y to his nephew, Philippe d'Orleans,
Duc de Chartres. Important reconstructions and rearrangements had been
carried on from time to time, but nothing so radical as to change the
specious aspect of the palace of the Cardinal's time, though it had been
considerably enlarged by extending it rearward and annexing the Hotel
Danville in the present Rue Richelieu. Mansart on one occasion was
called in and built a new gallery that Coypel decorated with fourteen
compositions after the AEnid of Virgil.

Under the regency the Salon d'Entree was redecorated by Oppenard, and a
series of magnificent fetes was organized by the pleasure-loving queen
from the Austrian court. Richelieu's theatre was made into an
opera-house, and masked balls of an unparalleled magnificence were
frequently given, not forgetting to mention--without emphasis
however--suppers of a Pantagruelian opulence and lavish orgies at which
the chronicles only hint.

In 1661, Monsieur, brother of the king, took up his official residence
in the palace, enlarged it in various directions and in many ways
transformed and improved it. Having become the sole proprietor of the
edifice and its gardens, by Letters Patent of February, 1692, the Duc
d'Orleans left this superb property, in 1701, to his son the too famous
regent, Philippe d'Orleans, whose orgies and extravagances rendered the
Palais Royal notorious to the utmost corners of Europe.

The first years of the eighteenth century were indeed notorious. It was
then that Palais Royal became the head-centre for debauch and abandon.
It is from this epoch, too, that date the actual structures which to-day
form this vast square of buildings, at all events their general outline
is little changed to-day from what it was at that time.

If the regent's policy was to carry the freedom and luxury of
Richelieu's time to excess, replacing even the edifices of the Cardinal
with more elaborate structures, his son Louis (1723-1752) sought in his
turn to surround them with an atmosphere more austere.

A disastrous fire in 1763 caused the Palais Royal to be rebuilt by order
of Louis Philippe d'Orleans, the future Philippe-Egalite, by the
architect Moreau, who carried out the old traditions as to form and
outline, and considerably increased the extent and number of the arcades
from one hundred and eighty to two hundred and seven. These the astute
duke immediately rented out to shopkeepers at an annual rental of more
than ten millions. T