1936 On the Continent

Club, the Golf de Paris à la Boulie at Versailles and the Fontainebleau Club.
Auteull and Longchamps
    Finally, you will probably not want to leave France without going to some of the race meetings at Auteuil or Longchamps, and without putting your shirt or part of it on a “dead cert.”
    As far as betting goes, there is not need for you to risk catching a cold in the rain at Maisons-Lafitte. At every corner of the street there are small cafés which are at the same time branch offices of the P.M.U. (Pairs Mutualité Urbaine).
    These little cafés are thoroughly typical of Paris, with the table shoved against a window, behind which the daughter of the house or the “patronne” herself books bets for hurried people up to the very last minute before the race. Taxi-drivers, actresses, very respectable business men, and less respectable and far more attractive girls, press round the table feverishly trying to decide which horse is going to lose their savings for them this time.
    Special dailies and weeklies will give you all the information you need as to the form and chances of the various horses, and at the same time generously give you absolutely infallible “tips.” But before putting your money down, think over the words which Alexandre Dumas, son, author of
La Dame aux Camélias
, pronounced just before he died: “My last desire is to begin my life over again twice. Once to win back the amounts I have lost betting on horses, and the second time to lose them once more.”

THE ENVIRONS OF PARIS
    Nature has been far less generous to the environs of Paris, as regards quaint or picturesque spots, than is the case with certain other European capitals. But where nature has been ungenerous, or even niggardly, man has built mansions, laid out parks and avenues which render this region so attractive from the tourist’s point of view that even without the proximity of Paris it would have become world famous.
Versailles
    The expression “environs of Paris” immediately recalls to everyone a name that is universally known, even in the most distant corners of the globe. Hugo Victor once said:
    “I am not rich, but I offer 100 francs each to all those who, having visited Versailles, truthfully declare that they have not been enchanted by it.”
    This town of 70,000 inhabitants, which lies some 11 miles from Paris and is the capital of the Seine et Oise Department, has little to offer that is of interest to the tourist.
    But there is the Palace!
    I will assume that you have three days at most, and we shall therefore go through the magnificent residence of the last of the French kings in top gear, so to speak. It is perhaps unnecessary to remind you that Versailles was a simple hunting-lodge during the reign of Louis XIII and was transformed and extended according to the grandiose plans of the architect Mansart, the man who gave his name (“mansard”) to the special Parisian type of garret. It is said that the construction of the Palace cost 60 million francs, but Voltaire was the first man to suspect that this amount was increased to 100 millions out of the “secret fund,” which was then already in existence; but in either case the amount was colossal for the seventeenth century.
    Louis XV continued the embellishment of Versailles, but his successor, Louis XVI, was already driven out by the Revolution, and the Palace never regained its formergrandeur except under Napoleon, and particularly under Louis Philippe.
    It is not our intention to enumerate here all that there is to be seen at Versailles. No doubt you will visit, first of all, the famous Hall of Mirrors where, on January 18th, 1871, the King of Prussia was proclaimed Emperor of Germany and where, on June 28th, 1919, Germany and the Allied Powers signed the Peace Treaty.
Historic Rooms
    You, Madam, will probably leave your husband in the Hall of Mirrors and go round to the Queen’s apartments, the “petits appartements de Marie Antoinette,” and also to the room where, in October 1780 Marie Antoinette sought refuge, half clad, from the revolutionary mob. Marie Antoinette’s apartments were originally appointed for Maria Theresa, then for Marie Leczinska, the wife of Louis XV.
    Up the magnificent “Queen’s staircase” you will reach the apartments of the notorious Madame de Maintenon, including her all too famous bedroom. After passing through countless other rooms and ante-rooms and up a number of stairs, you will end up in the Salle du Congrés,