In 1636, divining the attitude of envy of many of the nobility who frequented his palace, Richelieu—great man of politics that he was—made a present of the entire lot of curios to Louis XIII, but undertaking to house them for him, which he did until his death in 1642.
At the death of Louis XIII the Palais Cardinal, which had been left to him in its entirety by the will of Richelieu, came to Anne d'Autriche, the regent, who, with the infant Louis XIV and the royal family, installed herself therein, and from now on (October 7, 1642), the edifice became known as the Palais Royal.
Now commenced the political rôle of this sumptuous palace which hitherto had been but the Cardinal's caprice. Mazarin had succeeded Richelieu, and to escape the anger of the Frondeurs, he, with the regent and the two princes, Louis XIV and the Duc d'Anjou, fled to the refuge of Saint Germain-en-Laye.
In company with Mademoiselle de Montpensier, who had been rudely awakened from her slumbers in the Luxembourg, they took a coach in the dead of night for Saint Germain. It was a long and weary ride; the Pavi du Roi was then, as now, the most execrable suburban highroad in existence.
When calm was reëstablished Mazarin refused to allow the regent to take up her residence again in the old abode of Richelieu and turned it over to Henriette de France, the widow of Charles I, who had been banished from England by Cromwell.
Thirty odd years later Louis XIV, when he was dreaming of his Versailles project, made a gift of the property to his nephew, Philippe d'Orleans, Duc de Chartres. Important reconstructions and rearrangements had been carried on from time to time, but nothing so radical as to change the specious aspect of the palace of the Cardinal's time, though it had been considerably enlarged by extending it rearward and annexing the Hotel Danville in the present Rue Richelieu. Mansart on one occasion was called in and built a new gallery that Coypel decorated with fourteen compositions after the Ænid of Virgil.
Under the regency the Salon d'Entrée was redecorated by Oppenard, and a series of magnificent fêtes was organized by the pleasure-loving queen from the Austrian court. Richelieu's theatre was made into an opera-house, and masked balls of an unparalleled magnificence were frequently given, not forgetting to mention—without emphasis however—suppers of a Pantagruelian opulence and lavish orgies at which the chronicles only hint.
In 1661, Monsieur, brother of the king, took up his official residence in the palace, enlarged it in various directions and in many ways transformed and improved it. Having become the sole proprietor of the edifice and its gardens, by Letters Patent of February, 1692, the Duc d'Orleans left this superb property, in 1701, to his son the too famous regent, Philippe d'Orleans, whose orgies and extravagances rendered the Palais Royal notorious to the utmost corners of Europe.
The first years of the eighteenth century were indeed notorious. It was then that Palais Royal became the head-centre for debauch and abandon. It is from this epoch, too, that date the actual structures which to-day form this vast square of buildings, at all events their general outline is little changed to-day from what it was at that time.
If the regent's policy was to carry the freedom and luxury of Richelieu's time to excess, replacing even the edifices of the Cardinal with more elaborate structures, his son Louis (1723-1752) sought in his turn to surround them with an atmosphere more austere.