Note 10 — Chapter IV · LA SALLE AND THE GREATER NEW FRANCE.
Reading edition
The pomp and splendour of the armies of Louis XIV. was worthy of a prince in a fairy tale. Every campaign ended in a sort of royal pageant; coaches of crystal and gold, horses draped in cloth of gold, courtiers and conquerors dazzling with diamonds, ladies all silks and plumes and laces.
He built Versailles where two hundred years afterwards the Conference following the Great War of 1914-18 met to settle the terms of peace—“a palace such as the world had never seen, glittering with mirrors and gold, paved and lined with precious marbles, decorated with paintings representing the battles and triumphs of the great monarch and looking over an immense park peopled with bronze and marble statues and reflected in vast sheets of water where lovely fountains played.”—Duclaux.