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The coach passed through the Bois de Boulogne, in sight of lovely lakes,
quaint old windmills, and across famous Longchamps, where after the
Franco-German War under a bright sky, in the presence of the French
president, his cabinet, the senate and chamber of deputies, in full
dress, and a million of enthusiastic citizens, Grevy and Gambetta
presented several hundred silk banners to the French army. Thence the
drive was along the left bank of the river till the ruins of St. Cloud
were reached, where Napoleon III. Unwittingly signed his abdication when
he declared war against Prussia.
Climbing the hills through fine old forests after fourteen miles of
travel southwest of Paris, the coach reached Versailles. Here that
magnificent monarch, Louis XIV. lavished hundreds of millions on
palaces, parks, fountains, and statues, and here the Harrises studied the
brilliant pictorial history of France. In the Grand Gallery, which
commands beautiful views of garden and water, are effective paintings
in the ceiling, which represent the splendid achievements of Louis XIV.
In this same Hall of Glass, beneath Le Brun's color history of the defeat
of the Germans by the French, occurred in 1871 a bit of fine poetic
justice, when King William of Prussia, with the consent of the German
States, was saluted as Emperor of reunited Germany.
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