From this time the house of the banker Jérôme Gondi, one of the Italian adventurers who had followed the fortunes of Catherine de Medici, was an habitual residence of the Court. It became the property of Hervard, Controller of Finances, from whom Louis XIV. bought it for his brother Philippe d'Orléans, enlarged the palace, and employed Lenôtre to lay out the park. Monsieur married the beautiful Henriette d'Angleterre, youngest daughter of Charles I., who died here, June 30, 1670, with strong suspicion of poison. St. Simon affirms the person employed to have confest to Louis XIV., having used it at the instigation of the Chevalier de Lorraine (a favorite of Monsieur), whom Madame had caused to be exiled. One of the finest sermons of Bossuet describes the "disastrous night on which there came as a clap of thunder the astonishing news! 'Madame is dying! Madame is dead!' At the sound of so strange a wo people hurried to St. Cloud from all sides to find panic over all except the heart of the princess." In the following year Monsieur was married again, to the Princess Palatine, when it was believed that his late wife appeared near a fountain in the park, where a servant, sent to fetch water, died of terror. The vision turned out to be a reality--a hideous old woman, who amused herself in this way. "The cowards," she said, "made such grimaces that I nearly died laughing. This evening pleasure paid me for the toil of my hard day." Monsieur gave magnificent fétes to the Court at St. Cloud, added to the palace with great splendor, and caused the great cascade, which Jérôme Gondi had made, to be enlarged and embellished by Mansart. It was at St. Cloud that Monsieur died of an attack of apoplexy, brought on by overeating after his return from a visit to the king at Marly.... The chateau continued to be occupied by Madame, daughter of the Elector, the rude, the original, and satirical Princess Palatine, in whom the modern House of Orleans has its origin, and here she died during the regency of her son.... The Régent d'Orléans, nephew of Louis XIV., received Peter the Great at St. Cloud in 1717. In 1752 his grandson, Louis Philippe d'Orléans, gave at St. Cloud one of the most magnificent fêtes ever seen in France. In 1785 the Due d'Orleans sold St. Cloud for six million francs to Queen Marie Antoinette, who made great alterations in the internal arrangements of the building, where she resided during the early days of the Revolution. It was at St. Cloud that the coup d'état occurred which made Napoleon first-consul. This led him to choose the palace of St. Cloud, which had been the cradle of his power, as his principal residence, and, under the first empire, it was customary to speak of "le cabinet de Saint-Cloud," as previously of "le cabinet de Versailles," and afterward of "le cabinet des Tuileries." Here, in 1805, Napoleon and Josephine assisted at the baptism of the future Napoleon III....