The King got things built more quickly than anyone else, partly because he had the Army to help him and partly because he hired all of the qualified builders. And so La Dunette was still nothing more than an empty stretch of high ground with a clever name when le Roi had given his cousin, the duc d’Arcachon, a personal tour of the palace. They had lingered particularly in the Queen’s Apartments: a row of bedchambers, antechambers, and salons that stretched between the Peace drawing-room and the King’s guardroom on the upper storey of the palace’s southern wing. The King and the Duke had strolled up and down the length of those apartments once, twice, thrice, pausing before each of the high windows to enjoy the view across the Parterre Sud, and the Orangerie below it to the rise of the Bois de Satory a mile away. The duc d’Arcachon had, in the fullness of time, perceived what the King had wished him to perceive, which was that any buildings erected on or near the crest of the hill would spoil the Queen’s view, and give her the feeling that the de Lavardacs were peering down into her bedroom windows. And so a great pile of expensive architectural drawings had been used to start fires in the Hôtel d’Arcachon in Paris, and the duc had hired the great Hardouin-Mansart and implored him to design a château altogether magnificent—but invisible from the Queen’s windows. Mansart had situated it well back from the crest of the hill. Consequently, from the windows of the château of La Dunette proper, the view was limited. But Mansart had laid out a promenade that swung out along a lobe of the garden and led to a gazebo, perched demurely on the brink of the hill, and camouflaged with climbing vines. From there the prospect was superb.