The French, as no other nation has ever done, set in a fitting shrine the beautiful furniture which they made; the decoration of walls, doors, ceilings, and fireplace always playing an important part in the whole scheme. The French "style," a word on which Lady Dilke strongly insists in her great work on "French Furniture of the XVIII Century," was unmistakably impressed on all they attempted. The woodwork was lighter and more openly carved than Italian work of the same period. Even when made by Italian workmen who swarmed to the French court under promise of abundant employment and rich emolument, the work was imbued with the French spirit and an elegance with which even Italy could not vie. The noble appreciation which had grown up in France was fostered by Louis XIV. when he came to the throne, not so much for art's sake as for his own aggrandizement, and to make his court the most elegant in the world. Louis contemned the style of elegance and luxury begun in an earlier reign, and artists of even superior merit were set to work to make beautiful the homes of those uncrowned queens on whom the "Grand Monarch" lavished such immense sums of money. Versailles was enriched, the lovely gardens planned by Le Notre, with their superb flower beds and fountains, the "green carpet" of turf down which the monarch loved to walk, were all made with enormous outlay of money. The hotels and buildings at Versailles set apart for the service of the king and his attendants were numbered by hundreds. There were the royal stables, the new hotel of the Governor of Versailles, the green rooms of the actors who performed at the palace, the hotel of the keeper of the wardrobe, the hotel of the guardsmen, the English garden, the riding-school, the king's icehouses, the houses of the body-guard, and so on. Street after street was filled with these buildings, besides those devoted to falconry, boar-hunting, the kennels, the little stables, and those filled with shops, vegetable gardens, etc., and in addition that great habitation occupied by more than two thousand persons, with other buildings called "Louises" where the king assigned temporary or permanent lodgings. The great stables built in 1682 and costing 3,000,000 francs are some of the few buildings left to show the magnificence of old Versailles. They were so ample and beautiful that under the direction of the great Louis himself they served sometimes as a ball-room, sometimes as a theatre, and more often as a circus for the princes. [Illustration: Figure 72. BED OF LOUIS XIV AT VERSAILLES.]