Page:An adventure (1911).pdf/52

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42
AN ADVENTURE

the Revolution, and it was not likely that the old type would be seen anywhere in France now.

It would seem that no plough was used ordinarily at Trianon even in old days, for amongst a list of tools bought for the gardeners from 1780-1789, there is no mention of a plough.[1]

We learned, in 1905, from Desjardins' book, that throughout the reign of Louis XVI. an old plough used in his predecessor's reign had been preserved at the Petit Trianon and sold with the king's other properties during the Revolution.[2]

A picture of this identical plough, procured in 1907, showed that it had handles like the one seen in 1901, but the cutting part was hidden in the ground and could not be compared.[3]

In the old map of 1783 there is ploughed land where later the Hameau was built and the sheet of water placed: but there is none in the later maps, nor any now to be seen in the grounds.

  1. Archives Nationales O1, 1878.
  2. Desjardins, p. 15; Rocheterie's Histoire de Marie Antoinette, pp. 289, 290, vol. i.
  3. In the Bibliothèque Nationale.