[Paris—Friday, 14 October 1859]
Friday 14th Glorious day at Versailles—the weather like mid summer and the grass brilliant with the Spring’s glad green, all in strange contrast with the falling leaves which accorded but too well with the deserted palaces.
The Grand and Petit Trianon were full of interest. Here the great Napoleon passed the happiest moments of his life with Josephine. The guide who conducted us was an old servant of the great Napoleon and being a married man was one of those chosen to wait on Josephine. He showed us the very table where the unhappy divorce was signed, the very room in which Josephine was most happy and close upon these the stately apartments of Marie Louisa. Then came the statelier palace and the bed upon which Louis XIV died and the noble balcony upon which the terrified Marie Antoinette dragged out her innocent children—hoping to appease the Paris mob which had rushed thither and finally that hall of halls that Salon magnificent enough to gratify imperial hearts, upon which Louis Phillippe spent 3,000,000 francs in decorations alone. It is lined by some of the finest pictures of the greatest artist who lived in his reign. Even here the hand of the great Napoleon is felt. It was his desire to restore the palace but money was needed.
