The balcony, in which La Fayette appeared with the Queen and her children, opens from one of these rooms. It overlooks the inner court; or that in which the carriages of none but the privileged entered, for all these things were regulated by arbitrary rules. No one, for instance, was permitted to ride in the King's coach, unless his nobility dated from a certain century (the fourteenth, I believe), and these were your _gentilshommes_; for the word implies more than a noble, meaning an ancient nobleman. The writing cabinet, private dining-room, council-room in ordinary, library, etc. of the King, came next; the circuit ending in the Salles des Gardes, and the apartments usually occupied by the officers and troops on service. There was one room we got into, I scarce know how. It was a long, high gallery, plainly finished for a palace, and it seemed to be lighted from an interior court, or well; for one was completely caged when in it. This was the celebrated Bull's Eye (_oeil de boeuf_), where the courtiers danced attendance before they were received. It got its name from an oval window over the principal door. We looked at no more than the state apartments, and those of the King and Queen, and yet we must have gone through some thirty or forty rooms, of which, the baths and dressing-room of the Queen excepted, the very smallest would be deemed a very large room in America. Perhaps no private house contains any as large as the smallest of these rooms, with the exception of here and there a hall in a country house; and, no room at all, with ceilings nearly as high, and as noble, to say nothing of the permanent decorations, of which we have no knowledge whatever, if we omit the window-glass, and the mantels, in both of which, size apart, we often beat even the French palaces. We next proceeded to the Salle de Spectacle, which is a huge theatre. It may not be as large as the French Opera-house at Paris, but its dimensions did not appear to me to be much less. It is true, the stage was open, and came into the view; but it is a very large house for dramatic representations. Now, neither this building nor the chapel, seen on the exterior of the palace, though additions that project from the regular line of wall, obtrudes itself on the eye, more than a verandah attached to a window, on one of our largest houses! In this place the celebrated dinner was given to the officers of the guards.