Benjamin Haydon letter to Leigh Hunt, June 20, 1814

Paris June 20- 1814 My dear Hunt, I have got so much to tell you that I do not know how I can squeeze it all into one sheet, however I'll do my best -- I have been to Versailles, Beambouellet, Malmaison, & St. Cloud, I have been to the Catacomb, the Jardins Des Plantes, Musee Francois & through at the Gaming houses of the Palais Royal. Such scenes as you in your antidiluvian [sic] innocence of mind, in England can never conceive, and God grant you never may without seeing them -- Fancy white rooms full of gamblers -- in each room a table, and each table for a different game, you can gamble for napoleons, [?Four] to ten sous each table was full, from the napoleon table, to the one for sous -- all eager, silent, anxious, intensely alive to the slightest motion, or the slightest noise, -- young interesting women were wandering about losing & at one and gaining at another, old harassed villains, with the most polished manners, and worn out, ugly, dirty dissipated [?], smothered in ragged lace, head buried beneath huge bonnets -- The expressions of disappointment, of agonized disappointment, of piercing, acute abstraction, & cold, dreaming, [?perspiring] vexation, and of a long drawn leer, of chuckling triumph, and yet [?supposed] pleasure were apparent, /and/ were so apparent, that no man could mistaken what was passing within, and as your eye wandered around on each your /heart/ heart sunk as you recognized their thoughts -- they all looked jagged, fagged creatures whose whole life had [?passed] in perpetual/ly/ struggle of opposite [?passing], there was a dissipated neglect about them, that marked them. I never witnessed such a scene -- The whole was passing in the most dreadful silence and they [sic] only sound that disturbed it was the tinkling of the money or the smart /of/ crack of the stick, as the winner [?jirked] /cracked/ it toward his heap -- [?When] June 22nd. Versailles at present exhibits a most melancholy appearance of ruined splendor. Painted ceilings faded! Crimson tapestry torn and golden freezes brown with age! During the revolution, a wing was occupied by the soldiers, and it bears miserable proofs of their careless inclination to destroy -- The Opera House is vast ruinous and dark, the gardens formal, to my feelings -- how anyone can look at the delicious gardens of petit Trianon a l'Anglois and not be [?converted], is to me extraordinary -- Petit Trianon, was fitted up for Maria Louisa, most luxuriously but she never resided there. Both Bonaparte & The Empress also remained at grand Trianon -- The servants who shewed us Petit Trianon said they began to feel the blessings of repose for that during Napoleon's reign, they never had been suffered to be still for an instant -- as Wilkie was fatigued I set off by myself the next morning to Rambouillet, the hunting seat of the Kings of France, it is an old fashioned building with two very ancient towers -- I was exceedingly affected in going through the chambers of Maria Louisa -- her toilet was precisely as she left it, the last morning she had dressed her hair, her bed room was elegant, and by her bed stand a piano forte, which I touched, her little solon de [?repose] was close to the dining room, and it appeared snug & refined in its luxuries -- the old man who shewed me the Rooms said she came the last [?stage] when she arrived at Rambouillet on foot, that for the last Six days she scarcely eat any thing, and walked about the grounds in silence, & melancholy; from