintenon and
those of the later Napoleon I.

[Illustration: _The Fountain of Neptune, Versailles_]

In spite of all this the Trianon of to-day is not what it was in the
eighteenth century. "Madame de Maintenon," said de Musset, "made of
Versailles an oratory, but La Pompadour turned it into a boudoir." He
also called the Trianon: "a tiny chateau of porcelain." It was, too, the
boudoir of Madame de Montespan.

Louis XV, too, built, or furnished, discreet boudoirs of this order on
every hand. More than one great gallery in which his elders had done big
things he divided and subdivided into minute apartments and papered the
walls, or painted them, all colours of the rainbow, or hung them with
silks or velvets.

"Don't you think