In the delight of Corneille’s presence in Paris, Ninon sacrificed all the ordinary routine of her life. It was in her salon, if the chronicling of the fact is to be trusted, that Corneille read to the assembled company his manuscript of _The Cid_, all the principal members being present of the Hôtel Bourgogne, and the few other talented “rogues and vagabonds” proscribed of the Church, though ill to be spared by it, if the cardinal’s plays were to have any sort of success. The Comédie Française was yet an institution of the future; and the stage of the Hôtel Bourgogne, with the two or three other theatres were not much more than glorified fair platforms, while the theatre in the rue Guénégaud ordinarily confined itself to the presentment of Chinese shadows. The drawing-room of the Louvre and of the Palais Cardinal were utilised for masques and such plays as there were, called in request for the Court and the more exalted circles of society. Richelieu’s own pieces were thus performed. The drama was in transition. It was a far cry now from Clement Marot and the antics of the clerks of the Basoche upon the huge marble table of the Hall of Lost Footsteps, to the Académie Française and the Hôtel de Rambouillet; and the language of the country was undergoing changes, even as the aspect of the city itself was no longer that of a few years earlier, when Ninon first came to Paris. Then Notre-Dame was nearly surrounded by green spaces of meadowland and field and hedgerow, stretching between the streets and the grassy banks of the Isle de la Cité. Now here, and away to the Palais de Justice; and northwards of the Louvre, streets were gathering, and houses began to crowd about the old towers of the Conciérgerie; while on the banks of the Seine, right and left, the old walls of Philip Augustus were laid low or broken up to afford room for new buildings. Behind the Louvre, far extending to the gardens and palace of the Tuileries, Richelieu’s magnificent residence dominated the rue de Rivoli—the Palais Cardinal, so soon to pass as a gift to the king and take the name of the Palais Royal, till the Revolution of 1793 changed it to the Palais Égalité, and the lordly “pleasure-house” of the great upholder of kingly power was cut up into gaudy shops and gaming-houses.