Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/314

292 PARIS city. Bloody riots followed, and came to an end only with the exhaustion of the populace and its voluntary submission to the king. Though Louis XIV. ceased to stay in Paris after he grew up, he did not neglect the work of embellish ment. On the site of the fortifications of tienne Marcel, which during the previous hundred years had been gradually disappearing, he laid out the line of boulevards connecting the quarter of the Bastille with that of the Madeleine. Though he no longer inhabited the Louvre (and it never was again the seat of royalty), he caused the great colonnade to be constructed after the plans of Claude Perrault. This immense and imposing facade, 548 feet long, has the defect of being quite out of harmony with the rest of the build ing, which it hides instead of introducing. The same desire for effect, altogether irrespective of congruity, appears again in the observatory erected by the same Perrault, without the smallest consideration of the wise suggestions made by Cassini. The Place Vendome, the Place des Yictoires, the triumphal gates of St Denis and St Martin, and several fountains, are also productions of the reign of Louis XIV. The hospital of La Salpetriere, with its majestically simple dome, was finished by Liberal Bruant. The Hotel des Invalides, one of the finest institu tions of the Grand Monarque, was also erected, with its chapel, between 1671 and 1675, by Bruant ; but it was reserved for the architect Hardouin Mansart to give to this imposing edifice a complement worthy of itself : it was he who raised the dome, admirable alike for its proportions, for the excellent distribution of its ornaments, and for its gilded lantern, which rises 344 feet above the ground. "Private persons," says Voltaire, "in imitation of their king, raised a thousand splendid edifices. The number increased so greatly that from the neighbourhood of the Palais Royal and of St Sulpice there were formed in Paris two new towns much finer than the old one." All the aristocracy had not thought fit to take up their residence at Versailles, and the great geniuses of the century, Corneille, Racine, La Fontaine, Moliere, Madame de Se vigne, had their houses LiPCASTiJt: LAW LLT; rrT VNI K. u.^i rt, >; TJ- Paris in 1615. in Paris ; there also was the Hotel de Rambouillet, so famous in the literary history of the 17th century. The halls of the Palais Royal during the minority of Louis XV. were the scene of the excesses of the regency ; later on the king from time to time resided at the Tuileries, which- henceforward came to be customarily regarded as the official seat of the monarchy. To the reign of Louis XV. are due the rebuilding of the Palais Royal, the " Place " now called De la Concorde, the military school, the greater part of the church of Ste Genevieve or Pantheon (a masterpiece of the architect Soufflot), the church of St Roch, the palace of the l^lyse e (now the resi dence of the president of the republic), the Palais Bourbon (with the exception of the facade) now occupied by the chamber of deputies, and the mint, a majestic and scholarly work by the architect Antoine, as well as the rebuilding of the College de France. Louis XVI. finished or vigorously carried on the works begun by his grandfather. He did not come to live in Paris till compelled by the Revolution. That historical movement began indeed at Versailles on June 17, 1789, when the states-general were transformed into a con stituent assembly; but the first act of violence which proved the starting-point of all its excesses was performed in Paris on July 14, 1789, when Paris inaugurated, with the capture of the Bastille, its " national guard," organized and then commanded by the celebrated La Fayette. At the same time the assassination of the last provost of the merchants, Jacques de Flesselles, gave the opportunity of establishing, with more extended powers, the " mairie " (mayoralty) of Paris, which was first occupied by Bailly, and soon became, under the title of commune, a political power capable of effectively counterbalancing the central authority. Paris had at that time once more outgrown its limits. The quarter on the left side of the river had more than