Again mention of the Palais Royal enters into the action of "The Queen's Necklace." When Madame de la Motte and her companion were _en route_ to Versailles by cabriolet, "they met a delay at the gates of the Palais Royal, where, in a courtyard, which had been thrown open, were a host of beggars crowding around fires which had been lighted there, and receiving soup, which the servants of M. le Duc d'Orleans were distributing to them in earthen basins; and as in Paris a crowd collects to see everything, the number of the spectators of this scene far exceeded that of the actors. "Here, then, they were again obliged to stop, and, to their dismay, began to hear distinctly from behind loud cries of 'Down with the cabriolet! down with those that crush the poor!' "'Can it be that those cries are addressed to us?' said the elder lady to her companion. "'Indeed, madame, I fear so,' she replied. "'Have we, do you think, run over any one?' "'I am sure you have not.' "'To the magistrate! to the magistrate!' cried several voices. "'What in heaven's name does it all mean?' said the lady. "'The crowd reproaches you, madame, with having braved the police order which appeared this morning, prohibiting all cabriolets from driving through the streets until the spring.'" This must have been something considerable of an embargo on pleasure, and one which would hardly obtain to-day, though asphalted pavements covered with a film of frost must offer untold dangers, as compared with the streets of Paris as they were then--in the latter years of the eighteenth century. CHAPTER XV. THE BASTILLE The worshipper at the shrines made famous by Dumas--no less than history--will look in vain for the prison of La Roquette, the Bastille, the hôtel of the Duc de Guise, at No. 12 Rue du Chaume, that of Coligny in the Rue de Bethusy, or of the Montmorencies, "near the Louvre." They existed, of course, in reality, as they did in the Valois romances, but to-day they have disappeared, and not even the "_Commission des Monuments Historiques_" has preserved a pictorial representation of the three latter. One of Dumas' most absorbing romances deals with the fateful events which culminated at the Bastille on the 14th Thermidor, 1789. "This monument, this seal of feudality, imprinted on the forehead of Paris," said Dumas, "was the Bastille," and those who know French history know that he wrote truly. The action of "The Taking of the Bastille," so far as it deals with the actual assault upon it, is brief. So was the event itself. Dumas romances but little in this instance; he went direct to fact for his details. He says: "When once a man became acquainted with the Bastille, by order of the king, that man was forgotten, sequestrated, interred, annihilated....