3-028-795 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Courtyard of the Tuileries on the night of a State Ball, 1870. 'Between Epiphany and Lent it is the custom for a series of state balls to be given annually at the Palace of the Tuileries [in Paris]...About three o'clock in the morning the fete is over, and people have the disagreeable task of waiting for their carriages, with a thousand draughts playing around them in the vestibule of the chateau. Some hundreds of vehicles crowd the court of the Tuileries, which is illuminated with immense blazing fires, around which the coachmen and footmen of the guests, though clad in furs and the heaviest of overcoats, are only too glad to group themselves, while their more fortunate masters have been comfortably installed in the warm and luxuriant salons of the palace of the Tuileries'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.