"
Louis soon turned to Madame Dubarry--and a lower step was taken. The
prestige and dignity of the Court suffered. "Vice," as Saint-Amand
observes, "threw off all semblance of disguise" and yet, while the King
slowly submerged his nature in a slough of corruption, and his
associates made of the Court a carnival of immorality, there was still
one figure in whom the traditional morals and manners were
maintained--the Queen Marie Leczinska. She was the one pure and
virtuous figure in the Court life. "Her domestic hearth," writes
Saint-Amand, "was near the boudoir of the favorites, but it was she
that preserved for the Court the traditions of decency and decorum.
"Last of all of the women of Versailles, came Marie Antoinette, the
woman who, in the most striking and tragic of all destinies, represents
not solely the majesty and the griefs of royalty, but all the graces
and all the agonies, all the joys and all the sufferings, of her sex."
CHAPTER VIII
THE VERSAILLES OF LOUIS XV
Louis the Great, in commanding immense and costly edifices to rise out
of the earth, was moved, at least in part, by a desire to assure the
monarchy and its established ceremonial a worthy background. Louis XV,
in the numerous graceful additions to the chateau made by him, sought
only to satisfy his own caprice and convenience.
When the Court returned from Vincennes to Versailles in 1722, seven
years after the death of Louis XIV, one of the new King's first
undertakings was the construction of the Salon of Hercules, adjoining
the chapel court.
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