The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-06-16

IN FAMOUS FRENCH CHATEAUX.
 Passing St, Germain few days ago I noticed that the scaffolding which for a long time has covered one facade of the palace was being taken down, and some new stonework round a door--desgned, I believe, by M. Puech-was beginning to appear from behind it's barricade.
 These restorations of St. Germain are an old story but latterly they have
 been keeping pace with an industrious.
 and, on the whole, admirable series of changes in the famous palaces of
 France. These changes, which In most
 cases are not restorations (ominous word!) so much as rehabilitations or re- constitutions of old rooms, of old groupings of furniture, and so forth, are due to the desire of the Depart
 ment of Fine Arts to lay the history of the houses even more freely before visitors, It occurred to me that few notes on these changes might be useful, l write of places within easy reach of
 Paris which are commonly visited by | English people.
 Taking them in the order of their | nearness to Paris, begin with the
 house that happens to be the smallest
 of them all-La Bagatelle, on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne. Here Is a case of innovation, not reconstitution. The white house, which in these days makes
 one wonder how 1t keeps so clean face
 under the smoke which often pours across the Seine from the Puteaux fac-
 tories, has at last come into the posses sion of the Paris city council. After
 many changes of ownership it ought to
 rest forever in safe hands. This is the house which the Conlte d'Artois, broth- CT of Louis XIV, built in month in
 order to win a bet from Marie Antol- nette. He inscribed "Parva sed Apta"
 over the door, which was classical
 way of saying that the whole thing was a bagatelle. After belonging to the Due
 de Barry, who often used to live there,
 the house was bought by Lord Hertford l dhe stoyne of Vanity Fair" and Mon
 mouth of "Coningsby'), and through him passed to Cir Richard Wallace. | The delightful garden Is cut out of the Bois and the house Itself is an elegant box, without elaboration, such as you
 might build in month. In the garden
 botanical school is to be established, and on May 10 an exhibition of paint l ings was opened in the chateau. This exhibition, which may be the first of
 many contains pictures chiefly by those
 who showed their work in the seces- 1 sionary exhibitions of the Champ de
 Mars, and who nowadays those that 1 survive-exhibit at the New Salon. I | noticed two studies by Burne-Jones
 which have not been exhibited before. l At the chateau of Malmaison, near | Ruell-three-quarters of an hour by tram from Parisa Napoleonic-museum
 is being formed by the curator. Mall
 maison is the house where Napoleon as 1 first consul lived with Josephine, but
 many of the relics were removed long | age. Some of the furniture is in the | Grand Trlanon at Versailles, and some of the books of the library which Ma poleon cherished more than any library he ever had, were scattered as far as | Marseilles. From Marseilles they are
 being brought back, and soon the cura- | tor will throw open more rooms in the chateau than the public have ever seen | before. l do not know any more inter
 esting souvenir than this house of the
 best and probably happiest part of Ma
 poleon's life-the life which he aban-
 doned for reasons of State" when he | divorced Josephine. It was here that
 he said goodbye to Josephine. with
 misgiving and tears; here that he came like an unquiet spirit after his return
 from Elba-Josephine was dead-and
 said to Queen Hortense: q expect to | see Josephine at every turn of these walksf And well he might. All the
 time when he was absent in Egypt and
 in danger of losing his influence in France she had used her salon to rally
 waverers to his side, and when he was | at home she had laid out the garden
 and enlarged t hehouse into a consular
 Trianon to please him. It was to Mall i maison that he came again to spend his