DAY BY DAY
The Park of Versailles Ransacked

I. THE TREES

We do not write these words lightly. And if this title surprises you, you who thought that, thanks to the magnificent generosity of Mr. J. D. Rockefeller, the palace and gardens of Versailles, these marvelous jewels of France's heritage, were henceforth safe from the ravages of time, know that it is precisely because of a deplorable use of these gifts that the beauty of Versailles is currently suffering irreparable outrages.

A bad fate, truly, seems to weigh on the domain of the ancient monarchy. To confine ourselves to the last ten years, it was in June 1914 that Mr. André Hallays, resuming a campaign that had had important administrative consequences at the palace, was obliged to title a resounding article in the Journal des Débats: "The Tampering of Versailles." »
And no one has forgotten that other campaign that Mr. Henry Lapauze led two years ago in favor of certain works of art at Versailles that were threatened with perishing: the emotion that his cries of alarm had aroused in public opinion determined first private companies, then the public authorities, to take effective care of saving these treasures.
Finally, we were reassured to learn that a generous American was offering our country a sum of 9 million francs to repair Versailles, - a gift that will doubtless be followed by an equal credit opened by the State. But who could have imagined that this very gift would become, today for Versailles, the cause of new misfortunes?

This subject is, unfortunately, too vast for us to be able to deal with it in a single article. Let us begin with the trees.

First of all, it is important to know that the chief architect of the palaces of Versailles and Trianon, being "responsible for the conservation of the estate", exercises supreme power over everything that constitutes the gardens: ground, basins and pools, stairs, vases, statues, trees and flowers. The authority of the inspector of Water and Forests of the department does not cross the gate of the park, just as that of the curator of the palace is limited to the interior of the buildings.
But, while in a national forest one cannot cut down a sapling without all sorts of prior investigations, authorizations and formalities, the chief architect of the palace of Versailles is the absolute master of these historic high forests.

How does the current architect, Mr. Chaussemiche, use this power?
He presented to the mayor of Versailles an estimate of the work to be carried out using the Rockefeller donation, which states the following: "Repair of the trellises and pruning of the trees in the gardens of Versailles and Trianon: Fr. 3,000,000." Three million to rebuild trellises and prune trees is a lot of money... And we are told that there are more than 120 kilometers of trellises in the gardens, but there is still a lot of money left over for pruning!

But you have no idea what the chief architect means by "pruning." As the popular expression goes, you have to see it to believe it. So go to Versailles, and, moving away from the château and the Water Parterre, go down the Royal Alley... Just a fortnight ago, you could still see the Mansard colonnade on the left, through the thick trees; one could make out its thirty-two columns of colored marble, reinforced with pilasters and supporting a light frieze; but one had to follow a small path and enter the interior of the building to admire the decoration with which it is adorned, the heads of nymphs, naiads or sylvans fixed to the keystone of each arch, the children's games sculpted in bas-reliefs between the arcades. As for the exterior of the colonnade, it does not bear an ornament, not a molding, because it is strictly speaking a reverse side; also, at all times, dense trees hid it from view, we know this from the oldest testimonies. Well, this reverse side of the Colonnade, which was and had to be hidden by the greenery, appears to us now, similar to some frame of a theater farm, in its unsightly nudity. For several days now, in fact, a team of skilled lumberjacks has been raging and raging through the forest surrounding the colonnade. Large, beautiful tree trunks litter the ground, without anyone even having taken the trouble to pull out the stumps. Lean over this one - it was perfectly healthy and vigorous - and you wonder why its branches are now making logs and roundels, why the workers are going to leave, when they leave, this bare ground, which is no longer a forest, which is not a lawn, which is no longer anything at all. And if you try to get an explanation from the lumberjacks, they will answer you: "We are carrying out the architect's orders. It seems that it is because of the statues.

The statues? ... We will soon see what they are doing in this deadly pruning of the park of Versailles. But, in the meantime, let all those who cherish this park and the nobility of its branches hurry to see it again before the most beautiful trees have fallen under the axe. It is important that this massacre has many witnesses!

HUBERT MORAND