Page:Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands.djvu/315

 290 GRAND AND PETIT TRIANON.

healthful bearing. At our departure, surfeited with splendor, from this great Babylon, created for the pride and praise of men who are now but dust, we were beset at the gates by the saddest and lowest forms of mendicity, who in piteous accents supplicated for a single sous.

The two small palaces of Grand and Petit Trianon are within the gardens of Versailles. The first was erected by the Grand Monarque for Madame de Maintenon, and we saw there the sedan-chair, rich with gilding and velvet, in which she used to be borne around the magnificent grounds. Among the pictures was one commemorating our national era of the "Surrender at York town," in which Washington, in an antiquated uniform, makes rather a quaint appearance. Every apartment in this beautiful palace, especially the working rooms of the present queen and the sister of Louis Philippe, display consummate taste in the arrangement and adaptation to each other of the hangings, sofas, chairs, mirrors, and different articles of furniture.

Le Petit Trianon, was built by Louis the Fifteenth for Madame Dubarri, and here he was smitten with his fatal sickness. Afterwards it was given by Louis the Sixteenth to Marie Antoinette, who beautified its grounds by her taste, and erected among them the imitation of a little Swiss village. It is surrounded by many fine trees, of which some are American. Here Louis the Fifteenth was called to render up his breath, and here the son of Napoleon was born.