It was a good afternoon's work to visit all the fountains. They are
twenty-six in number, strewn over the undulating grounds. People who
visit Paris usually consider a day of Grandes Eaux at Versailles the
last word of this species of costly trifling. But the waters at
Versailles bear no comparison with those of La Granja. The sense is
fatigued and bewildered here with their magnificence and infinite
variety. The vast reservoir in the bosom of the mountain, filled with
the purest water, gives a possibility of more superb effects than have
been attained anywhere else in the world. The Fountain of the Winds is
one, where a vast mass of water springs into the air from the foot of a
great cavernous rock; there is a succession of exquisite cascades called
the Race-Course, filled with graceful statuary; a colossal group of
Apollo slaying the Python, who in his death agony bleeds a torrent of
water; the Basket of Flowers, which throws up a system of forty jets;
the great single jet called Fame, which leaps one hundred and thirty
feet into the air, a Niagara reversed; and the crowning glory of the
garden, the Baths of Diana, an immense stage scene in marble and bronze,
crowded with nymphs and hunting-parties, wild beasts and birds, and
everywhere the wildest luxuriance of spouting waters. We were told that
it was one of the royal caprices of a recent tenant of the palace to
emulate her chaste prototype of the silver bow by choosing this artistic
basin for her ablutions, a sufficient number of civil guards being
posted to prevent the approach of Castilian Actaeons.
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