Marie-Antoinette escaped from the stifling royal court life in Paris to Versailles, from the stifling court life of the Grand Château de Versailles to the Grand Trianon, and from the stifling court life of the Grand Trianon to the Petit Trianon.

Still feeling stifled, she ordered her architect, Richard Mique, and court painter Hubert Robert, to design a hameau (hamlet, village) to remind her of her native Austria.

Louis XV had built a model farm here, so farm life was nothing new to the Château de Versailles.

It was built at the edge of the Petit Trianon's carp-filled Grand Lac (large lake), and it was from here, on October 5th, 1789, that Marie-Antoinette fled from frivolous fantasy to brual reality as the revolutionaries from Paris approached the palace.

But until then, life in the hameau was good, with 10 cottages modeled on those at Chantilly, a milk house furnished in marble, a little vineyard, pens for extraordinarily well-kept livestock, and other accoutrements of village life without the dirt or uncertainty.

Peacocks strut, pigs oink, and the hundreds of carp in the lake approach with mouths gaping if you so much as look their way.

The interiors of the buildings are not open to visitors, but you can stroll through the village.

If you haven't yet visited the Petit Trianon and its Temple of Love, they should be your next destination.