resent
Hotel de Cluny on the site.

Of all the minor French palaces the Luxembourg and the Elysee are the
most often heard of in connection with the life of modern times. The
first is something a good deal more than an art museum, and the latter
more than the residence for the Republican president, though the
guide-book makers hardly think it worth while to write down the facts.

The Palais du Luxembourg has been called an imitation of the Pitti
Palace at Florence, but, beyond the fact that it was an Italian
conception of Marie de Medici's, it is difficult to follow the
suggestion, as the architect, Jacques Debrosse, one of the ablest of
Frenchmen in his line, simply carried out the work on the general plan
of the time of its building, the early seventeenth century.

Its three not very extensive pavilions are joined together by a
colonnade which encloses a rather foreboding flagged courtyard, a
conception, or elaboration, of the original edifice by Chalgrin, in
1804, under the orders of Napoleon. The garden front, though a
restoration of Louis Philippe, is more in keeping with the original
Medici plan; that, at any rate, is to its credit.

To-day the Luxembourg, the Republican Palais du Senat, is but an echo of
the four centuries of aristocratic existence which upheld the name and
fame of its first proprietor, the Duc de Piney-Luxembourg, Prince de
Tigry, who built it in the sixteenth century. From 1733 to 1736 the
palace underwent important restorations and the last persons to inhabit
it before the Revolution were the Duchesse de Brunswick, the Queen
Dowager of Spain and the Comte de Provence, brother of Louis XVI, to
whom it had been given by Letters Patent in 1779.

[Illustration: _Palais du Luxembourg_]

In 1791 the Convention thought so little of it that they made it a
prison, and a few years later it was called again the Palais du
Directoire, and, before the end of the century, the Palais du Consulat.
This was but a brief glory, as Napoleon transferred his residence in
accordance with his augmenting ambitions, to the Tuileries in the
following year.

By 1870 the edifice had become known as the Palais du Senat, then as the
headquarters of the Prefecture of the Seine, and finally, as to-day, the
Palais du Luxembourg, the seat of the French Senate and the residence of
the president of that body.

The principal public apartments are the Library, the "Salle des
Seances," the "Buvette"--formerly Napoleon's "Ca