Arrivals at the palace were admitted from the Place d’Armes to the court designated for their reception.  Only the King and his family might enter by the central gate.  Nobles passed through the gates at the side.  Privileged persons were permitted to alight in the Royal Court; those of inferior prestige in the Court of the Ministers, which gave entrance to the offices and living quarters of the palace executives and the hundreds of minions composing the King’s retinue.  On the left of the enclosure called the Marble Court was the vestibule to the Marble Stairway; opposite was the doorway leading to the renowned Stairway of the Ambassadors, later removed by command of Louis XV.  The royal suites, except those of the Dauphin and his attendants, were on the second floor.  These rooms beneath the ornate Mansard attic were the scene of all the potent events and ceremonies that have distinguished Versailles above the palaces of the world.

Grouped above the Marble Court at the far end of the main court of the chateau, were the State Apartments of the King.  Though, in later times, the sequence of some of these salons was changed, in the years when the Sun King occupied them they comprised the Salon of Venus, opening upon the Ambassadors’ Staircase, the Salon of Diana, the Salon of Mars, and the Salon of Mercury.  These halls formed a magnificent prelude to the still greater magnificence of the Salon of Apollo,—­the Throne Room where guests came into the presence of the King himself.  The Salon of Venus was most admired for its marble mosaics and its ceiling painting representing Venus subduing all the other deities.  In Louis’ day, as now, the royal master of all this grandeur was here portrayed in white marble, garbed in the robes of a Roman emperor.  Diana and her nymphs were depicted on the ceiling of the salon named for the Goddess of the Hunt.  Here under candles glimmering in sconces of silver and crystal the courtiers engaged in games of billiards, while their ladies disposed themselves gracefully upon tapestried seats.  And there were orange trees in silver tubs to add brilliance to the scene.  In the Salon of Mars dancing parties and concerts were given.  Silver punchbowls set on silver tables offered refreshment to the gay throng that coquetted and danced and applauded beneath the triumphant picture of Mars limned upon the ceiling.  This room was a-glitter with silver, cut glass and gold embroidered draperies.  In the crimson-hung Salon of Mercury was the King’s bed of state, before which was a balustrade of silver.  In all the Grand Apartments were hangings and furniture of extraordinary richness.  There were tables of gilded wood and mosaic, Florentine marbles, pedestals of porphyry for vases of precious metal, ebony cabinets inlaid with copper, columns of jasper, agate and lapis lazuli, silver chandeliers, branched candle-sticks, baskets, vessels for liqueurs, silver perfuming pans.  Windows were draped with silver brocade worked in gold thread, with Venetian silks and satins, or embroideries from the Gobelin studios.  On the floors, originally of marble, were spread carpets woven in designs symbolical of kingly power.