On entering Versailles by the Paris avenue, we see the palace on the summit of the horizon.  The houses, scattered here and there and concealed among the trees, appear less to form a town than to accompany the monument raised beyond and above them.  Approaching the Place d’Armes, we distinguish the different parts of which the imposing mass of buildings is composed.  In the center is a singular bit of architecture.  In vain the neighboring masses extend their circle around it:  their great arms are unable to stifle it; but it possesses a seriousness of character that attracts the eye more strongly than their high white walls.  This is the remains of the chateau built by Louis XIII at Versailles.  Louis XIV did not wish to bury his father’s dwelling.

THE STORY OF VERSAILLES

CHAPTER I

THE BEGINNINGS OF VERSAILLES

A dreary expanse of low-lying marsh-land, dismal, gloomy and full of quicksands, where the only objects that relieved the eye were the crumbling walls of old farm buildings, and a lonely windmill, standing on a roll of higher ground and stretching its gaunt arms toward the sky as if in mute appeal against its desolate surroundings—­such was Versailles in 1624.  This uninviting spot was situated eleven miles southwest of Paris, the capital city of France, the royal city, the seat, during a century before, of the splendid court of the brilliant Francis I and of the stout-hearted Henry II, the scene of the masterful rule of Catherine de Medici, of the career of the engaging and beautiful Marguerite de Valois and of the exploits of the gallant Henry of Navarre.

The desolate stretch of marshland, with its lonely windmill, meant nothing then to the court nor to the busy fortune-hunting and pleasure-seeking inhabitants of Paris.  No one had reason to go to Versailles, except perhaps the poor farmers and the owner of the isolated mill—­least of all the nobility and fashionable folk of the glittering capital.  No exercise of the imagination could then have conjured up the picture of the splendor in store for the barren waste of Versailles.  The mention of the name in 1600 would have brought nothing more from the lips of royalty and nobility than an indifferent inquiry:  “And what, pray, is Versailles and where may it be?” You, my lord, who raise your eyebrows interrogatingly, and you, my lady, who flick your fan so carelessly, will some day behold your grandchildren paying humble and obsequious court to the reigning favorites at Versailles—­yes, out there on this very moorland where you see nothing but marshy hollows and ruined walls, there will your lord and master, your glorious Sun King, the Grand Monarch, Louis the Fourteenth, build a palace home that Belshazzar might justly have envied:  there will he hold high court and set the whole world agape at his prodigal outlay and magnificent festivities.  And well may we inquire to-day:  how came this dreary waste to be the wondrous Versailles, the seat and scene of so much in the making and the making-over of the world?