The palace recalls very much the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, with its solid masonry and rather severe heavy architecture. It must have been a gloomy residence, notwithstanding the beautiful gardens with their broad alleys and great open spaces. The gardens are stiff, very Italian, with statues, fountains, and marble balustrades--not many flowers, except immediately around the palace, but they were flooded with sunshine that day, and the old grey pile seemed to rise out of a parterre of bright flowers. The palace has been slightly modernised, but the general architecture remains the same. Many people of all kinds have lived there since it was built--several royal princes, and the Emperor Napoleon when he was First Consul. He went from there to the Tuileries. The Luxembourg Palace has always been associated with the history of France. During the Revolution it was a prison, and many of the curious scenes one reads of at that period took place in those old walls--the grandes dames so careful of their dress and their manners, the grands seigneurs so brave and gallant, striving in every way by their witty conversation and their music (for they sang and played in the prisons all through that awful time) to distract the women and make them forget the terrible doom that was hanging over them. Many well-known people went straight from the palace to the scaffold. It seemed a fitting place for the sittings of the Senate and the deliberations of a chosen body of men, who were supposed to bring a maturer judgment and a wider experience in the discussion of all the burning questions of the day than the ardent young deputies so eager to have done with everything connected with the old régime and start fresh.