The building contained a fine _salon_, which at one time was placed by a Chancellor d’Aligre at the service of the Grand Council, and so late as the year of Curtius’s arrival in Paris we hear of it being used for an exhibition of pictures displayed under the ægis of the Académie de Saint Luc. Of this académie Curtius was soon elected a member, and it may be presumed that some of his own works were shown in the exhibition. During its latter days the hotel figured under a dual appellation, the ancient name of d’Aligre being prefaced by that of the renowned Schomberg. Finally it was known to the good citizens of Paris, shortly before its total disappearance, as the Old Hôtel Schomberg d’Aligre. This building occupied a position that could hardly have been better chosen for Curtius’s purpose, for it stood in the very heart and throng of the busy capital--that is to say, close to the Louvre and at no great distance from the Tuileries--and was surrounded by the houses of the wealthiest and most influential inhabitants of the city. We should like to follow the footsteps of Curtius, and enter with him into his new home in Paris; but with the meagre information we have concerning these early days in his career we can only picture him as settling down to his work and drawing around him many famous patrons, to some of whom we shall have to refer as we make progress with our story. Doubtless the ideals he had conceived of the French capital as a citizen in far-off Berne would not have squared with the actual state in which he found the city when he took up his domicile within it. Report had carried the splendours of Versailles far beyond the frontiers of France, and might well have enlivened the imagination of an artist like Curtius, who, doubtless, would have hoped to enjoy the pleasure of witnessing them for himself; but on his arrival in the capital he found the glories of the palaces had set, and that the Court of Louis XV had not only grown dull, but had even gone out of fashion. The King himself had become weary of the great Court functions and sumptuous entertainments, and now preferred to indulge in complete seclusion the appetites that still remained to him. The military exploits of his reign had not brought him any great renown, and in recent years he had suffered reverses that had cast a gloom over these closing days of his life. He had also been reminded more than once that the levelling hand of Death took no heed of rank and power. That dread visitor had already unceremoniously claimed the King’s son (the Dauphin) and his wife, and his own neglected Queen, Marie Leczinska, was fast failing in health.