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Updated: June 24, 2025
Omnia vanitas! Is that indeed the proper comment on our lives, coming, as it does in this case, from one who might have made his own all that life has to bestow? Yet he was never to be seen at court, and has lived here almost as an exile. Was our "Great King Lewis" jealous of a true grand seigneur or grand monarque by natural gift and the favour of heaven, that he could not endure his presence?
And now was a market assured for a man's work, a royal market, with the king as its chief, and his favourites following close. The ateliers scattered about Paris were allied in spirit, were all the result of the encouragement of preceding monarchs, but it remained for Le Grand Monarque to gather all together and form a state solidarity. Kings must have credit, even though others do the work.
In 1855 the Derby was won by the illustrious Monarque, and the following year witnessed the first appearance upon the turf of the now famous red and blue of Lagrange. It was Beauvais, belonging to Madame Latache de Fay, who in 1860 carried off the coveted prize, which was won the next year by Gabrielle d'Estrées, from the stable of the comte de Lagrange.
It turned preponderantly to commercial and economic aims. A secular view of the purpose of God in history began to prevail in all classes of society. The Grand Monarque was ready to proclaim the divine right of the State which was himself. Still, not until the period of his dotage did that claim bear any relation to what even he would have called religion.
What France might do in the future was unknown; yet it was unthinkable that aught could be worse than this glorious reign of Louis, the Grand Monarque, this crumbling clod, this resolving excrescence, this phosphorescent, disintegrating fungus of a diseased life and time. Seventy-two years a king; thirty years a libertine; twenty years a repentant.
"Precede me, Hector," she said with consummate dignity, "to M. le Comte's audience chamber." And with hands folded before her, her aristocratic head very erect, her mouth and eyes composed to reposeful majesty, she sailed out through the mahogany doors in a style which no one who had never curtsied to the Bien-aimé Monarque could possibly hope to imitate.
Louis XIV, the Grand Monarque, lived to his pose of heavy magnificence even in the furnishing and decorating of the apartments where he ruled as king and where he lived as man. Sumptuous splendour, expressed in heavy design, in deep colouring, with much red and gold, these were the order of the day, and best expressed the reign.
Each glanced his eye significantly at the other, and a sarcastic smile passed over the face of Sir Gervaise, though his friend maintained his customary appearance of gravity. "I believe le Grand Monarque and Marshal Saxe give a different account of that matter, Sir Wycherly," drily observed the former; "and it may be well to remember that there are two sides to every story.
Millions were wasted to build the vast monument of royal fatuity, and when it was done the Grand Monarque found it necessary to fly from time to time to the sham solitude and mock retirement he had built an hour away.
In a grave, grand way, he was not a little curious, and took care to place himself where he could command a view of the court; while Louis, making no secret of his own amusement, worked up an excitement to entertain his father, and stood watching at the window. 'Crack! crack! there are the postilion's whips! Now for the Grand Monarque himself thundering under the archway!
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