One cannot take a hundred steps without encountering some accessory of the palace:  the hotel of the staff of the body-guard, the hotel of the staff of light-horse-guards, the immense hotel of the body-guard itself, the hotel of the gendarmes of the guard, the hotel of the grand wolf-huntsman, of the grand falconer, of the grand huntsman, of the grand-master, of the commandant of the canal, of the comptroller-general, of the superintendent of the buildings, and of the chancellor; buildings devoted to falconry, and the vol de cabinet, to boar-hunting, to the grand kennel, to the dauphin kennel, to the kennel for untrained dogs, to the court carriages, to shops and storehouses connected with amusements, to the great stable and the little stables, to other stables in the Rue de Limoges, in the Rue Royale, and in the Avenue Saint-Cloud; to the king’s vegetable garden, comprising twenty-nine gardens and four terraces; to the great dwelling occupied by 2,000 persons, with other tenements called “Louises” in which the king assigned temporary or permanent lodgings, — words on paper render no physical impression of the physical enormity. — At the present day nothing remains of this old Versailles, mutilated and appropriated to other uses, but fragments, which, nevertheless, one should go and see.  Observe those three avenues meeting in the great square.  Two hundred and forty feet broad and twenty-four hundred long, and not too large for the gathering crowds, the display, the blinding velocity of the escorts in full speed and of the carriages running “at death’s door."[5] Observe the two stables facing the chateau with their railings one hundred and ninety-two feet long.  In 1682 they cost three millions, that is to say, fifteen millions to day.  They are so ample and beautiful that, even under Louis XIV himself, they sometimes served as a cavalcade circus for the princes, sometimes as a theater, and sometimes as a ball-room.  Then let the eye follow the development of the gigantic semi-circular square which, from railing to railing and from court to court, ascends and slowly decreases, at first between the hotels of the ministers and then between the two colossal wings, terminating in the ostentatious frame of the marble court where pilasters, statues, pediments, and multiplied and accumulated ornaments, story above story, carry the majestic regularity of their lines and the overcharged mass of their decoration up to the sky.  According to a bound manuscript bearing the arms of Mansart, the palace cost 153 million, that is to say, about 750 million francs of to day;[6] when a king aims at imposing display this is the cost of his lodging.  Now turn the eye to the other side, towards the gardens, and this self-display becomes the more impressive.  The parterres and the park are, again, a drawing room in the open air.  There is nothing natural of nature here; she is put in order and rectified wholly with a view to society; this is no place to be alone and to relax oneself, but