Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/507

 new throne occupied the place of the one burned by the mob in 1848, and the Galerie de Diane, the Imperial dining room.

The Palais Royal, another of the public buildings attacked by the rage of the Commune, faces the Louvre, and is built on the site of Cardinal Richelieu's palace. It was given to the Duke of Orleans by his brother, Louis XIV, and passed from him to the Regent Duke. Here the Regent and his daughter held their orgies, though not in the present edifice. His grandson Egalité rebuilt the Palace after a fire, and erected the ranges of shops to relieve his embarrassments.

The Gardens of the Palais Royal were the favorite resort of Camille Desmoulins, and other mob orators, and in them the tricolored flag was unfurled July 13th, 1789. Here were hatched the plots which ended in the execution of Egalité, when the Palace was sold by lottery. After the Restoration it was bought back, and repaired by the Orleans family, by whom it was inhabited until they removed to the Tuileries in 1830.

Invaded and plundered by the mob in 1848, the building was turned into a barrack, but, during the second Empire, it changed back again to a palace.

Given by the Emperor to his uncle Jerome, it descended to Prince Napoleon, who fitted it up in the most sumptuous style.

Nothing, however, can equal the loss to the city of the Hotel de Ville, which dates in part from 1628. This was a most magnificent structure, containing some of the finest saloons in Paris, and perhaps in the world. The additions made to this building in 1842 cost no less than $3,200,000. The building contained some five hundred statues of French celebrities, from the time of Charlemagne to Louis XIV, and, as a specimen of modern French magnificence, the decorations and furniture of