Post by Juan P Lluria

After the sad news of this respected colleague's death last weekend, fondly recalling the past kindnesses of the late erudite, witty, enthusiastic and modest Jacques Villard who arranged a private tour one morning in 2002 of the former Ministère des Affaires Étrangères on the former rue de la Surintendance in Versailles now named (perhaps appropriately) La rue d'Indépendence Américaine in which the apartments of state for hosting ambassadors and envoys was the setting where Benjamin Franklin worked with Louis XVI's Ministre des Affaires Étrangères Le Comte de Vergennes. Here were negotiated the Treaty of Versailles and Paris which ended the 1783 American war of Independence. So many lovely doors he opened for a visitor from the other side of the Atlantic who demonstrated an earnest interest in the former Court City during the Ancien Régime, that he assured was the first he'd ever experienced in all the decades during which he devoted his life and career to being the world's recognized premier historian of the city. "Foreigners come to Versailles in the thousands, visit the chateau and leave without even demonstrating an interest or even having an idea what the city has in terms of legions of buildings that tell the remaining story of the Bourbon kings and the Cour de France"!