In this palace the great minister--busy with a yet vaster scheme for building an immense Place Ducale, north of the palace--passed away leaving its stately magnificence to the king, whose widow, Anne of Austria, inhabited it during the regency with her sons, Louis XIV. and Philip Duke of Orleans, the founder of the Bourbon-Orleans family. The famous architect, François Mansard, was employed by her to extend the Palais Royal as it was then called, which subsequently became infamous as the scene of the orgies of Philip's son during his regency. The buildings were further extended by Philip Egalité, who destroyed the superb plantation of chestnut trees and erected shops along the sides of the gardens, which as _cafés_ and gambling-saloons became a haunt of fashionable vice and dissipation in the late eighteenth century. The gardens of the royal palaces had always been open to well-dressed citizens, but notices forbade entrance to beggars, servants, and all ill-clad persons under pain of imprisonment, the carcan, and other graver penalties. Egalité, however, to win popularity, opened his gardens without restriction, and they soon became the forum of the revolutionary agitation. Here Camille Desmoulins declaimed his impassioned orations and called Paris to arms. The gambling-hells, of which there were over three hundred, survived the Revolution, and Blucher and many an officer of the allied armies lost immense sums there. The Palais Royal became subsequently the residence of the Orleans family, and now serves as the meeting-place of the Conseil d'Etat.