Paris was lively enough during this reign, for Versailles was not so far away but that its people could go to town for city diversions, and as Louis grew more serious with age and court etiquette more rigorous and burdensome, the town made its call more and more insistently. Louis himself, hugely bewigged and elaborately elegant, however, does not often appear in the picture. Once he took part in a gorgeous _carrousel_--a carnival chiefly of equestrian sports--which took place in the large square--now called the Place du Carrousel--lying between the Louvre and the Tuileries. Once, twenty-five years later, he was entertained at the Hôtel de Ville at a dinner at which the city officials waited upon him in person. Yet neither of these pictures lingers in the memory like that of the bewigged monarch usually most punctilious in his dress for occasions, appearing in the palace of the Cité before the Parliament, booted for the chase, arrogantly careless of any courtesy toward the body he addressed and haughtily insisting with the full force of his sincere belief that he and the State were one,--“_L’État c’est moi_.” Power was dear to the king’s heart and he so impressed his magnificence on his people that they thought it only fitting that he should have a rising sun carved on the buildings which he erected, such as that part of the Louvre which he built to complete the eastern quadrangle. (See plan, Chapter XXII). The eastern exterior of this section, facing the church of Saint Germain l’Auxerrois, shows the superb colonnade designed by Perrault, a sort of universal genius, who was both a physician and an architect. Another piece of his work was the Observatory, still in active use on the left bank near the University. The king’s appreciation of splendor demanded completeness, and so his handsome buildings were placed in the setting of stately gardens, his chief designer being Le Nôtre whose work is still to be seen encircling the palaces in the environs of Paris. In the city he laid out the gardens of the Tuileries, and that superb avenue, the Champs Elysées, which leads from the broad Place de la Concorde to Napoleon’s Arch of Triumph. The four hundredth anniversary of Le Nôtre’s birth was celebrated on March 12, 1913, when Parisians recalled his work with almost unanimous approval because of its harmony with the impressive buildings which it supplemented. Other important buildings of Louis’ reign were the Invalides or Soldiers’ Home with its church and its later addition, the work of Mansard who gave his name to the curb-roof which we know. Beneath Mansard’s beautiful dome the body of Napoleon now lies “among the people whom I loved.”