embellished with such loveliness as to charm every
beholder. It became the favorite rural resort of the king.

The chateau and its grounds soon witnessed a series of festivities,
the fame of which resounded through all Europe. Republican America
will ponder the fact, which the aristocratic courts of Europe ignored,
that these entertainments of boundless extravagance were at the
expense of the overtaxed and starving people. That king and courtiers
might riot in luxury, the wives and daughters of peasants were
harnessed by the side of donkeys to drag the plow.

Early in the spring of 1664, the king, accompanied by his court of six
hundred individuals, gentlemen and ladies, with a throng of servants,
repaired to Versailles. The personal expenses of all the guests were
defrayed by the king with the money which he wrested from the people.
With almost magical rapidity, the artificers reared cottages, stages,
porticoes, for the exhibition of games, and the display of splendor
scarcely equaled in the visions of Oriental romances.

The first entertainment was a tournament. The cavaliers were
gorgeously dressed in the most glittering garb of the palmiest days of
feudalism, magnificently mounted with wondrous trappings, with their
shields and devices, with their attendant pages, equerries, heralds
at arms. Among them all the king shone pre-eminent. His dress, and the
housings of his charger, embellished with the crown jewels, glittered
with a profusion of costly gems which no one else could equal.

The queen, with three hundred ladies of the court, brilliant in
beauty, and in the most attractive dress, sat upon a platform, beneath
triumphal arches, to view the procession as it passed. The gleaming
armor of the cavaliers, their prancing steeds, the waving of silken
banners, and the flourish of trumpets, presented a spectacle such as
no one present had ever conceived of before.

The tilting did not cease till evening. Suddenly the blaze of four
thousand torches illumined the scene with new brilliance. Tables were
spread for a banquet, loaded with every delicacy.

"The tables were served by two hundred attendants, habited as dryads,
wood deities, and fawns. Behind the tables, which were in the form of
a vast crescent, an orchestra arose as if by magic. The tables were
illuminated by five hundred girandoles. A gilt balustrade inclosed the
whole of the immense area."

CHAPTER VI.

DEATH IN THE PALACE.

1664-1670

Con