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Updated: June 12, 2025
After admiring the beautifully decorated ceiling and the handsome leather hangings, we left the dining room and its temptations for what was a much greater attraction to the men of the party, the fine suits of armor in the Salle des Gardes.
There were also some light horse posted outside these windows in the same ignorance, and many principal officers and others in the Regent's bed-room, and in the grand cabinet. All things being well arranged, the Marechal de Villeroy arrived about mid-day, with his accustomed hubbub, but alone, his chair and porters remaining outside, beyond the Salle des Gardes.
The apartments showing best the Napoleonic style in decorations and furnishings are the Salon des Huissiers, the Salle des Gardes, the Escalier d'Apollon, the Salle de Don Quichotte which contains a series of designs destined to have served for a series of tapestries intended to depict scenes in the life of the windmill knight the Galerie des Fêtes, the Galerie des Cerfs, the Salle Coypel, the Salle des Stucs and the Salon des Fleurs, through which latter one approaches the royal apartments.
The Minister who only the day before, from his seat upon one of the benches of the Opposition, sat with his head held aloft, his long body erect, with rigid dignity, as if made of triple brass, cannot now take the initiative in the appointment of a 'garde champêtre. His undersecretaries of State, his gardes champêtres, he himself, his whole environment, in fact, are only painted dummies and the meek puppets that a director of the staff, a chief of a division, or a chief of a bureau sets in motion, to the tune he grinds out of his hand-organ, or moves them about at his will like pawns upon a chess-board.
"Let him wait in the salle des gardes," he said aloud. "Is he young, Pardaillan?" "Yes, monseigneur; he says he is a son of Lecamus the furrier." "Lecamus is a good Catholic," remarked the cardinal, who, like his brother the duke, was endowed with Caesar's memory. "The rector of Saint-Pierre-aux-Boeufs relies upon him; he is the provost of that quarter."
But for some months previous to the vendange, no one but a proprietor has the right to enter a vineyard; at this period a perfect calm and silence reigns, and they become an asylum, a veritable land of Goshen, an oasis for all the partridges, hares, and rabbits of the neighbourhood. In order to prevent gentlemen and professional poachers from cruising in these delightful latitudes, killing the game and injuring the vines, a number of gardes champêtres, generally old soldiers, are chosen, who armed with an old sabre, post themselves on some height which commands the vineyard, ready to lay violent hands on any delinquent that may make his appearance. But in spite of the garde champêtre, his long sabre, their interminable cut and thrust, and his eternal de par la loi, arretez! there is a sport in the early morning, called
Officers of the service noticed this beginning of disorder, and probably were concerned at my embarrassment. Some Gardes Francais were called within the barrier of the parterre in order to restrain the disturbers. Suddenly a very lively quarrel broke out in the centre.
By and by there was a sound of music, and soon the Emperor of the French and the Emperor of Austria, escorted by the famous Cent Gardes, entered the enclosure.
As they went, tokens of the life within came out to them through doorway and window. Now it was the voice of a laughing young mother: "Si tu as faim Manges ta main Et gardes l'autre pour demain; Et ta tete Pour le jour de fete; Et ton gros ortee Pour le Jour Saint Norbe" And again: "Let us pluck the bill of the lark, The lark from head to tail " He knew the voice.
A few days afterwards the members of the Provisional Government sat twelve hours, on thrones erected for them under the Arch of Triumph, to see Gardes Mobiles, National Guards, troops of the line, and armed workmen, file past them, all shouting for Lamartine and Order!
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