It is with such guiding lights as are suggested by the foregoing résumé that one seeks his clues for the repicturing of the circumstances under which French royal palaces were erected, as well as for the truthful repetition of the ceremonies and functions of the times, for the court life of old, whether in city palace or country chateau, was a very different thing from that of the Republican régime of to-day.
Not only were the royal Paris dwellings, from the earliest times, of a profound luxuriance of design and execution, but the private hotels, the palaces, one may well say, of the nobility were of the same superlative order, and kings and queens alike did not disdain to lodge therein on such occasions as suited their convenience. The suggestive comparison is made because of the close liens with which royalty and the higher nobility were bound.
It is sufficient to recall, among others of this class, the celebrated Hotel de Beauvais which will illustrate the reference. Not only was this magnificent town house of palatial dimensions, but it was the envy of the monarchs themselves, because of its refined elegance of construction. This edifice exists to-day, in part, at No. 68 Rue François Miron, and the visitor may judge for himself as to its former elegance.
Loret, in his "Gazette" in verse, recounts a visit made to the Hotel de Beauvais in 1663 by Marie Thérèse, the Queen of Louis XIV.
Mercredi, notre auguste Reine, Cette charmante souveraine, Fut chez Madame de Beauvais Pour de son amiable palais Voir les merveilles étonnantes Et les raretés surprenantes.
Times have changed, for the worse or for the better. The sedan-chair and the coach have given way to the automobile and the engine, and the wood fire to a stale calorifer, or perhaps a gas-log.
The comparisons _are_ odious; there is no question as to this; but it is by contrast that the subject is made the more interesting.
From the old Palais des Thermes (now a part of the Musée de Cluny) of the Roman emperors down through the Palais de la Cité (where lodged the kings of the first and second races) to the modern installations of the Louvre is a matter of twelve centuries. The record is by no means a consecutive one, but a record exists which embraces a dozen, at least, of the Paris abodes of royalty, where indeed they lived according to many varying scales of comfort and luxury.