The little marble palace, called "_Petit Trianon_," built for Madame Pompadour in the garden grounds, is a beautiful affair, full of what somebody calls "affectionate-looking rooms;" and "_Grand Trianon_," built also on the grounds at the distance of half a mile, for Madame Maintenon, is a very lovely spot, made more interesting by the preference given to it over all other places by Marie Antoinette. Here she amused herself with her Swiss village. The cottages and artificial "mountains" (ten feet high, perhaps) are exceedingly pretty models in miniature, and probably illustrate very fairly the ideas of a palace-bred fancy upon natural scenery. There are glens and grottoes, and rocky beds for brooks that run at will ("_les rivieres à volonté_," the guide called them), and trees set out upon the crags at most uncomfortable angles, and every contrivance to make a lovely lawn as inconveniently like nature as possible. The Swiss families, however, must have been very amusing. Brought fresh from their wild country, and set down in these pretty mock cottages, with orders to live just as they did in their own mountains, they must have been charmingly puzzled. In the midst of the village stands an exquisite little Corinthian temple; and our guide informed us that the cottage which the Queen occupied at her Swiss tea-parties was furnished at an expense of sixty thousand francs--two not very Switzer-like circumstances. It was in the little palace of _Trianon_ that Napoleon signed his divorce from Josephine. The guide showed us the room, and the table on which he wrote. I have seen nothing that brought me so near Napoleon. There is no place in France that could have for me a greater interest. It is a little _boudoir_, adjoining the state sleeping-room, simply furnished, and made for familiar retirement, not for show. The single sofa--the small round table--the enclosing, tent-like curtains--the modest, unobtrusive elegance of ornaments, and furniture, give it rather the look of a retreat, fashioned by the tenderness and taste of private life, than any apartment in a royal palace. I felt unwilling to leave it. My thoughts were too busy. What was the strongest motive of that great man in this most affecting and disputed action of his life?