When we entered the Place d'Armes fronting the palace, desolation worse than that of the beggars faced us. That vast noble pile, untenanted and sacked, symbolized the vanished monarchy of France. Doors stood wide. The court was strewn with litter and filth; and grass started rank betwixt the stones where the proudest courtiers in the world had trod. I tried to enter the queen's rooms, but sat on the steps leading to them, holding my head in my hands. It was as impossible as it had been to enter the Temple. The fountains which once made a concert of mist around their lake basin, satisfying like music, the marquis said, were dried, and the figures broken. Millions had been spent upon this domain of kings, and nothing but the summer's natural verdure was left to unmown stretches. The foot shrank from sending echoes through empty palace apartments, and from treading the weedy margins of canal and lake. "I should not have brought you here, Lazarre," said my friend. "I had to come, monsieur." We walked through meadow and park to the little palaces called Grand and Petit Trianon, where the intimate life of the last royal family had been lived. I looked well at their outer guise, but could not explore them. The groom held our horses in the street that leads up to the Place d'Armes, and as we sauntered back, I kicked old leaves which had fallen autumn after autumn and banked the path. It rushed over me again! I felt my arms go above my head as they did when I sank into the depths of recollection. "Lazarre! Are you in a fit?" The Marquis du Plessy seized me. "I remember! I remember! I was kicking the leaves--I was walking with my father and mother--somewhere--somewhere--and something threatened us!" "It was in the garden of the Tuileries," said the Marquis du Plessy sternly. "The mob threatened you, and you were going before the National Assembly! I walked behind. I was there to help defend the king." We stood still until the paroxysmal rending in my head ceased. Then I sat on the grassy roadside trying to smile at the marquis, and shrugging an apology for my weakness. The beauty of the arched trees disappeared, and when next I recognized the world we were moving slowly toward Paris in a heavy carriage, and I was smitten with the conviction that my friend had not eaten the dinner he ordered in the town of Versailles. I felt ashamed of the weakness which came like an eclipse, and withdrew leaving me in my strength. It ceased to visit me within that year, and has never troubled me at all in later days. Yet, inconsistently, I look back as to the glamour of youth; and though it worked me hurt and shame, I half regret that it is gone. The more I saw of the Marquis du Plessy the more my slow tenacious heart took hold on him. We went about everywhere together. I think it was his hope to wed me to his company and to Paris, and shove the Mittau venture into an indefinite future; yet he spared no pains in obtaining for me my passports to Courland.