has not
been for the past quarter of a century. Satirical persons have demanded
as to what should be made of it, a _velodrome_ or a skating-rink, but
this is apart from a real consideration of the question for certain it
is that much of its former charm can be restored to it without turning
it into a Luna Park. It is one of the too few Paris breathing-spots, and
as such should be made more attractive than it is at the present time.

It was sixty years ago, when Louis Philippe was the legitimate owner of
the Palais Royal, its galleries, its shops, its theatre and its gardens,
that it came to its first debasement. "One went there on tip-toe, and
spoke in a whisper," said a writer of the time, and one does not need to
be particularly astute to see the significance of the remark.

It was Alphonse Karr, the _ecrivain-jardinier_, who set the new vogue
for the Palais Royal, but his interest and enthusiasm was not enough to
resurrect it, and so in later years it has sunk lower and lower. The
solitude of the Palais Royal has become a mockery and a solecism. It is
virtually a _campo santo_, or could readily be made one, and this in
spite of the fact that it occupies one of the busiest and noisiest
quarters of the capital, a quadrangle bounded by the Rues Valois,
Beaujolais, Montpensier and the Place du Palais Royal.

The moment one enters its portal the simile accentuates and the hybrid
shops which sell such equivocal bric-a-brac to clients of no taste and
worse affectations carry out the idea of a cloister still further, for
actually the clients are few, and those mostly strangers. One holds his
breath and ambles through the corridors glad enough to escape the bustle
of the narrow streets which surround it, but, on the other hand, glad
enough to get out into the open again.

CHAPTER IX

THE LUXEMBOURG, THE ELYSEE AND THE PALAIS BOURBON

The kings and queens of France were not only rulers of the nation, but
they dominated the life of the capital as well. Upon their crowning or
entry into Paris it was the custom to command a gift by right from the
inhabitants. In 1389 Isabeau de Baviere, of dire memory, got sixty
thousand _couronnes d'or_, and in 1501, and again in 1504, was presented
with six thousand and ten thousand _livres parisis_ respectively.

The king levied personal taxes on the inhabitants, who were thus forced
to pay for the privilege of having him live among them, those of the
professions and craftsmen,