The Sun King [antikvár]

ITHE HOUSEEl F on peut comparer sans crainte d'etre injuste Le siecle de Louis au beau siecle d'A uguste.charles perraultLouis XIV fell in love with Versailles and Louise de La Valliere at the same time; Versailles was the love of his life. For years before he lived there it was never out of his mind. When he was at the seat of government or away on hunting visits or with his army at the front he had to be sent a daily report on the work in hand on his house down to the tiniest details; and he never stopped adding to and improving the place while there was breath in his body. This 'undeserving favourite' as the courtiers called it is part of his legend but in fact the Sun King only lived there during the meridian and the sunset years: in his great morning he held his court, consisting of a few dozen officials, at the Louvre and Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where he was born, with visits to Chambord, Fontainebleau and Vincennes. Like a feudal king, he was always on the move, generally at war, and his court was a bivouac between two campaigns.Nobody ever knew when this secret man first conceived the design by which his father's little hunting lodge was to become the hub of the universe, perhaps as early as i66i when he began to give parties in the gardens there for his young mistress and a band of friends, whose average age at that time was nineteen. He was twenty-three, had been married for a year and already had a son, but his kingdom hadl' ;hitherto been governed by Cardinal Mazarin his godfather; and his behaviour was still regulated by his mother, Queen Anne of Austria. He liked to disport himself away from the eye of the older generation and Versailles was a perfect place in which to do so, though the parties there had to take place in the garden ; the house was much too small. The weather was always fine in those happy young days, the freshness of evening a welcome change from the heat of noon.Louis XIII's house at Versailles had some twenty rooms and one big dormitory for men. It was perched over a village which clustered round a twelfth-century church, (where the Orangery is today; the Piece d'Eau des Suisses was the village pond). Some poor little hamlets in the neighbourhood were called Trianon, Saint-Cyr, Clagny. Versailles, on the main road from Normandy to Paris, was more9