This magnificent pile is in the Fauxbourg St. Germain, and was formerly the palace of the Bourbons. After passing through a suite of splendid apartments, I entered, through lofty folding doors, into the hall, where the legislators assemble. It is a very spacious semicircular room, and much resembles, in its arrangements the appearance of a splendid theatre before the stage. The ascent to the seat of the president is by a flight of light marble steps; the facing of his bureau is composed of the most costly marble, richly carved. On each side of the president's chair are seats for the secretaries; and immediately below them is the tribune, into which the orator ascends to address the House. On each side of the seat of the president are antique statues of eminent patriots and orators, which are placed in niches in the wall. Under the tribune, upon the centre of the floor, is the altar of the country, upon which, in marble, is represented the book of the laws, resting upon branches of olive. Behind it, upon semicircular seats, the legislators sit, at the back of whom are the boxes of the embassadors, and officers of state, and immediately above them, within a colonnade of corinthian pillars, the public are admitted. Round the upper part of the cornice, a beautiful festoon of lilac coloured cloth, looped up with rich tassels, is suspended, for the purpose of correcting the vibration of the voice. The whole is very superb, and has cost the nation an immense sum of money. The principal housekeeper asked me "whether our speakers had such a place to declaim in," I told him, "that we had very _great_ orators in England, but that they were content to speak in very little places." He laughed, and observed, "that frenchmen never talked to so much advantage as when their eye was pleased." This man I found had been formerly one of the door keepers of the national assembly, and was present when, after having been impeached by Billaud, Panis, and their colleagues, Tallien discharged the pistol at Robespierre, whom he helped to support, until the monster was finally dispatched by the guillotine, on the memorable 9th of Thermidor. The french are amazingly fond of finery and stage effect. The solicitude which always first manifested itself after any political change in the course of the revolution, was the external decoration of each new puppet who, arrayed in the brief authority of the fleeting moment, was permitted to "play his fantastic tricks before high Heaven."