Versailles 1 5 



service the king was seated between his two brothers, and 

 seemed by his carriage and inattention to wish himself a hunting. 

 He would certainly have been as well employed as in hearing 

 afterwards from his throne a feudal oath of chivalry, I suppose, 

 or some such nonsense, administered to a boy of ten years old. 

 Seeing so much pompous folly I imagined it was the dauphin, 

 and asked a lady of fashion near me; at which she laughed in 

 my face, as if I had been guilty of the most egregious idiotism ; 

 nothing could be done in a worse manner ; for the stifling of her 

 expression only marked it the more. I applied to Monsieur de 

 la Rochefoucauld to learn what gross absurdity I had been guilty 

 of so unwittingly; when, forsooth, it was because the dauphin, 

 as all the world knows in France, has the cordon blue put around 

 him as soon as he is born. Sn_\]np arda nalilg_w.as it for a foreigner 

 to be ignorant of such an important part of French history, 

 as thalol gi virig a babe a blue slobbering bib instead of a 

 white one ! 



After this ceremony was finished, the king and the knights 

 walked in a sort of procession to a small apartment in which he 

 dined, saluting the queen as they passed. There appeared to be 

 more ease and familiarity than form in this part of the ceremony ; 

 her majesty, who, by the way, is the most beautiful woman I 

 saw to-day, received them with a variety of expression. On 

 some she smiled ; to others she talked; a few seemed to have the 

 honour of being more in her intimacy. Her return to some was 

 formal, and to others distant. To the gallant Suffrein it was 

 respectful and benign. The ceremony of the king's dining in 

 public is more odd than splendid. The queen sat by him with 

 a cover before her, but ate nothing; conversing with the Duke 

 of Orleans and the Duke of Liancourt, who stood behind her 

 chair. To me it would have been a most uncomfortable meal, 

 and were I sovereign I would sweep away three-fourths of these 

 stupid forms; if kings do not dine Hke other people, they lose 

 much of the pleasure of life ; their station is very well calculated 

 to deprive them of much, and they submit to nonsensical cus- 

 toms, the sole tendency of which is to lessen the remainder. The 

 only comfortable or amusing dinner is a table of ten or twehe 

 covers for the people whom they like; travellers tell us that this 

 was the mode of the late King of Prussia, who knew the value of 

 life too well to sacrifice it to empty forms on the one hand, or 

 to a monastic reserve on the other. 



The palace of Versailles, one of the objects of which report 

 had given me the greatest expectation, is not in the least striking ^ 



