Samaritaine,
erected in 1608 and rebuilt in 1712 to pump water from the Seine and
distribute it to the Louvre and the Tuileries palaces. The timepiece
was an _industrieuse horloge_, which told the hours, days, and months.
The present baths of La Samaritaine mark its site and retain its name.

[Illustration: PONT NEUF.]

In 1624, Henry the Fourth's great scheme for enlarging and completing
the Louvre was committed by Richelieu to his architect, Jacques
Lemercier, and the first stone of the Pavilion de l'Horloge was laid
on 28th June by Louis. Lemercier was great enough and modest enough to
adopt his predecessor's design and having erected the pavilion,
continued Lescot's west wing northwards, turned the north-west angle
and carried the north wing to about a fourth of its designed extent.
The Pavilion de l'Horloge thus became the central feature of the west
wing, which was exactly doubled in extent. The south-east and
north-east towers of the eastern wing of the old Gothic Louvre,
however, remained intact, and even as late as 1650 Sylvestre's drawing
shows us the south-east tower still standing and the east wing only
partly demolished. Lemercier also designed a grand new palace for the
cardinal, north of the Rue St. Honore, including in the plans two
theatres: a small one to hold about six hundred spectators, and a
larger one, which subsequently became the opera-house, capacious
enough to seat three thousand. Magnificent galleries, painted by
Philippe de Champaigne and other artists, represented the chief events
in the cardinal's reign, and were hung with the portraits of the great
men of France, each with a Latin distich in letters of gold. The
courts were adorned with carvings of ships' prows and anchors,
symbolising the cardinal's function as Grand Master of Navigation;
spacious gardens, with an avenue of chestnut trees, which cost 300,000
francs to train, added to its splendours.

In this palace the great minister, busy with a yet vaster scheme for
building an immense Place Ducale to the north, passed away leaving its
stately magnificence to the king, whose widow, Anne of Austria,
inhabited it during the regency with her sons, Louis XIV. and Philip,
Duke of Orleans, the founder of the Bourbon-Orleans family. The famous
architect, Francois Mansard, was employed by her to extend the Palais
Royal as it was then called, which in 1652 was occupied by Henrietta
Maria, Charles I.'s widow, whose court ill repaid the hospit