Gaming at the Palais Royal was not wholly confined to the public gambling houses. During the carnival season of 1777 the gambling which went on in the royal apartments became notorious for even that profligate time: in one night the Duc de Chartres lost eight thousand livres. Louis XVI, honest man, took all due precautions to reduce this extravagance, but was impotent.
Between the courtyard fountain and the northern arcade of the inner palace was placed the famous Cannon du Palais Royal, which, by an ingenious disposition, was fired each day at midday by the action of the sun's rays. All the world stood around awaiting the moment when watches might be regulated for another twenty-four hours.
The celebrated Abbé Delille, to whom the beauties of the gardens were being shown, deplored the lack of good manners on the part of the habitués and delivered himself of the following appropriate quatrain:
"Dans ce jardin tout se rencontrée
Exceptê l'ombrage et les fleurs;
Si l'on y dêregle ses mœurs
Du moins on y règle sa montre."
The Galerie de Bois was perhaps the most disreputable of all the palace confines. It was a long, double row of booths which only disappeared when Louis-Philippe built the glass-covered Galerie d'Orleans.
Up to the eve of the Revolution the Palais Royal enjoyed the same privileges as the Temple and the Luxembourg, and became a sort of refuge whereby those who sought to escape from the police might lose themselves in the throng. The monarch himself was obliged to ask permission of the Duc d'Orleans that his officials might pursue their police methods within the outer walls.
It was July 12, 1789. The evening before, Louis XVI had dismissed his minister, Neckar, but only on Sunday, the 12th, did the news get abroad. At the same time it was learned that the regiment known as the Royal Allemand, under the orders of the Prince de Lambesc, had charged the multitude gathered before the gates of the Tuileries. Cries of "A Mort!" "Aux Armes!" "Vengeance!" were hurled in air from all sides.
At high noon in the gardens of the Palais Royal, on the 13th, as the midday sun was scorching the flagstones to a grilling temperature, the sound of a tiny cannon shot smote the still summer air with an echo which did not cease reverberating for months. The careless, unthinking promenaders suddenly grew grave, then violently agitated and finally raving, heedlessly mad. A young unknown limb of the law, Camille Desmoulins, rushed bareheaded and shrieking out of the Café de Foy, parted the crowd as a ship parts the waves, sprang upon a chair and harangued the multitude with such a vehemence and conviction that they were with him as one man.
"Citizens," he said, "I come from Versailles * * * It only remains for us to choose our colours. Quelle couleur voulez vous? Green, the colour of hope; or the blue of Cincinnati, the colour of American liberty and democracy."
"Nous avons assez déliberé! Deliberate further with our hands not our hearts! We are the party the most numerous: To arms!"