The back garden of the Palace of Versailles in Paris: a French secret missed by tour groups

I rushed onto the C train at Gare du Nord in the early morning, clutching a cold croissant. I thought I could have the Palace of Versailles all to myself before the tour groups, but I ran into a group of white-haired tour group holding small flags at the gate - they were taking crazy selfies facing the outer wall of the palace. Suddenly, I had an impulse and turned to walk towards the side door. This change of mind led me to stumble upon the most stunning secret garden in Europe. When the security guard wearing lavender-scented gloves showed me the way, I had no idea that this garden, which had been collected by Louis XIV for three hundred years, would be breathtakingly beautiful in the morning mist. The 16 euro ticket (25 euros including the fountain in summer) was soaked with sweat. I walked down the gravel road, and three hundred steps suddenly opened up before my eyes - the waves of the Neptune Fountain were licking the morning light, dewdrops were still condensed on the goddess' skirt of the Latona Fountain, and in the distance, the 1.6-kilometer Cross Canal was like a silver snake drilling into the depths of the green fields. Michel, the old gardener who prunes boxwoods, chats over his pipe while his pruning shears skim the rose buds with precision. In 1624, Louis XIII's hunting lodge was transformed into a geometric maze by Le Nôtre: 1,500 fountains once danced simultaneously across 800 hectares of land (now there are only 300 left, but every weekend, the Four Seasons concerts make the water dance like a ballet). I squatted beside the flower bed next to the orange orchard and watched him use pansies to spell out the emblem of the Sun King - this is a "moving canvas" that is changed every week. Just yesterday, a group of horticulturists who came to study it with magnifying glasses were sent away. When crossing the Mirror Pond, a black swan suddenly fluttered over my head and led me into the "Secret Canal Area". The old man at the boat rental office insisted on not charging a deposit: "Young man, go find the secret of Louis XIV in the reeds!" In the river where willows swayed the water, I came across corners where tour groups would never stop - at the feet of the gilded sculpture of Poseidon, there was a small crab carved by a 17th-century craftsman; next to the tree hole of a century-old sycamore tree, wild roses were climbing up the bronze statue of Louis XV's mistress. The best time is three o'clock in the afternoon, when I hear the sound of shutter clicks from the direction of the palace. I lie on the lawn by the Cross Canal, watching the clouds passing over the Apollo's Chariot Fountain and listening to the French people picnicking on the other side humming "La Vie en Rose". The check-in details that are most likely to be missed by the guide: ・Mint tea stand at Trianon Farmhouse, 8 euros per cup with freshly baked crepes (better than the souvenir shop in the palace) ・The "Injured Diana" in the sculpture area has a tear in her skirt left by a shell from World War II, which adds to the goddess' tragic beauty. ・Every Wednesday morning, the flower house is open for half an hour, where you can learn the royal gardeners’ flower arrangement secrets (I took a photo of them using asparagus leaves as decoration!) As we left, dusk enveloped the Palace of Versailles. Looking back, we saw the lights on in the palace, while the garden behind us still hid unfinished stories. The tour buses left one after another, but they didn't know that the back garden that the tour guide urged them to "hurry up" hid the most luxurious romance of Louis XIV - it was not a palace built of gold, but the soul of the French that had allowed 800 hectares of green land to breathe for three hundred years.