The rest of the surroundings and accessories of Versailles are mere adjunctive details of those chief features here mentioned. To catalogue them even would be useless since they are all set down in the guidebooks. CHAPTER XVII SAINT GERMAIN-EN-LAYE Saint Germain has not the popularity of Versailles, nor the charm of Fontainebleau, but it is more accessible than either, and, if less known and less visited by the general mass of tourists, it is all the more delightful for that. Saint Germain, the chateau, the town and the forest, possess a magnificent site. Behind is a wooded background, and before one are the meanderings of the Seine which in the summer sunlight is a panorama which is to be likened to no other on earth. Across the river bottom run the great tree-lined roadways, straight as the proverbial flight of the arrow, while on the horizon, looking from the celebrated terrace, one sees to-day the silhouetted outline of Paris with the Tour Eiffel and the dome of the Sacre Coeur as the culminating points. The town itself is ugly and ill-paved, and heavy-booted dragoons make a hideous noise as they clank along to and from the cavalry barracks all through the day and night. Neither are scorching automobiles making their ways to Trouville and Dieppe over the "Route des Quarante Sous" a pleasant feature. One can ignore all these things, however, for what is left is of a superlative charm. [Illustration: SAINT GERMAIN] Saint Germain-en-Laye in the first stages of French history was but a vast extent of forest which under Charlemagne came to the possession of the monks of the Abbaye de Saint Germain-des-Pres. The first royal palace here was built by King Robert in the tenth century, practically upon the site of the present edifice. In the eleventh century there came into being another royal dwelling, and in the twelfth century Louis-le-Gros built a chateau-fort as a protection to the royal residence and monastery. This did not prevent the Black Prince from very nearly burning them down on one of his bold raids, but by 1367, Charles V re-erected the "_castel_" of Saint Germain-en-Laye. The English, by coercion, induced a monk of a neighbouring establishment at Nanterre to deliver up a set of false keys by which the great gates of the castle were surreptitiously opened, and, for a time, the descendants of the Conqueror held possession. The establishment of Charles V in no way satisfying the artistic ambitions of Francis I, that monarch gave the task of reconstruction to the architect Pierre Chambiges, in 1539, preserving only the Saint Chapelle of Saint Louis and the donjon. The building must have gone forward with an extreme rapidity for at the architect's death, in 1544, it had reached nearly the level of the rooftop. Chambiges' successor was his son-in-law, Guillaume Guillain, who, without changing the primitive plan, completed the work in 1548.