The Great Days of Versailles - Studies From Court Life in the Later Years of Louis XIV #254872

The following pages do not profess to be history; still less do they pretend to throw any new light upon a period which is already so exhaustively known through its memoirs and its letters. All that I have attempted to do is to reconstruct from familiar materials a picture of Court life at Versailles in the later years of Louis XIV — the manners, customs, and interests of a unique society which has no counterpart in modern Europe — and to give a brief account of the private life and character of some of the people who figured most prominently in the events of the time. My hope is that such a compilation may be of use to those who intend to study the French eighteenth-century memoirs, by making them familiar with some of the personal questions which counted for so much at the French Court; and, also, that it may not be without interest for that large class of people who have neither time nor opportunity to study the period in detail, and who are forced to be content with the summaries of others.