personages of its drama are as various as life itself; kings, poets,
ministers, courtiers, confessors, courtesans, queens without power, and
queens with too much power; ambassadors, generals, little abbés and
great ladies; nobles, clergy, even the people. For two centuries did
this crowd continue to pass and re-pass over these marble floors and
under these gilded vaults; and every day its flood became more
impetuous, every day it gave way more and more to the whims and
passions. And the palace heard all, saw all, spied all--and has
retained all, each action in its acted hour, each word in its place.
During the two centuries of absolute monarchy, nothing took place that
Versailles did not either originate or answer. Every shot that was
fired in Flanders, Germany and Spain awakened here an echo. Richelieu
was here, the first statesman of the monarchy, and Necker, the last.
French literary history is inscribed on its walls, which received
within them the great writers of France from Molière to Beaumarchais.
Art erected especially for Versailles the schools and systems whose
influence has been felt through the succeeding centuries. For
Versailles, Lebrun became a painter, Coysevox a sculptor, and Mansard
an architect. But it was not France alone that depended on Versailles.
Foreign nations sent their representatives to this famous center; the
choice spirits of Europe came to visit it.

The history of Versailles was for two centuries the history of
civilization. From Versailles may be seen the movement of manners,
wars, diplomacy, literature, arts and energies that agitated Europe.

On entering Versailles by the Paris avenue, we see the palace on the
summit of the horizon. The houses, scattered here and there and
concealed among the trees, appear less to form a town than to accompany
the monument raised beyond and above them. Approaching the Place