of which, the baths and dressing-room of the Queen excepted, the very
smallest would be deemed a very large room in America. Perhaps no
private house contains any as large as the smallest of these rooms, with
the exception of here and there a hall in a country house; and, no room
at all, with ceilings nearly as high, and as noble, to say nothing of
the permanent decorations, of which we have no knowledge whatever, if we
omit the window-glass, and the mantels, in both of which, size apart, we
often beat even the French palaces.

We next proceeded to the Salle de Spectacle, which is a huge theatre. It
may not be as large as the French Opera-house at Paris, but its
dimensions did not appear to me to be much less. It is true, the stage
was open, and came into the view; but it is a very large house for
dramatic representations. Now, neither this building nor the chapel,
seen on the exterior of the palace, though additions that project from
the regular line of wall, obtrudes itself on the eye, more than a
verandah attached to a window, on one of our largest houses! In this
place the celebrated dinner was given to the officers of the guards.

The chapel is rich and beautiful. No catholic church has pews, or, at
all events they are very unusual, though the municipalities do sometimes
occupy them in France, and, of course, the area was vacant. We were most
struck with the paintings on the ceiling, in which the face of Louis
XIV. was strangely and mystically blended with that of God the Father!
Pictorial and carved representations of the Saviour and of the Virgin
abound in all catholic countries; nor do they much offend, unless when
the crucifixion is represented with bleeding wounds; for, as both are
known to have appeared in the human form, the mind is not shocked at
seeing them in the semblance of humanity. But this was the first attempt
to delineate the Deity we had yet seen; and it caused us all to shudder.
He is represented in the person of an old man looking from the clouds,
in the centre of the ceiling, and the King appears among the angels that
surround him. Flattery could not go much farther, without encroaching on
omnipotence itself.

In returning from Versailles, to a tithe of the magnificence of which I
have not alluded, I observed carts coming out of the side of a hill,
loaded with the whitish stone that composes the building material of
Paris. We stopped the carriage, and went into the passage, where we
found ex