LE JOUR DE L’ANNEE

The closing days of 1900 had been unusually mild. Versailles townsfolk, watching the clear skies for sign of change, declared that it would be outside all precedent if Christmas week passed without snow. But, defiant of rule, sunshine continued, and the new century opened cloudless and bright.

Karl, entering with hot water, gave us seasonable greeting, and as we descended the stair, pretty Rosine, brushing boots at the open window of the landing, also wished us a smiling bonne nouvelle année. But within or without there was little token of gaiety. Sundry booths for the sale of gingerbread and cheap jouets, which had been erected in the Avenue de St. Cloud, found business languishing, though a stalwart countryman in blouse and sabots, whose stock-in-trade consisted of whirligigs fashioned in the semblance of moulins rouges and grotesque blue Chinamen which he carried stuck into a straw wreath fixed on a tall pole, had no lack of custom.

The great food question never bulks so largely in the public interest as at the close of a year, so perhaps it was but natural that the greatest appreciation of the festive traditions of the season should be evinced by the shops devoted to the sale of provender. Turkeys sported scarlet bows on their toes as though anticipating a dance rather than the oven; and by their sides sausages, their somewhat plethoric waists girdled by pink ribbon sashes, seemed ready to join them in the frolic. In one cookshop window a trio of plaster nymphs who stood ankle-deep in a pool of crimped green paper, upheld a huge garland of cunningly moulded wax roses, dahlias, and lilac, above which perched a pheasant regnant. This trophy met with vast approbation until a rival establishment across the way, not to be outdone, exhibited a centrepiece of unparalleled originality, consisting as it did of a war scene modelled entirely in lard. Entrenched behind the battlements of the fort crowning an eminence, Boers busied themselves with cannon whose aim was carefully directed towards the admiring spectators outside the window, not at the British troops who were essaying to scale the greasy slopes. Half way up the hill, a miniature train appeared from time to time issuing from an absolutely irrelevant tunnel, and, progressing at the rate of quite a mile an hour, crawled into the corresponding tunnel on the other side. At the base of the hill British soldiers, who seemed quite cognisant of the utter futility of the Boer gunnery, were complacently driving off cattle. Captious critics might have taken exception to the fact that the waxen camellias adorning the hill were nearly as big as the battlements, and considerably larger than the engine of the train. But fortunately detractors were absent, and such trifling discrepancies did not lessen the genuine delight afforded the spectators by this unique design which, as a card proudly informed the world, was entirely the work of the employes of the firm.

It was in a patisserie in the Rue de la Paroisse that we noticed an uninviting compound labelled “Pudding Anglais, 2 f/2 kilo.” A little thought led us to recognise in this amalgamation a travesty of our old friend plum-pudding; but so revolting was its dark, bilious-looking exterior that we felt its claim to be accounted a compatriot almost insulting. And it was with secret gratification that towards the close of January we saw the same stolid, unhappy blocks awaiting purchasers.

The presence of the customary Tuesday market kept the streets busy till noon. But when the square was again empty of sellers and buyers Versailles relapsed into quietude. I wonder if any other town of its size is as silent as Versailles. There is little horse-traffic. Save for the weird, dirge-like drone of the electric cars, which seems in perfect consonance with the tone of sadness pervading the old town whose glory has departed, the clang of the wooden shoes on the rough pavement, and the infrequent beat of hoofs as a detachment of cavalry moves by, unnatural stillness seems to prevail.

Of street music there was none, though once an old couple wailing a plaintive duet passed under our windows. Britain is not esteemed a melodious nation, yet the unclassical piano is ever with us, and even in the smallest provincial towns one is rarely out of hearing of the insistent note of some itinerant musician. And no matter how far one penetrates into the recesses of the country, he is always within reach of some bucolic rendering of the popular music-hall ditty of the year before last. But never during our stay in Versailles, a stay that included what is supposedly the gay time of the year, did we hear the sound of an instrument, or with the one exception of the old couple, whom it would be rank flattery to term vocalists the note of a voice raised in song.

With us, New Year’s Day was a quiet one. A dozen miles distant, Paris was welcoming the advent of the new century in a burst of feverish excitement. But despite temptations, we remained in drowsy Versailles, and spent several of the hours in the little room where two pallid Red-Cross knights, who were celebrating the occasion by sitting up for the first time, waited expectant of our coming as their one link with the outside world.

It was with a sincere thrill of pity that at dejeuner we glanced round the salle-a-manger and found all the Ogams filling their accustomed solitary places. Only Dunois the comparatively young, and presumably brave, was absent. The others occupied their usual seats, eating with their unfailing air of introspective absorption. Nobody had cared enough for these lonely old men to ask them to fill a corner at their tables, even on New Year’s Day. To judge by their regular attendance at the hotel meals, these men all of whom, as shown by their wearing the red ribbon of the Legion of Honour, had merited distinction had little hospitality offered them. Most probably they offered as little, for, throughout our stay, none ever had a friend to share his breakfast or dinner.

