It seems hardly necessary to more than mention the name of the Palais Royal, in connection with either the life or the writings of Alexandre Dumas, to induce a line of thought which is practically limitless. It was identified with Dumas’ first employment in the capital, and it has been the scene of much of the action of both the D’Artagnan and the Valois romances.

More than all else, however, though one is apt to overlook it somewhat, it is so closely identified with Richelieu that it is difficult to separate it from any event of French political history of the period.

It was built by Richelieu in 1629, on the site occupied by the HÔtels de Mercoeur and Rambouillet, and was originally intended to have borne the name of HÔtel Richelieu. Toward 1634 it was enlarged, and was known as the Palais Cardinal. Finally it was presented, in 1642, to Louis XIII., and at his death came to Anne of Austria, when the royal family removed thither and it became known as the Palais Royal.

The incident of the flight of the royal family and Mazarin to St. Germain is one of the historic and dramatic incidents which Dumas used as one of the events in which D’Artagnan participated.

The court never returned to make use of the Palais Royal as a royal residence, and it became the refuge of Henriette de France, Queen of England and widow of Charles I. Thirty years later Louis XIV., who had fled from its walls when a child, gave it to his nephew Philippe d’Orleans, Duc de Chartres.

It was during the RÉgence that the famous fÊtes of the Palais Royal were organized,—they even extended to what the unsympathetic have called orgies,—but it is certain that no town residences of kings were ever as celebrated for their splendid functions as was the Palais Royal in the seventeenth century.

In 1763 a fire brought about certain reconstructions at the expense of the city of Paris. In 1781, it became again the prey of fire; and Philippe-ÉgalitÉ, who was then Duc de Chartres, constructed the three vast galleries which surround the Palais of to-day.

The boutiques of the galleries were let to merchants of all manner of foibles, and it became the most lively quarter of Paris.

The public adopted the galleries as fashionable promenades, which became, for the time, “un bazar europÉen et un rendez-vous d’affaires et de galanterie.”

It was in 1783 that the Duc d’Orleans constructed “une salle de spectacle,” which to-day is the ThÉÂtre du Palais Royal, and in the middle of the garden a cirque which ultimately came to be transformed into a restaurant.

The purely theatrical event of the history of the Palais Royal came on the 13th of July, 1789, when at midday—as the coup of a petit canon rang out—a young unknown avocat, Camille Desmoulins, mounted a chair and addressed the throng of promenaders in a thrilling and vibrant voice:

“Citoyens, j’arrive de Versailles!—Necker is fled and the Baron Breteuil is in his place. Breteuil is one of those who have demanded the head of Mirabeau ... there remains but one resource, and that ‘to arms’ and to wear the cockade that we may be known. Quelle couleur voulez-vous?”

With almost a common accord the tricolour was adopted—and the next day the Bastille fell.

Dumas’ account of the incident, taken from “The Taking of the Bastille,” is as follows:“During this time the procession kept on advancing; it had moved obliquely to the left, and had gone down the Rue Montmartre to the Place des Victoires. When it reached the Palais Royal some great impediment prevented its passing on. A troop of men with green leaves in their hats were shouting ‘To arms!’

“It was necessary to reconnoitre. Were these men who blocked up the Rue Vivienne friends or enemies? Green was the colour of the Count d’Artois. Why then these green cockades?

“After a minute’s conference all was explained.

“On learning the dismissal of Necker, a young man had issued from the CafÉ Foy, had jumped upon a table in the garden of the Palais Royal, and, taking a pistol from his breast, had cried ‘To arms!’

“On hearing this cry, all the persons who were walking there had assembled around him, and had shouted ‘To arms!’

