The King loved air and exercise very much, as long as he could make use of them.  He had excelled in dancing, and at tennis and mall.  On horseback he was admirable, even at a late age.  He liked to see everything done with grace and address.  To acquit yourself well or ill before him was a merit or a fault.  He said that with things not necessary it was best not to meddle, unless they were done well.  He was very fond of shooting, and there was not a better or more graceful shot than he.  He had always, in his cabinet seven or eight pointer bitches, and was fond of feeding them, to make himself known to them.  He was very fond, too, of stag hunting; but in a caleche, since he broke his arm, while hunting at Fontainebleau, immediately after the death of the Queen.  He rode alone in a species of “box,” drawn by four little horses—­with five or six relays, and drove himself with an address and accuracy unknown to the best coachmen.  His postilions were children from ten to fifteen years of age, and he directed them.

He liked splendour, magnificence, and profusion in everything:  you pleased him if you shone through the brilliancy of your houses, your clothes, your table, your equipages.  Thus a taste for extravagance and luxury was disseminated through all classes of society; causing infinite harm, and leading to general confusion of rank and to ruin.

As for the King himself, nobody ever approached his magnificence.  His buildings, who could number them?  At the same time, who was there who did not deplore the pride, the caprice, the bad taste seen in them?  He built nothing useful or ornamental in Paris, except the Pont Royal, and that simply by necessity; so that despite its incomparable extent, Paris is inferior to many cities of Europe.  Saint-Germain, a lovely spot, with a marvellous view, rich forest, terraces, gardens, and water he abandoned for Versailles; the dullest and most ungrateful of all places, without prospect, without wood, without water, without soil; for the ground is all shifting sand or swamp, the air accordingly bad.

But he liked to subjugate nature by art and treasure.

He built at Versailles, on, on, without any general design, the beautiful and the ugly, the vast and the mean, all jumbled together.  His own apartments and those of the Queen, are inconvenient to the last degree, dull, close, stinking.  The gardens astonish by their magnificence, but cause regret by their bad taste.  You are introduced to the freshness of the shade only by a vast torrid zone, at the end of which there is nothing for you but to mount or descend; and with the hill, which is very short, terminate the gardens.  The violence everywhere done to nature repels and wearies us despite ourselves.  The abundance of water, forced up and gathered together from all parts, is rendered green, thick, muddy; it disseminates humidity, unhealthy and evident; and an odour still more so.  I might never finish upon the monstrous defects of a palace so immense and so immensely dear, with its accompaniments, which are still more so.