Another of the king’s languid interests was the Military School which looms imposingly across the southeastern end of the Champ de Mars as the modern tourist sits at luncheon on the first ‘stage’ of the Eiffel Tower. The Field of Mars itself, now green with lawns and bright with flowers, was laid out as a drill ground on the very spot where a battle with the Normans took place during the siege of 885 A.D. Its great size has frequently made it useful for large gatherings of people, and no fewer than four World Exhibitions have erected their plaster cities upon its ample space. Another open place of impressive size was the present Place de la Concorde, first called the Place Louis XV. This vast square, now the center of Paris, was framed on the side of the Tuileries gardens by balustrades designed by Gabriel, the architect of the Military School, and was planned as a setting for that colossal statue of the King on which a wag pinned a placard saying: “He is here as at Versailles, Without heart and without entrails.” The square stood on the western edge of the settled part of the city, but not too far away for the appropriate erection of the handsome buildings still standing on the north side restored to their early dignity. One of these, built as a storehouse for state effects, is now used by the Ministry of Marine. The other was a private _hôtel_. Between the two the rue Royale runs a little way northward to the classic church of the Madeleine, whose cornerstone Louis laid on the site of a former chapel, but whose construction was long delayed. Standing on its broad steps to-day the eye follows the vista of the rue Royale across the square and over the river to the Palace of Deputies, begun as the Palais Bourbon in the early part of Louis XV’s reign. It was in the rue Royale that most of the deaths occurred during Louis XVI’s wedding festivities, and it was through this street that the tumbrils laden with victims for the guillotine came from the rue Saint Honoré. A little way from the _place_ on the west is the Palace of the Élysée, which the government furnishes as a mansion for the President of the Republic. It has been rebuilt and restored since its first condition as a private house which Louis XV bought and gave to Madame de Pompadour.