There had been a building of one kind or another on the same spot for above a century.

Louis XIV.

had erected there a cottage of porcelain for his imperious favorite, Madame de Montespan; and it was the more sumptuous palace with which, after her death, he replaced it, that gave rise to the strange quarrel between the haughty monarch and his equally haughty minister, Louvois, of which St.Simon has left us so curious an account.[2] This had been allowed to fall into a state of decay; and a few years before his death, Louis XV.

had pulled down what remained of it, and had built a third on its foundations, which had been the most favorite abode of Madame du Barri during his life, but which was now rendered vacant by her dismissal.

The house was decorated with an exquisite delicacy of taste, in which Louis XV.