The German poet Heinrich Heine wrote of this house: 'the palace ... unites everything which the spirit of the sixteenth century could conceive and the money of the nineteenth century could pay for ... It is the Versailles of a financial potentate.' Lami, the Imperial favourite, was the principal chronicler of the Rothschild residences, and during the Second Empire his most important patron after the Emperor himself was Baron James. Lami was given full responsibility as decorative advisor on several of the most ambitious of the building projects, including the two chateaux, Boulogne and Ferrieres