In the place des Vosges of to-day may be seen the best extant examples of this style. Catherine de Medicis had made Henry II’s death at the Hôtel des Tournelles an excuse to leave a building damp and malodorous from the ill-drained marsh on which it was built. For a long time it housed only some of Charles IX’s pet animals, and then it was torn down except for a wing where Henry IV installed some of the silk workers whom he introduced into France that his people might learn a new industry. The palace park was used as a horse market, and finally all memory of the past was cleared away and Henry IV caused to be laid out the Place Royale now called the Place des Vosges. “The spear-thrust of Montgomery,” said Victor Hugo, “was the origin of the Place Royale.” The king built at his own expense several of the houses along the south side and gave the remainder of the land to people who would finish the remainder of the quadrangle in harmonious style. An arcade runs about the whole square whose north and south entrances are under pavilions which break the monotony of the architecture. The effect is wonderfully pleasing even to-day when most of the houses show signs of dilapidation and the park which they enclose is noisy with the overflow of children from the old and crowded streets round about. In the days of its prime it must have been extremely dignified and handsome. Many great names are connected with this square. Richelieu lived here, Madame de Sévigné was born here, and here in the house where Victor Hugo had an apartment is the museum where Paris has collected mementoes of the man the people loved. Backing against the southern houses of the square still stands the house which Sully built for himself, its once imposing façade whose windows show signs of occupation by many small businesses, looking down upon a disheveled courtyard. Another step that tended to beautify Paris was the opening of the Place Dauphine from the western end of the palace of the Cité through the palace garden westward. It was surrounded by houses like those on the Place Royale. Madame Roland lived in one of them, situated where the _place_ opens on the Pont Neuf which Henry finished. On it he planned to place his own equestrian statue, but that ornament underwent so many misfortunes, even to being shipwrecked on its way from Italy where it had been cast, that Henry was dead before it was set in place. It seems to have been fated to ill-luck, for during the Revolution it was melted down and made into cannon, although up to that time the people had laid their petitions at its foot. The existing statue replaced the old one in 1818.