Halls that had echoed to the dance and the clink of gold
at gaming-tables now heard profound lectures on history, ancient
languages, mathematics, chemistry, and political economy! Classic
exercises beneath the painted ceilings of these memoried rooms!
Scholastic discourse where music and laughter had vibrated for a
hundred extravagant years!
The galleries at the Louvre contributed to the new Versailles museum
all the canvases of French artists that it possessed. Fragonard and
Greuze, Lebrun, Claude Lorrain, Mignard, Poussin, Rigaud, Vanloo,
Vernet--all were represented, some of them by numerous examples of
their graceful art. Besides, there was a Rubens Gallery, and two
salons filled with the works of Paul Veronese. Some of these treasures
were later removed to the Luxembourg Palace, where the French Senate
was sitting, and to the palace of Saint-Cloud, residence of Napoleon
Bonaparte, First Consul. Little by little the canvases were dispersed,
until, at the end of the Empire, the Versailles Museum of French Art
ceased to be.
At the beginning of the year 1800, Napoleon Bonaparte established at
Versailles a branch of the _Hotel des Invalides_ in Paris, and wounded
veterans of the Revolution to the number of 2,000 were installed for
two years in the vast apartments of Louis XV and in rooms overlooking
the garden and the Court of Ministers. During this period several of
the salons were opened to the people for exhibitions and assemblies,
and the public were free to enjoy the park, the Orangery and the
fragrant bosques of Trianon.
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