Among the designs originally submitted to Colbert was one which had not been sent to Rome. It was the work of an amateur, Claude Perrault, a physician by profession, whose brother, Charles Perrault, was chief clerk in the Office of Works. This was now brought forth, and a commission, consisting of Levau, Lebrun, and Claude Perrault, appointed to report on its practicability. Levau promptly produced his own discarded designs, which won Lebrun's approval, and both were submitted to the king for a final decision. Louis was fascinated by the stately classicism of Perrault's design, and this was adopted. "Architecture must be in a bad state," said his rivals, "since it is put in the hands of a physician." The new wing was raised and found to be seventy-two feet too long, whereupon the whole of Levau's river front was masked by a new façade, rendered necessary to correct the mistake, if mistake it were, and the whole south wing[142] is in consequence much thicker than any of the others which enclose the great quadrangle. Poor Levau is said to have died of vexation and grief. Even to this day the north-east end of Perrault's façade projects un-symmetrically beyond the line of the north front. Perrault's work has been much criticised and much praised. It evoked Fergusson's ecstatic admiration, and is eulogised by another critic as one of the finest pieces of architecture in any age. Strangely enough, neither of these ever saw, nor has anyone yet seen, more than a partial and stunted realisation of Perrault's design (which involved a broad and deep fosse), for, as the accompanying reproduction of a drawing by Blondel demonstrates, the famous east front of the Louvre is like a giant buried up to the knees, and the present first-floor windows were an afterthought, their places having been designed as niches to hold statues. The exactitude of Blondel's elevations was finally proved in 1903 by the admirable insight of the present architect of the Louvre, Monsieur G. Redon, who was led to undertake the excavations which brought to light a section of Perrault's decorated basement, by noticing that the windows of the ground floor evidently implied a lower order beneath. This basement, seven and a half metres in depth, now buried, was in Perrault's scheme designed to be exposed by a fosse of some fifteen to twenty metres in width, and the whole elevation and symmetry of the wing would have immensely gained by the carrying out of his plans. [Illustration: HOTEL DES INVALIDES.]