Mon. 13. [13 August 1894] We went to Notre Dame in the morning - it's
a long time since I've been there and it certainly is a fine place. That
facade with the blunt towers and the delicate connecting gallery is as
happy a piece of dovetailing between the ages as was ever hit upon.
About 3 we started off for Versailles where we arrived at 4, travelling
on the dusty top of a railway carriage. We were taken over some of
the apartments of the palace which I had seen before in greater detail,
then we had tea, then we walked down through the Park to Trianon.
The Palace standing at the top of its long gardens, avenues, formal
ponds where Greek gods and water monsters disport themselves
before the ghosts of kings and queens presents an aspect very
imposing, very regal in the beperiwigged, artificial regality of last
century. We walked up long avenues till we came to the Trianon - or
at least to a glimpse of the Grand Trianon at the top of range of trees;
we however turned to rightward and presently found ourselves before
a little stucco villa which was Le Petit Trianon. It was all shut up but we
walked through its courtyard and into Marie Antoinette's garden
behind - a long park with paths and artificial ponds and trees planted
in the grass and force[?] temples, grottos and rocky corners. In the
middle of all this suddenly we came upon a ghost - the ghost of
simple pleasures, the ghost of all the childish attractive part of life. It
was M.A.'s sham village, built in and out of trees round a weed grown
pond, all empty all unreal with the unreality of a place which never had
a solid existence - the ghost of a shadow. All the little balconies so
trim that fine court ladies might stand and hear their gallants'
declarations from them, all the little stairs so enticing to the gallant's
foot, all the little windows made to frame smiling court faces, all the
little stone seats to hold masquerading couples. And the Presbytere
where I wonder what acredited sceptic of the court was condemned to
live, and the dairy, a white marble dairy where they spilt bowls on
bowls of milk, poor dears, and wept over them afterwards. We
walked sadly away and through the formal flower borders and
avenues of the Grand Trianon which recalled however only Madame
du Barry and her wicked times, and then we came back to Versailles
and dined and took our uplifted seats on the top of a railway carriage
home. - And indeed I felt uplifted - what would she have thought, the
stately queen if she had known how a little bourgeoise of a few years
further on would look back on her best times and weigh them light in
the scale against her own love, pleasure, interest.