"At half-past ten, in ordinary times, every one in Versailles would have been in bed and wrapped in the profoundest slumber; but that night no eye was closed at Versailles. They had felt the counter-shock of the terrible concussion with which Paris was still trembling. "The French Guards, the body-guards, the Swiss drawn up in platoons, and grouped near the openings of all the principal streets, were conversing among themselves, or with those of the citizens whose fidelity to the monarchy inspired them with confidence. "For Versailles has, at all times, been a royalist city. Religious respect for the monarchy, if not for the monarch, is engrafted in the hearts of its inhabitants, as if it were a quality of its soil. Having always lived near kings, and fostered by their bounty, beneath the shade of their wonders--having always inhaled the intoxicating perfume of the _fleurs-de-lis_, and seen the brilliant gold of their garments, and the smiles upon their august lips, the inhabitants of Versailles, for whom kings have built a city of marble and porphyry, feel almost kings themselves; and even at the present day, even now, when moss is growing around the marble, and grass is springing up between the slabs of the pavement, now that gold has almost disappeared from the wainscoting, and that the shady walks of the parks are more solitary than a graveyard, Versailles must either belie its origin, or must consider itself as a fragment of the fallen monarchy, and no longer feeling the pride of power and wealth, must at least retain the poetical associations of regret, and the sovereign charms of melancholy. Thus, as we have already stated, all Versailles, in the night between the 14th and 15th July, 1789, was confusedly agitated, anxious to ascertain how the King of France would reply to the insult offered to the throne, and the deadly wound inflicted on his power." Versailles was one of the latest of the royal palaces, and since its birth, or at least since the days of "personally" and "non-conducted" tourists, has claimed, perhaps, even more than its share of popular favour. Certainly it is a rare attraction, and its past has been in turn sad, gay, brilliant, and gloomy. Event after event, some significant, others unimportant, but none mean or sordid, have taken place within its walls or amid its environment. Dumas evidently did not rank its beauties very high,--and perhaps rightly,--for while it is a gorgeous fabric and its surroundings and appointments are likewise gorgeous, it palls unmistakably by reason of its sheer artificiality. Dumas said much the same thing when he described it as "that world of automata, of statues, and boxwood forests, called Versailles." Much of the action of "The Queen's Necklace" takes place at Versailles, and every line relating thereto is redolent of a first-hand observation on the part of the author. There is no scamping detail here, nor is there any excess of it.