Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3II PARIS TO BLOIS textit{August i8th. Our start was made, in a windy rain storm, up the Champs Elysees, the Arc de Triomphe looming black against a leaden sky, through the Bois to Versailles. On arriving at our destination the rain ceased, giving us an opportunity to revisit the bath of the Bosquet de la Collon- ade, the memory of its beauty making one desirous to return to it again and again. At the Palace we confined our time to the Galleries containing our favourite portraits by Lebrun and Nattier. The last portrait that Vigee Lebrun painted of Queen Marie Antoinette hangs at Versailles and is known as "Marie Antoinette and her Children." It is the one of the doomed Queen in which she is seated beside a cradle, the Duke of Normandy on her knee, the little Madame Royale at her side, and the Dauphin pointing into the cradle. When the doors of the Salon of 1783 were thrown open the painting was not quite finished and for some days the frame reserved for it remained empty. It was on the eve of what was to become the Revolution and the country was speaking in no hushed whispers of the public deficit in the nation's treasury and gazing bewildered at the bankruptcy that threatened the land. The empty frame drew forth the bitter jest " Voila le deficit." Gazing at the Queen portrayed in all her glorious beauty one dreads to think of that lovely head bowed beneath the knife of the guillotine, and of the cruelties endured by her and her dear ones. The Nattier portraits of the daughters of Louis Fifteenth are all very beautiful and the one of Madame Pompadour exquisite. At the Hotel des Reservoirs, the old mansion once occupied by that famous courtesan, Madame Pompadour, we had a cup of chocolate, and could, in fancy, see the rooms crowded with the white-wigged, silken-clad belles and beaux who flock...