then sold for a mere song, the pedants of David's school despising the French art of the eighteenth century, it being too amiable and witty for their taste. "Sir," said one of these dealers later to me, "I have rolled up before now engravings of Poussin, for which I would not pay two francs to-day, in other engravings of Debucourt that I would not sell to-day for a thousand francs!"_ _All this was swept away by the amalgamation of the two Palaces and the prolonging of the Rue de Rivoli, which has, moreover, endowed us with a very fine Square in front of the Palais Royal, in lieu of the old one, so mean, with its fountain of water, decorative enough but all blackened with dirt and slime._ [Illustration: THE GARDEN OF THE PALAIS ROYAL IN 1791 _"Gouache" by the Chevalier de Lespinasse_ (Carnavalet Museum)] _As for the Palais Royal, which the Duke d'Orléans seemed to have had built, so that it might be the Forum of the Revolution, if it was no longer the rendezvous of politicians, clubmen, gazetteers, open-air orators, and stock-jobbers, the battlefield of 1793 Republicans and fops, of Royalists and half-pay soldiers, the official promenade for the Merveilleuses, and courtesans of all degrees, if it no longer had its wooden galleries, its Tartar camp, its Dutch grotto, its gambling hells, it was still the headquarters of the nymphs of the neighbourhood; and, thanks to its two theatres, its eating-houses, its renowned coffee-houses, its rich shops, especially those of the jewellers, it was still the central point of attraction in Paris for newcomers from the country and abroad. With the least shower, it was impossible to walk about beneath its porticoes; and, in all weathers, especially on Sunday--the day of meeting_ par excellence--_there were crowds in the glass-covered arcade where, quite recently, I found myself alone--absolutely alone!_ [Illustration: THE COURTYARD OF THE CARROUSEL AND THE MUSEUMS ABOUT 1848 _Etching by Martial_] _What shall I say of the Tuileries Palace, except that it once was and is no more? How I regret the magnificent shades of its grand avenue, unrivalled even at Versailles, and its clumps of chestnuts that braved the ardent sun rays! Nature alone is to blame for their disappearance, but they might have been replaced by trees less pitiable than the inevitable plane and acacia, which latter, without its flowers, is really the silliest and ugliest of trees. It promises a fine foliage for the future, if the future of this unfortunate garden is not to be totally suppressed, or at least to be broken up into lots!_ [Illustration: THE PLACE DE LA CONCORDE _Original drawing by G. de Saint-Aubin_ (George Cain Collection)]