¶ In this magnificent state apartment of Louis XIV are seventeen arcades of looking-glass, corresponding to the seventeen large windows; the ceiling by Lebrun shows thirty incidents in the life of Louis the Magnificent, each painting bordered by rich gilded sculptures.
The entire gallery is decorated with marbles and grand trophies of gilded copper, by Coysevox.
In Louis's time, the gallery was hung in white damask brocaded with gold; there were orange trees in rare boxes; the great central chandelier of gilded silver was by famous smiths; priceless Savonnerie carpets muffled the lightest foot-fall; round about were silver stools, with green velvet coverings surrounded by bands of gold brocade. Later, the silver was melted down, on Louis's order, and the money squandered.
¶ These great artists worked in the Hall of Mirrors and neighboring apartments: Berain, Monsart, Lebrun, Lenotre, Grissey, Vigarani, Audran, Baptiste, Coustau, Coypel, Van Cleve, Taffieri, Taupin, Tempore, Temporiti, numbering among them painters, sculptors, designers, architects, wood carvers, silversmiths and lockmakers extraordinary.
¶ Here, Louis, surrounded by some 1,500 flatterers of all degree, high and low, kept his court of pleasure bestowing ribbons, favors, dinners, golden swords for the men, diamond necklaces for the women.
¶ However, 1789 ended all that; the mob stormed into imperial chambers and through the apartments of the old aristocratic French courtesans; and with clubs, axes and fires laid in ruin art treasures that stood unmatched through centuries.
¶ To this Versailles come now the Prussian soldiers to proclaim their German Emperor; in this palace, where the Bourbons had expended some 200,000,000 francs, as money is reckoned today; to say nothing of the free labor of thousands of convicts.
No record tells what Louis spent on the place, but in August, 1684, 8,000 horses and 20,000 convicts were working there, and in 1685 at one time as many as 36,000 convicts, in charge of soldiers, added their vast free labor to heighten the peculiar glory of the great French monarchs, as the sublime representatives of kingcraft--in its splendor and in its downfall.
¶ All hail, William I, German Emperor! All hail, Bismarck! All hail, United Germany!