and narcissuses that the King and his
visitors were sometimes obliged to fly from the
overpowering sweets. The flowers in the
parterres were arranged in a thousand
different figures, which were constantly
changed, so that one might have supposed
it to be the work of some fairy, who, passing
over the gardens, threw upon them each time
a new robe aglow with color."

In the salons and copses where Louis the
Great basked in the somewhat chary smiles
of his latest (and last) favorite, his
grandson, the fifteenth of his name, was to install
the fascinating Madame de Pompadour.
The very apartments once dedicated to the
use of Madame de Maintenon, and later to
Queen Marie Leczinska, became the living-rooms
of the reigning mistress of the heart
of Louis XV.

The Revolution spared the Grand Trianon.
But under pretext of restoring it and
rendering it, according to their tastes, more
habitable, Napoleon First and Louis
Philippe spared it less. The last king of France
commanded in 1836 the architectural changes
necessary to convert the Trianon into the
royal residence, in place of the chateau of
Versailles. He stayed here for the last time