He loaned us
pictures and documents, and we felt we were living in a modern version
of the Sleeping Beauty, with the sleeping villa for heroine.
Our house had always been called "Villa Trianon," and so we kept the
name, but it should not be confused with the Grand Trianon or the Petit
Trianon. Of course everyone knows about the Park at Versailles, but
everyone forgets, so I shall review the history of the Park briefly,
that you may appreciate our thrills when we really owned a bit of it.
Louis XIV selected Versailles as the site for the royal palace when it
was a swampy, uninteresting little farm. Louis XIII had built a chateau
there in 1627, but had done little to beautify the flat acres
surrounding it. Louis the Magnificent lavished fortunes on the laying
out of his new park. The Grand Trianon was built for Madame de Main
tenon in 1685, and from this time on, for a full century, the Park of
Versailles was the most famous royal residence in the world.
The Petit Trianon was built by Louis XV for Madame du Barry. Later,
during the reign of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, who was then Queen,
tiring of court etiquette and scorning the stately rooms of Versailles,
persuaded her husband to make over to her the Petit Trianon. Here she
built a number of little rustic cottages, where she and the ladies of
her court, dressed in calicoes, played at being milkmaids.
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