Now he turned to Marie. Partly it was politeness. Also a little test. “But what do you think, mademoiselle?” he asked.

Marie considered for a moment.

“Everything you say seems correct, monsieur,” she answered carefully, “yet I would add one thing.” She glanced at Hadley. “Monsieur Hadley may know that during the boyhood of the king, perhaps as a reaction to the autocratic policies of Cardinal Mazarin, there were two terrible revolts, known as the Fronde. One night, the Paris mob broke into the Louvre and came into the king’s bedchamber. He was still only a child. He pretended to be asleep while they came around his bed, inspecting him. Imagine the scene. It must have been terrifying. Nobody could have stopped them if they’d wanted to murder him. And I suspect, monsieur, that the memory of that night stayed with the king all his life. His head may have dictated the move to Versailles, but I believe that, in his heart, even as a grown man, Louis XIV never felt safe in the Louvre.”

Roland looked at her admiringly.

“I think your woman’s wisdom comes closer to the mark than all my calculations,” he said with respect. And though he did not say it aloud, he added to himself that it would be a lucky man who had her by his side.

At the entrance, a guardian let them in. After that, they had the place to themselves. No footfalls, no voices but their own disturbed the silence of the huge marble halls, the gilded chambers and endless galleries.

They went through the King’s Apartment, stately, somber and impressive.

“Each reception room is named after one of the classical gods,” Roland explained. “The throne room is for Apollo.”

“It’s curious, isn’t it,” Marc remarked, “how our Christian monarch showed such a taste for comparing himself to pagan gods. He wasn’t called the Sun King for nothing.”

Here and there, Roland pointed out paintings and decorations, all by French artists like Rigaud and Le Brun, as they moved through the stately sequence of high, cold rooms. The culmination was the War Salon, a temple of green and red marble, massively ornamented with gold, and dominated by a huge oval relief of the godlike Sun King, mounted on a horse that was trampling upon his enemies.

“Everything depended upon the king,” Roland remarked. “His control was complete. The ritual was endless.” He gave Fox and Hadley an amused look. “Everything that the English and the American political systems wanted to avoid.”

And with that he led them through the doorway into the most famous room in France.

The Galerie des Glaces, the Hall of Mirrors. Nearly eighty yards long. Great windows down one side, gilded mirrors opposite, a tunnel-arched ceiling from which the massive row of crystal chandeliers hung in galactic splendor. The almost endless polished expanse of parquet floor gleamed like a lake under the sun.