“We have already said that all the foreign regiments had been collected around Paris. One might have imagined that it was an invasion by the Austrians. The names of these regiments alarmed the ears of all Frenchmen; they were Reynac, Salis Samade, Diesbach, Esterhazy, Roemer; the very naming of them was sufficient to make the crowd understand that they were the names of enemies. The young man named them; he announced that the Swiss were encamped in the Champs ElysÉes, with four pieces of artillery, and that they were to enter Paris the same night, preceded by the dragoons, commanded by Prince Lambesq. He proposed a new cockade which was not theirs, snatched a leaf from a chestnut-tree and placed it in the band of his hat. Upon the instant every one present followed his example. Three thousand persons had in ten minutes unleaved the trees of the Palais Royal.

“That morning no one knew the name of that young man; in the evening it was in every mouth.

“That young man’s name was Camille Desmoulins.”

After 1793 the Palais Royal was converted, by decree, into the Palais et Jardin de la RÉvolution; and reunited to the domains of the state. Napoleon I. granted its use to the Tribunal for its seances, and Lucien Bonaparte inhabited it for the “Hundred Days.” In 1830 Louis-Philippe, Duc d’Orleans, gave there a fÊte in honour of the King of Naples, who had come to pay his respects to the King of France. Charles X. assisted as an invited guest at the function, but one month after he had inhabited it as king.Under Napoleon III. the Palais Royal was the residence of Prince Jerome, the uncle of the emperor, afterward that of his son the Prince Napoleon, when the fleur-de-lis sculptured on the faÇade gave way before escutcheons bearing the imperial eagles, which in turn have since given way to the Republican device of “’48”—“LibertÉ, ÉgalitÉ, FraternitÉ.”

It is with a remarkable profusion of detail—for Dumas, at any rate—that the fourteenth chapter of “The Conspirators” opens.

It is a veritable guide-book phraseology and conciseness, which describes the streets of the Palais Royal quarter:

“The evening of the same day, which was Sunday, toward eight o’clock, at the moment when a considerable group of men and women, assembled around a street singer, who was playing at the same time the cymbals with his knees and the tambourine with his hands, obstructed the entrance to the Rue de Valois, a musketeer and two of the light horse descended a back staircase of the Palais Royal, and advanced toward the Passage du LycÉe, which, as every one knows, opened on to that street; but seeing the crowd which barred the way, the three soldiers stopped and appeared to take counsel. The result of their deliberation was doubtless that they must take another route, for the musketeer, setting the example of a new manoeuvre, threaded the Cour des Fontaines, turned the corner of the Rue des Bons Enfants, and, walking rapidly,—though he was extremely corpulent,—arrived at No. 22, which opened as by enchantment at his approach, and closed again on him and his two companions.

“... The crowd dispersed. A great many men left the circle, singly, or two and two, turning toward each other with an imperceptible gesture of the hand, some by the Rue de Valois, some by the Cour des Fontaines, some by the Palais Royal itself, thus surrounding the Rue des Bons Enfants, which seemed to be the centre of the rendezvous.”

The locality has not changed greatly since the times of which Dumas wrote, and if one would see for himself this Rue de Bons Enfants, NumÉro 22, and try to find out how the Regent of France was able to climb over the roof-tops to the Palais Royal, for a wager, he may still do so, for apparently the roof-tops have changed but little. The especial connection of the Rue des Bons Enfants with literature is perhaps Sylvestre’s establishment, which will, for a price, sell you almost any French celebrity’s autograph, be he king, prince, painter, or litterateur.In the “Vicomte de Bragelonne” there is a wonderfully interesting chapter, which describes Mazarin’s gaming-party at the Palais Royal.

