THE STYLE OF LOUIS XIV. 329 



in quality or fertility. Social conditions brought about a change in the 

 types of building erected and in the character of their fitting. In 

 Louis' later and gloomier years, when the edifying and didactic 

 Madame de Maintenon held sway, Court entertainments lost their 

 gaiety but not their formality, and courtiers, weary of etiquette and 

 multiplied religious observances, fled to the unconstraint of their own 

 homes. Domestic architecture thus revived at the very time when 

 the royal works were being cramped by the exhaustion of the treasury. 

 Even Louis XIV. had at times been oppressed by the publicity of 

 great palaces and taken refuge in the relative privacy of Trianon and 

 Marly. His courtiers, who suffered more than he from the comfortless 

 splendours of Court life, followed the fashion he had set for small 

 houses. No country house was complete without its Trianon. These 

 petites maisons were small and more or less secluded houses in the 

 grounds used for temporary residence, or pleasure parties of a few 

 hours' duration, and were modelled on the smaller royal houses. They 

 often had but a single storey, and consisted of a central saloon often 

 top lit a ritalienne and a few rooms grouped round it opening direct 

 into the garden, while such servants' offices as could not find room in 

 the basement were accommodated in separate blocks. In the mansions 

 themselves the suites of stately apartments for ceremonial occasions 

 were supplemented by suites of smaller and more comfortable rooms 

 side by side with them, whither the family might retire with their 

 intimates, and where privacy was secured by vestibules and passages. 

 A dining-room, planned ad hoc, though often a surprisingly small one, 

 was now general. 



SCHOOL OF J. H. MANSART. These changes were hastened by 

 changes in the personnel of architecture. Many names pass from the 

 scene within the years which saw the turning point in the King's 

 fortunes. Jean Marot died in 1677, Jean Le Pautre in 1682, Francois 

 Blondel in 1686. In this year Daniel Marot was exiled, and Cottart 

 is not heard of after it. Claude Perrault died in 1688, Errard in 

 1689, Le Brun in 1690, Antoine Le Pautre in 1691. Before his death 

 the supremacy of Le Brun was already passing to Jules Hardouin 

 Mansart, who, for the rest of his life, held a dominating influence in 

 the architectural world. Many of the ablest of the rising generation 

 were trained under it, but his rule was not so stern as Le Brun's, and 

 the new tendencies which begin to appear towards the end of the century 

 and developed later were largely due to his pupils and assistants, Robert 

 de Cotte, Cailleteau, nicknamed " L' Assurance," Pierre Le Pautre, 

 and others. But the only decline that can be traced in them is a 

 decline of the unity of aim. Symptoms, faint as yet, begin to show 

 themselves, as in the political and literary world, of a revolt against a 

 too rigid uniformity, of a cleavage, to be accentuated later, between 



