Excerpt from Women of Versailles: The Court of Louis XIV (Classic Reprint)
Arely has a city presented a spectacle so striking as that afforded by Versailles during the struggle of the army against the Commune. Between the grand century and our epoch, between the majesty of old France and the intestine broils of new France, between the dismal horrors of which Paris was the scene and the radiant souvenirs of the city of the sun-king, there was a contrast as painful as it was startling. Those avenues where one might see the head of the government and the illustrious defeated man of Reichshofien, that place of arms encumbered with cannons, those red flags, sad trophies of the civil war, which were taken to the Assembly as tokens of mourning as well as of victory, that magnificent palace whence seemed to issue a suppliant voice adjuring our soldiers to save so fair a heritage of historic splendors and national grandeurs, all filled the soul with profound emotion.