. Paris as seen and described by famous writers ... s the more the beauty of this one advances in my affec-tions : I love it tenderly, even its warts and blemishes. Whence arose Montaignes tenderness for Paris .? At that epoch, the magnificent boulevards which theediles of the day have created with a wave of their magicwand did not exist. At that time, there was no Rue deRivoli leading to the Hotel de Ville ; nor boulevards suchas Babylon might have envied, nor gigantic hotels, nor glit-tering cafes, nor squares ; there was nothing approachingthe Bois de Boulogne, nor anything resembling the P
. Paris as seen and described by famous writers ... s the more the beauty of this one advances in my affec-tions : I love it tenderly, even its warts and blemishes. Whence arose Montaignes tenderness for Paris .? At that epoch, the magnificent boulevards which theediles of the day have created with a wave of their magicwand did not exist. At that time, there was no Rue deRivoli leading to the Hotel de Ville ; nor boulevards suchas Babylon might have envied, nor gigantic hotels, nor glit-tering cafes, nor squares ; there was nothing approachingthe Bois de Boulogne, nor anything resembling the Pare deMonceaux. The Louvre, the principal facade of which,begun in 1666 on the plans of Claude Perrault, was onlyfinished in 1670, at that time presented the somewhat un-attractive aspect of a feudal castle, defended on the side ofSaint-Germain-lAuxerrois, by a wide moat fed by thewaters of the Seine. The Chateau of the Tuileries, whichCatherine de Medicis had built in 1564 for her privatedwelling, but from which she had fled immediately after- 26. MAiSON HENRI IV. OLD PARIS 27 wards on I do not know what astrological prediction, wasseparated from the garden by a street; and this garden,quite different from what Andre Le Notre made it in 1665,showed, mingled in confusion, an aviary, a pond, a me-nagerie, and a warren, all of which was protected by astrong wall, a moat and a bastion. There was no Place dela Concorde then, and the trees which to-day form theChamps-Elysees were not to be planted till 1670. TheMarche aux Chevaux, where the minions of Henri against the favourites of the Duke of Guise, onlybecame the Place Royale under Henri IV. It was a simplehouse, called hotel hdti de neuf which stood on the spotwhere a few years later Marie de Medicis caused the foun-dations of the Palais du Luxembourg to be laid. It goeswithout saying that the Palais Royale did not exist, nothaving been built, by Jacques Le Mercier, for Cardinal deRichelieu, till 1629. The construction
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