The Duke of Mantua was one of those strange loaded dice that Fate
occasionally flings upon this checkerboard of time: one of those
characters whose feverish faculties border on madness, yet who do the
world great good by breaking up its balances, preventing social
ankylosis, and eventually forcing upon mankind a new deal. But in the
train of these vagrant stars famine and pestilence follow.

The Duke of Mantua was brother in spirit to the man who made
Versailles--and making Versailles undid France.

Versailles is a dream: no language that the most enthusiastic lovers of
the beautiful may utter, can exaggerate the wonders of those acres of
palaces and miles of gardens. The magnificence of the place makes the
ready writer put up his pencil, and go away whipped, subdued and
crestfallen to think that here are creations that no one pen can even
catalog. Louis the Grand, we are told, had thirty-six thousand men and
six thousand horses at work here at one time. No wonder Madame De
Maintenon was oppressed by the treasures that were beyond the capacity of
man to contemplate; and so off in the woods was built that lover's
retreat, "The Trianon." And out there today, hidden in the forest, we
behold the second Trianon, built by Marie Antoinette, and we also see
those straw-thatched huts where the ladies of her Court played at peasant
life.

Louis the Fourteenth builded so well that he discouraged his successor
from doing anything but play keep-house, and so extensively that France
was rent in twain, and so mightily that even Napoleon Bonaparte was
staggered at the thought of maintaining Versailles.