The Revolution spared the Grand Trianon.  But under pretext of restoring it and rendering it, according to their tastes, more habitable, Napoleon First and Louis Philippe spared it less.  The last king of France commanded in 1836 the architectural changes necessary to convert the Trianon into the royal residence, in place of the chateau of Versailles.  He stayed here for the last time in the winter of 1848, before departing for Dreux.  But, despite changes and mutilations, the facade and the interior of the rose-colored palace retain the stamp of the Great King who sponsored the Gallery of Mirrors, the Antechamber of the Bull’s Eye, and the Chapel at Versailles.

CHAPTER V

A DAY WITH THE SUN KING

Louis the Magnificent, we must agree with that profuse and sharp-witted chronicler, the Duke of Saint-Simon, was made for a brilliant Court.  “In the midst of other men, his figure, his courage, his grace, his beauty, his grand mien, even the tone of his voice and the majestic and natural charm of all his person, distinguished him till his death as the King Bee, and showed that if he had been born only a simple private gentleman, he would have excelled in fetes, pleasures and gallantry. . . .  He liked splendor, magnificence and profusion in everything.  Nobody ever approached his magnificence.”

With sumptuous detail the King’s day progressed at Versailles, from the formal “rising” to the hour when, with equal pomp, the monarch went to bed.  Before eight o’clock in the morning the waiting-room next the King’s bedchamber was the gathering-place of princes, nobles and officers of the Court, each fresh from his own laving and be-wigging.  While they passed the time in low converse, the formal ceremony of the King’s awakening took place behind the gold and white doors of the royal sleeping-room.  “The Chamber,” one of the eleven offices in the service of the King, comprised four first gentlemen of the Chamber, twenty-four gentlemen of the Chamber, twenty-four pages of the Chamber, four first valets of the Chamber, sixteen ushers, thirty-two valets of the Chamber, two cloak-bearers, two gun-bearers, eight barbers, three watch-makers, one dentist, and many minor attendants—­all under the direction of the Grand Chamberlain.

A few minutes before eight o’clock it was the duty of the chief valet de chambre to see that a fire was laid in the King’s chamber (if the weather required one), that blinds were drawn, and candles snuffed.  As the clock chimed the hour of eight, he approached the embroidered red velvet curtains of the royal bed with the announcement, “Sire, it is the hour.”