In that it enters somewhat more into detail than is usual with Dumas, it appears worth quoting here, if only for its description of the furnishing of the salle in which the event took place, and its most graphic and truthful picture of the great cardinal himself:

“In a large chamber of the Palais Royal, covered with a dark-coloured velvet, which threw into strong relief the gilded frames of a great number of magnificent pictures, on the evening of the arrival of the two Frenchmen, the whole court was assembled before the alcove of M. le Cardinal de Mazarin, who gave a party, for the purposes of play, to the king and queen. A small screen separated three prepared tables. At one of these tables the king and the two queens were seated. Louis XIV., placed opposite to the young queen, his wife, smiled upon her with an expression of real happiness. Anne of Austria held the cards against the cardinal, and her daughter-in-law assisted her in her game, when she was not engaged in smiling at her husband. As for the cardinal, who was reclining on his bed, his cards were held by the Comtesse de Soissons, and he watched them with an incessant look of interest and cupidity.

“The cardinal had been painted by Bernouin; but the rouge, which glowed only on his cheeks, threw into stronger contrast the sickly pallor of the rest of his countenance and the shining yellow of his brow. His eyes alone acquired a more lively expression from this auxiliary, and upon those sick man’s eyes were, from time to time, turned the uneasy looks of the king, the queen, and the courtiers. The fact is, that the two eyes of Mazarin were the stars more or less brilliant in which the France of the seventeenth century read its destiny every evening and every morning. Monseigneur neither won nor lost; he was, therefore, neither gay nor sad. It was a stagnation in which, full of pity for him, Anne of Austria would not have willingly left him; but in order to attract the attention of the sick man by some brilliant stroke, she must have either won or lost. To win would have been dangerous, because Mazarin would have changed his indifference for an ugly grimace; to lose would likewise have been dangerous, because she must have cheated, and the Infanta, who watched her game, would, doubtless, have exclaimed against her partiality for Mazarin. Profiting by this calm, the courtiers were chatting. When not in a bad humour, M. de Mazarin was a very debonnaire prince, and he, who prevented nobody from singing, provided they paid, was not tyrant enough to prevent people from talking, provided they made up their minds to lose. They were chatting, then. At the first table, the king’s younger brother, Philip, Duc d’Anjou, was admiring his handsome face in the glass of a box. His favourite, the Chevalier de Lorraine, leaning over the fauteuil of the prince, was listening, with secret envy, to the Comte de Guiche, another of Philip’s favourites, who was relating in choice terms the various vicissitudes of fortune of the royal adventurer, Charles II. He told, as so many fabulous events, all the history of his peregrinations in Scotland, and his terrors when the enemy’s party was so closely on his track; of nights passed in trees, and days passed in hunger and combats. By degrees, the fate of the unfortunate king interested his auditors so greatly, that the play languished even at the royal table, and the young king, with a pensive look and downcast eye, followed, without appearing to give any attention to it, the smallest details of this Odyssey, very picturesquely related by the Comte de Guiche.”

Again mention of the Palais Royal enters into the action of “The Queen’s Necklace.” When Madame de la Motte and her companion were en route to Versailles by cabriolet, “they met a delay at the gates of the Palais Royal, where, in a courtyard, which had been thrown open, were a host of beggars crowding around fires which had been lighted there, and receiving soup, which the servants of M. le Duc d’Orleans were distributing to them in earthen basins; and as in Paris a crowd collects to see everything, the number of the spectators of this scene far exceeded that of the actors.

“Here, then, they were again obliged to stop, and, to their dismay, began to hear distinctly from behind loud cries of ‘Down with the cabriolet! down with those that crush the poor!’

“‘Can it be that those cries are addressed to us?’ said the elder lady to her companion.

“‘Indeed, madame, I fear so,’ she replied.

“‘Have we, do you think, run over any one?’

“‘I am sure you have not.’

“‘To the magistrate! to the magistrate!’ cried several voices.

“‘What in heaven’s name does it all mean?’ said the lady.

“‘The crowd reproaches you, madame, with having braved the police order which appeared this morning, prohibiting all cabriolets from driving through the streets until the spring.’”This must have been something considerable of an embargo on pleasure, and one which would hardly obtain to-day, though asphalted pavements covered with a film of frost must offer untold dangers, as compared with the streets of Paris as they were then—in the latter years of the eighteenth century.