A Path in Saint-Cloud

In 1862 there was still a palace on the hill at Saint-Cloud. The château was an official residence of Napoleon III, and for part of each year the court and the ministers moved out there from Paris. Corot was in his sixties and working a few kilometres away at Ville-d'Avray, where his family had a house, and what he brought back from Saint-Cloud was a footpath under trees.

Eight years later the emperor's ministers met in that château and settled on war with Prussia. On 13 October 1870 a shell exploded in Napoleon III's apartments and the building burned for two days. The ruins were left standing until 1891, when the government had them pulled down and the stone auctioned off. The wooded slopes and the paths came through all of it, and the estate is a public park today.