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Louis XIV, out of respect to his father, would not allow Mansart's project to be carried out and therefore alterations were only made in the court by surrounding it on the western side with the magnificent buildings now forming the garden front. The southern wing was subsequently added for the accommodation of the younger members of the royal family.
It is due to M. de Nolhac, the Conservateur du Musée de Versailles, that this happy amelioration has been brought about and that Mansart's admirable work is again as it was in the days of Madame de Maintenon and those of the later Napoleon I. In spite of all this the Trianon of to-day is not what it was in the eighteenth century.
The rather sprawling, one-story, horseshoe-shaped villa built by Louis XIV for Madame de Maintenon, and known as the Grand Trianon, was an architectural conception of Mansart's. It is worth remarking that the Grand Trianon, to-day, is in a more nearly perfect state than it has been for long past, for the restorations lately made have removed certain interpolations manifestly out of place.
For forty years Saint Germain has been in a state of restoration, and like the restoration of Pierrefonds it has swallowed up fantastic sums. The western façade has been rebuilt from the chapel to the entrance portal and the last of Mansart's pavilions, which he built to please either his own fancy or that of Louis XIV, have been demolished.
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