The same scenes were repeated every day, beginning at the Salon de l’œil de Bœuf, which was the ante-chamber to the Royal bedchamber; to be received by Louis while still in his shirt was a mark of outstanding favour. Ladies and gentlemen elbowed and trod on one another from the moment the King rose in the morning until the hour when he retired on the Dubarry’s arm at night. To be at Versailles without being noticed was nearly as bad as not being there at all. Hundreds flocked to Versailles every day from their homes in Paris and the surrounding country, enduring the nightmare roads in the early dawn, risking the attacks of thieves who waited in the woodlands and suffering the rigours of a particularly bitter winter rather than miss the Court for a single day. Others, richer and more privileged, lived in Versailles itself, but so many were the applicants for rooms that even the vast Palace could not accommodate them with any degree of privacy or comfort. Comtesses and marquises fought like cats over the smallest chamber with a bed and a chair in it; owners of great Châteaux contented themselves with sharing a room with two or three others; their servants disposed themselves as and where they could; nobody cared about them when the plight of their masters and mistresses was so miserably uncomfortable.
