Page:EB1911 - Volume 27.djvu/1068

 of Deputies met from 1876 till 1879, and where the Congress has since sat to revise the constitution voted at Versailles in 1875 and to elect the president of the republic. The first floor is almost entirely occupied by the Battle Gallery (394 ft. long and 43 wide), opened in 1836 on the site of rooms used by Monsieur the brother of Louis XIV. and the duke and duchess of Chartres. It is lighted from above, and the walls are hung with pictures of French victories. In the window openings are the names of soldiers killed while fighting for France, with the names of the battles in which they fell, and there are more than eighty busts of princes, admirals, constables, marshals and celebrated warriors who met a similar death. Another room is given up to the events of 1830 and the accession of Louis Philippe, and a gallery contains the statues and busts of kings and celebrities.

The gardens of Versailles were planned by André Le Nôtre. The ground falls away on every side from a terrace adorned with ornamental basins, statues and bronze groups. Westwards from the palace extends a broad avenue, planted with large trees, and having along its centre the grass of the “Tapis Vert”; it is continued by the Grand Canal, 200 ft. wide and 1 m. long. On the south of the terrace two splendid staircases lead past the Orangery to the Swiss Lake, beyond which is the wood of Satory. On the north an avenue, with twenty-two groups of three children, each group holding a marble basin from which a jet of water rises, slopes gently down to the Basin of Neptune, remarkable for its fine sculptures and abundant water. The Orangery (built in 1685 by Mansart) is the finest piece of architecture at Versailles; the central gallery is 508 ft. long and 42 wide, and each of the side galleries is 375 ft. long. There are 1200 orange trees, one of which is said to date from 1421, and 300 other kinds of trees.

Among the chief attractions of Versailles are the fountains and waterworks made by Louis XIV. in imitation of those he had seen at Fouquet’s chateau of Vaux. Owing to the scarcity of water at Versailles, the works at Marly-le-Roi were constructed in order to bring water from the Seine ; but part of the supply thus obtained was diverted to the newly erected chateau of Marly. Vast sums of money were spent and many lives lost in an attempt to bring water from the Eure, but the work was stopped by the war of 1688. At last the waters of the plateau between Versailles and Rambouillet were collected and led by channels (total length 98 m.) to the gardens, the soil of which covers innumerable pipes, vaults and aqueducts.

Beyond the present park, but within that of Louis XIV., are the two Trianons. The Grand Trianon was originally erected as a retreat for Louis XIV. in 1670, but in 1687 Mansart built a new palace on its site. Louis XV., after establishing a botanic garden, made Gabriel build in 1766 the small pavilion of the Petit Trianon, where the machinery is still shown by which his supper-table came up through the floor. It was a favourite residence of Marie Antoinette, who had a garden laid out in the English style, with rustic villas in which the ladies of the court led a mimic peasant-life. The Grand Trianon is a one-storeyed building with two wings, and has been occupied by Monsieur (Louis XIV.’s brother), by the Great Dauphin, Napoleon I., and Louis Philippe and his court. The gardens of the Grand Trianon are in the same style as those of Versailles, and there is a museum with a curious collection of state carriages, old harness, &c.

Apart from the palace, there are no buildings of interest in Versailles; the church of Notre Dame, built by Mansart, the cathedral of St Louis, built by his grandson, the Protestant church and the English chapel being in no way remarkable. The celebrated tennis-court (Jeu de Paume) is now used as a museum. The large and sumptuous palace of the prefecture was built during the second empire, and was a residence of the president of the republic from 1871 to 1879. The library consists of 60,000 volumes; and the military hospital formerly accommodated 2000 people in the service of the palace. There are statues of General Hoche and of Abbe de l'Epee in the town. A school of horticulture was founded in 1874, attached to an excellent garden, near the Swiss Lake.

Louis XIII. often hunted in the woods of Versailles, and built a small pavilion at the corner of what is now the rue de la Pompe and the avenue of St Cloud. In 1627 he entrusted Jacques Lemercier with the plan of a chateau. In 1661 Louis Levau made some additions which were further developed by him in 1668. In 1678 Mansart took over the work, the Galerie des Glaces, the chapel and the two wings being due to him. In 1682 Louis XIV. took up his residence in the chateau. It is estimated that 20 million pounds were spent on the palace, gardens and works of art, the accounts for which were destroyed by the king. Till his time the town was represented by a few houses to the south of the present Place d’Armes; but land was given to the lords of the court and new houses sprang up, chiefly in the north quarter. Under Louis XV. the parish of St Louis was formed to the south for the increasing population, and new streets were built to the north on the meadows of Clagny, where in 1674 Mansart had built at Louis XIV.’s orders a chateau for Madame de Montespan, which was now pulled down. Under Louis XVI. the town extended to the east and received a municipality; in 1802 it gave its name to a bishopric. In 1783 the armistice preliminary to the treaty of peace between Great Britain and the United States was signed at Versailles. The states-general met here on the 5th of May 1789, and on the 20th of June took the solemn oath in the Tennis Court by which they bound themselves not to separate till they had given France a constitution. Napoleon neglected, and Louis XVIII. and Charles X. merely kept up, Versailles, but Louis Philippe restored its ancient splendour at the cost of £1,000,000. In 1870 and 1871 the town was the headquarters of the German army besieging Paris. After the peace Versailles was the seat of the French National Assembly while the commune was triumphant in Paris, and of the two chambers till 1879, being declared the official capital of France.

VERS DE SOCIÉTÉ, a term for social or familiar poetry, which was originally borrowed from the French, and has now come to rank as an English expression (see Fennell, The Stamford Dictionary of Anglicised Words). The use of the phrase as an English one is first met with at the opening of the 19th century. It is to be observed that it has come to bear a meaning which is not wholly equivalent to that of the French original. It was said of the blind philosopher, M. C. J. Pougens (1755–1833), that his petits vers de société procured great success for him in the salons of Paris, and several of the rhymesters of the early 18th century were prominent for their adroitness in composing petits vers sur des sujets légers. The prince of such graceful triflers was the Abbé de Chaulieu (1639–1720), of whom it was said that he made verses solely for the amusement