“You are exactly right, mademoiselle,” he said. “The very center of this huge facade contains the original hunting lodge. Just a modest house with a few bedrooms. But they preserved it and then built outward in every direction.” He turned to them all. “Shall we go in?”

As they started to move toward the entrance, he heard Marc murmur to his sister, “You knew where the hunting lodge was. Why didn’t you just say?” But Marie ignored him.

So Roland had been right. He remembered a conversation with Father Xavier, years ago. “When you marry,” the priest had said, “before you take any action, think first how it will feel to your wife. Consider her feelings before your own. If you and your wife both do this for each other, you are on the road to a happy marriage.”

Roland wanted a marriage like his parents’. He wanted to love and be loved. “I will try to do as you say,” he’d answered the priest.

“I am glad to hear it,” Father Xavier had replied with a smile. “So let me add one word of caution. However much you may fall in love, do not waste that love on a woman who is not considerate in return.”

Marie’s act of good manners was only a small sign, but an encouraging one. It suggested that she was thoughtful about others.

As they approached the entrance, Hadley had another question.

“Why did he move from Paris?” he asked. “He had the Louvre Palace, which is big enough.”

“Some say he hated Paris,” said Marc.

“That may be so,” Roland said. “But he still built Les Invalides, and some of the first boulevards in the city. The truth is, nobody knows for certain. But I think it was part of a larger process. France had been brought together as a single country, but it was still very hard to govern, with great nobles controlling huge regions. In the time of his father, Louis XIII, the great Cardinal Richelieu tried to bring order to the land by making the monarchy absolute. When Louis XIV came to the throne, he was only five years old, but all through his childhood, Richelieu’s successor, Cardinal Mazarin, followed the same policy. And once Louis XIV took power, with the help of his finance minister, Colbert, he continued to centralize the administration of France. What better way to control the nobles than to have all the powerful ones in one place, where he could keep an eye on them. Over two generations he became so clever at making them dance to his tune at the court of Versailles that he completely neutered them. He couldn’t have done that in Paris. It’s too spread out.”

“And hard to control,” Fox added.

“Impossible. Always full of places for people to hide, and breed dangerous ideas.” Roland smiled ruefully. “Paris gave us the Revolution.”