The Palais-Royal is the Parisian Mecca for all Americans. Its brilliant shops, glittering with diamonds and precious stones, are so many shrines at which Americans are most devout worshipers. They go there day after day, admiring the bewildering display, and the admiration excited by the wily shopkeeper by his skill in arranging his costly wares leads to purchases that would not otherwise have been made. There is a fascination about a shop window literally filled with diamonds, arranged by a Frenchman, that is irresistible, and with hundreds of such windows extending all the way around the immense court, there is no escaping its power. What a Parisian shopkeeper doesn't know about display isn't worth knowing. All Paris is arranged solely for the eye. They ignore the other senses to a very great degree. With all its present wealth and beauty the Palais-Royal has witnessed some very exciting scenes. It was built by Cardinal Richelieu for his residence, and he built it extremely well, little dreaming of the scenes of carnival, riot, quarrels, and bloodshed that were to be enacted there long after he had vacated it forever. In 1663, when it was finished, it was called the Palais-Cardinal, but having been presented by Richelieu to Louis XIII., whose widow, Anne of Austria, with her two sons, Louis XIV. and Philippe d'Orléans, lived there, it was called the Palais-Royal. [Sidenote: THE LUXURIOUS PALAIS.] Louis, on coming into possession of the Palais, presented it to his brother Philippe, during whose occupancy it was the scene of the most horrible orgies the world ever saw. The royal profligate gathered about him a host whose tastes were as depraved as his own, and with these he led a life of wild debauchery. [Illustration: PALAIS-ROYAL.] Later on, Philippe Egalité, exceeding the excesses of his grandfather, Philippe d'Orléans, made the Palais-Royal the scene of wilder disorders than had ever been seen there before, as bad as it had been. He was so reckless that his princely income was not enough to keep him in ready money. In fact his coffers were well nigh exhausted when he conceived the idea of deriving a revenue from some of the property that surrounded the Palais, which up to that time had been used simply for ornamentation. So he caused a number of shops to be erected around the garden adjoining the Palais, and from the rents paid for these was enabled to keep up his former manner of life until that (to him) memorable morning in November, 1793, when he took a walk to the Place de la Concorde, up a short flight of stairs, and for once in his life laid his head on a hard pillow. The deadly guillotine did its work, and the riotous life of Philippe Egalité came to a sudden end.