To-day, in the apartments which our architects measure out for us so sparingly, we must renounce all thought of having large canvases, fine paintings of vast historical subjects, and in many cases even the full-length portrait of one of our ancestors, unless we choose to take the risk, when we sit down, of striking our heads against the painting at the first unpremeditated movement we chance to make. The Marquis de Marvejol's mansion was on Rue Royale, where one may still see, in our day, some relics of the magnificent apartments of an earlier time. But what a difference! Although, on the outside, it still presents a reasonably well preserved image of what it was under Louis XIII; although it is still red and white, with its bricks surrounded by courses of stone, with its slated roof, its light balconies, its tall windows set in stone frames; although it has retained its low, dark, heavy galleries, which seem to have been built to defy the ages and the elements--on the other hand, the interior of its various wings is no longer the same, and, except in some few instances, the grandeur and magnificence of the olden time have entirely disappeared. But at the time of our narrative there were, in the neighborhood of the Hôtel de Marvejols, the Hôtels de Lesdiguières, de Guémenée, de Sully, d'Effiat, d'Aumont, de Chevreuse, de Chaulnes, de Saint-Paul, de Liancourt, etc., etc. At that time, too, the Place Royale was the scene of all the fêtes and _carrousels_, which attracted the nobility, the bourgeoisie, and the people of Paris, who were called in those days _the good people_. When the marriage of Louis XIII and Anne of Austria was announced, fêtes lasting three days were given on that square, although it was not entirely finished. In later times, on that same spot where noble knights broke lances to entertain the ladies of their thoughts, who, seated on the balconies of the neighboring houses, enjoyed the jousting, and encouraged the champions of their charms by tender glances and by showing them in advance the knot of ribbon which was to be the guerdon of victory--on that same spot, we have seen and may still see the peaceable inhabitant of the Marais, who has nothing in common with the paladins of old, exercising his faithful dog and selecting a bench whereon to rest a moment in the sunshine, whose beneficent warmth allays his rheumatic pains. And the young nursemaid, too, with the children in her care, whom she often leaves to bump against trees, or to fall as they run hither and thither, while she is gossiping with other maids on the subject of their employers, which is much more amusing than to watch children. And the modest seamstress, on her way to carry home the work intrusted to her, who crosses the Place Royale, although it is not directly on her road, because she ordinarily meets there a young man who makes flattering remarks to her; there is no law against seeking pleasant meetings.