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After the porticos, Serlio decorated the Galerie d'Ulysse which has since disappeared owing to the indifference of Louis XV and the imbecility of his friends; and always it was with François: "You understand, Maître Serlio; it is as you wish." The motif may have been Italian, but the impetus for the work was given by the esprit of the French.
"Why, that is Madame de , a grand-daughter of General Lafayette." I can hardly account, at this quiet moment, for the sudden impulse that seized me; but resist it I could not; and walking directly up to her, I made my lowest bow, and, without giving her time to look me well in the face, repeated, with all the gravity I could command, "Calypso ne pouvait se consoler du départ d'Ulysse."
The beautiful twisted staircase in front of the central pavilion was executed by Lemercier for Louis XIII., and replaces a staircase by Philbert Delorme. Facing this pavilion, the mass of buildings on the right is the Aile Neuve of Louis XV., built on the site of the Galerie d'Ulysse, to the destruction of the precious works of Primaticcio and Niccolo dell' Abbate, with which it was adorned.
The imposing entrance court is a hundred and twelve metres in width by a hundred and fifty-two metres in length, and to see it as it was originally, before the destruction of the Galerie d'Ulysse, one must imagine it as closed in by a series of small pavilions with their frontons of colonnettes preceded only by a staircase and two drawbridges crossing the moat, which at that time surrounded the entire confines of the palace.
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