In this palace the great minister, busy with a yet vaster scheme for building an immense Place Ducale to the north, 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, Francois Mansard, was employed by her to extend the Palais Royal as it was then called, which in 1652 was occupied by Henrietta Maria, Charles I.'s widow, whose court ill repaid the hospitality of France by acts of Vandalism. In 1661, on the marriage of Henrietta Anne, her daughter, to the Duke of Orleans it was assigned to the Orleans princes, a portion being reserved for Louis XIV. where he lodged his mistress Mme. de la Valliere. The palace subsequently became infamous as the scene of almost incredible orgies during the regency. In 1730 Philip II.'s austere and pious son, Prince Louis, after having made an _auto-da-fe_ of forty pictures of the nude from the Orleans collection, permitted the destruction of Richelieu's superb avenue of trees. The buildings were further extended by Philip Egalite, who erected shops along the sides of the gardens, which as _cafes_ 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. Egalite, 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 Bluecher and many an officer of the allied armies lost immense sums there. The Palais Royal became subsequently the residence of Louis Philippe, and now serves as the meeting-place of the Conseil d'Etat.