Explore "Louis XIV" by Bernard Capes on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Looking over the inner Cour de Marbre at Versailles Palace were two little rooms, in the main pile of the building, which constituted the very core of privacy in the Petits Appartements du Roi. One was his Majesty's "den," the other his wig-room, and both were elegantly simple, almost severe, in their appointments. In the Galerie des Glaces adjoining, marble, paint, crystal, and silver, in lavish profusion, represented to the public eye the habitual equipage of a Grand Monarch; these more restful surroundings represented to the monarch himself his secret possession of some emotions felt in common with the vulgar herd, to wit, the joys of a retreat where he could do just as he liked, without the necessity of posing to himself or others.
A few chairs, a table, a secrétaire -- all profusely painted and be-ormolued, it was true, but for the simple reason that beauty unadorned was unprocurable in the Paris of the period -- sober hangings, a quiet picture or so -- such was the furniture of the little apartment appropriated by Louis XIV. to his inmost meditations.