Contemporary accounts of the execution of a man who had made an attempt upon the life of the king shows a callousness to suffering that would seem impossible if one had not read recently of the brutalities of the Balkan war, nearly three hundred years later. The execution took place as usual in the Place de Grève, and every window and balcony was filled with eager spectators, many of them elegantly dressed ladies of the court who played cards to while away the moments of waiting. The poor wretch who was to furnish amusement for this gay throng was placed on an elevated table where all might see him, and he was gashed and torn and twisted and burned and broken for an hour before the breath mercifully left his mangled body. Like his great-grandfather, Louis preferred Versailles to Paris, but not for the Sun King’s reason. He had no especial desire to keep his eye on his courtiers, but kindred spirits he gathered about him and the favorites of Madame de Pompadour ruled and of Madame du Barry vulgarized the once decorous though far from impeccable salons of Versailles. With lowered taste architecture became _rococo_ and decoration a mass of wreaths and shells and leaves and scrolls. In Paris, meanwhile, the Louvre fell into such disrepair that it was habitable only by people willing to live in haphazard fashion for the sake of a free lodging, while private stables occupied much of the ground floor and the government post horses stamped and kicked beneath Perrault’s unfinished colonnade. Disgusted at this eyesore in their once beautiful city the Parisians authorized the Provost of the Merchants to offer to repair the building at the expense of the town. Louis, however, seems to have thought that if the citizens had so much money to spend it had better be on him, and he refused the offer and set about devising new ways of capturing the hidden coin. Of building there could not be much at a time when the monarch took no pride in his own chief city and suffered no expenditures except those that he saw no way of diverting to his own yawning purse. One of the few constructions of Louis’ date is the Mint, built on one of the left bank quays on a part of the site once occupied [Illustration: ELYSÉE PALACE, RESIDENCE OF PRESIDENT OF FRANCE.] [Illustration: CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES (PALAIS BOURBON).] by the ancient Hôtel de Nesle. It contains a museum of coins and medals as well as the workshops for the making of coins.