Le Notre died about this time, after having been eighty-eight years in perfect health, and with all his faculties and good taste to the very last.  He was illustrious, as having been the first designer of those beautiful gardens which adorn France, and which, indeed, have so surpassed the gardens of Italy, that the most famous masters of that country come here to admire and learn.  Le Notre had a probity, an exactitude, and an uprightness which made him esteemed and loved by everybody.  He never forgot his position, and was always perfectly disinterested.  He worked for private people as for the King, and with the same application—­seeking only to aid nature, and to attain the beautiful by the shortest road.  He was of a charming simplicity and truthfulness.  The Pope, upon one occasion, begged the King to lend him Le Notre for some months.  On entering the Pope’s chamber, instead of going down upon his knees, Le Notre ran to the Holy Father, clasped him round the neck, kissed him on the two cheeks, and said—­“Good morning, Reverend Father; how well you look, and how glad I am to see you in such good health.”

The Pope, who was Clement X., Altieri, burst out laughing with all his might.  He was delighted with this odd salutation, and showed his friendship towards the gardener in a thousand ways.  Upon Le Notre’s return, the King led him into the gardens of Versailles, and showed him what had been done in his absence.  About the Colonnade he said nothing.  The King pressed him to give his opinion thereupon.

“Why, sire,” said Le Notre, “what can I say?  Of a mason you have made a gardener, and he has given you a sample of his trade.”

The King kept silence and everybody laughed; and it was true that this morsel of architecture, which was anything but a fountain, and yet which was intended to be one, was much out of place in a garden.  A month before Le Notre’s death, the King, who liked to see him and to make him talk, led him into the gardens, and on account of his great age, placed him in a wheeled chair, by the side of his own.  Upon this Le Notre said, “Ah, my poor father, if you were living and could see a simple gardener like me, your son, wheeled along in a chair by the side of the greatest King in the world, nothing would be wanting to my joy!”

Le Notre was Overseer of the Public Buildings, and lodged at the Tuileries, the garden of which (his design), together with the Palace, being under his charge.  All that he did is still much superior to everything that has been done since, whatever care may have been taken to imitate and follow him as closely as possible.  He used to say of flower-beds that they were only good for nurses, who, not being able to quit the children, walked on them with their eyes, and admired them from the second floor.  He excelled, nevertheless, in flowerbeds, as in everything concerning gardens; but he made little account of them, and he was right, for they are the spots upon which people never walk.