The bearing of the hotel guests suggested absolute ignorance of one another’s existence. The Colonels, as I have said in a previous chapter, were exceptions, but even they held intercourse only without the hotel walls. Day after day, month after month, year after year as we were told, these men had fed together, yet we never saw them betray even the most cursory interest in one another. They entered and departed without revealing, by word or look, cognisance of another human being’s presence. Could one imagine a dozen men of any other nationality thus maintaining the same indifference over even a short period? I hope future experience will prove me wrong, but in the meantime my former conception of the French as a nation overflowing with bonhomie and camaraderie is rudely shaken.

The day of the year would have passed without anything to distinguish it from its fellows had not the proprietor, who, by the way, was a Swiss, endeavoured by sundry little attentions to reveal his goodwill. Oysters usurped the place of the customary hors d’oeuvres at breakfast, and the meal ended with cafe noir and cognac handed round by the deferential Iorson as being “offered by the proprietor,” who, entering during the progress of the dejeuner, paid his personal respects to his clientele.

The afternoon brought us a charming discovery. We had a boy guest with us at luncheon, a lonely boy left at school when his few compatriots save only the two Red-Cross prisoners had gone home on holiday. The day was bright and balmy; and while strolling in the park beyond the Petit Trianon, we stumbled by accident upon the hameau, the little village of counterfeit rusticity wherein Marie Antoinette loved to play at country life.

Following a squirrel that sported among the trees, we had strayed from the beaten track, when, through the leafless branches, we caught sight of roofs and houses and, wandering towards them, found ourselves by the side of a miniature lake, round whose margin were grouped the daintiest rural cottages that monarch could desire or Court architect design.

History had told us of the creation of this unique plaything of the capricious Queen, but we had thought of it as a thing of the past, a toy whose fragile beauty had been wrecked by the rude blows of the Revolution. The matter-of-fact and unromantic Baedeker, it is true, gives it half a line. After devoting pages to the Chateau, its grounds, pictures, and statues, and detailing exhaustively the riches of the Trianons, he blandly mentions the gardens of the Petit Trianon as containing “some fine exotic trees, an artificial lake, a Temple of Love, and a hamlet where the Court ladies played at peasant life.”

It is doubtful whether ten out of every hundred tourists who, Baedeker in hand, wander conscientiously over the grand Chateau Palace, alas! no longer ever notice the concluding words, or, reading its lukewarm recommendation, deem the hamlet worthy of a visit. The Chateau is an immense building crammed with artistic achievements, and by the time the sightseer of ordinary capacity has seen a tenth of the pictures, a third of the sculpture, and a half of the fountains, his endurance, if not all his patience, is exhausted.

I must acknowledge that we, too, had visited Versailles without discovering that the hameau still existed; so to chance upon it in the sunset glow of that winter evening seemed to carry us back to the time when the storm-cloud of the Revolution was yet no larger than a man’s hand; to the day when Louis XVI., making for once a graceful speech, presented the site to his wife, saying: “You love flowers. Ah! well, I have a bouquet for you the Petit Trianon.” And his Queen, weary of the restrictions of Court ceremony though it must be admitted that the willful Marie Antoinette ever declined to be hampered by convention experiencing in her residence in the little house freedom from etiquette, pursued the novel pleasure to its furthest by commanding the erection in its grounds of a village wherein she might the better indulge her newly fledged fancy for make-believe rusticity.

About the pillars supporting the verandah-roof of the chief cottage and that of the wide balcony above, roses and vines twined lovingly. And though it was the first day of January, the rose foliage was yet green and bunches of shrivelled grapes clung to the vines. It was lovely then; yet a day or two later, when a heavy snowfall had cast a white mantle over the village, and the little lake was frozen hard, the scene seemed still more beautiful in its ghostly purity.

At first sight there was no sign of decay about the long-deserted hamlet. The windows were closed, but had it been early morning, one could easily have imagined that the pseudo villagers were asleep behind the shuttered casements, and that soon the Queen, in some charming deshabille, would come out to breathe the sweet morning air and to inhale the perfume of the climbing roses on the balcony overlooking the lake, wherein gold-fish darted to and fro among the water-lilies; or expect to see the King, from the steps of the little mill where he lodged, exchange blithe greetings with the maids of honour as they tripped gaily to the laiterie to play at butter-making, or sauntered across the rustic bridge on their way to gather new-laid eggs at the farm.

The sunset glamour had faded and the premature dusk of mid-winter was falling as, approaching nearer, we saw where the roof-thatch had decayed, where the insidious finger of Time had crumbled the stone walls. A chilly wind arising, moaned through the naked trees. The shadow of the guillotine seemed to brood oppressively over the scene, and, shuddering, we hastened away.