On the morrow, the now famous 14th of July, the Frenchman's "glorious fourteenth," the people rose and the Bastille fell.

Revolutionary decree, in 1793, converted the palace and its garden into the Palais et Jardin de la Révolution, and appropriated them as national property. Napoleon granted the palace to the Tribunal for its seat, and during the Hundred Days Lucien Bonaparte took up his residence there. In 1830 Louis Philippe d'Orleans gave a great fête here in honour of the King of Naples who had come to the capital to pay his respects to the French king. Charles X, assisting at the ceremony as an invited guest, was also present and a month later came again to actually inhabit the palace and make it royal once more.

The table herewith showing the ramifications of the Bourbon Orleans family in modern times is interesting—all collateral branches of the genealogical tree sprouting from that of Louis Philippe. The heraldic embellishments of this family tree offer a particular interest in that the armorial blazonings are in accord with a decree of the French Tribunal, handed down a few years since, which establishes the right to the head of the house to bear the écu plein de France—d'azur a trois fleurs de lys d'or, thus establishing the Orleans legitimacy.

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The Republic of 1848 made the palace the headquarters of the Cour des Comptes and of the État Major of the National Guard. Under Napoleon III the Palais Royal became the dwelling of Prince Jerome, the uncle of the emperor. Later it served the same purpose for the son of Prince Napoleon. It was at this epoch that the desecration of scraping out the blazoned lys and the chipping off the graven Bourbon armoiries took place. Whenever one or the other hated Bourbon symbol was found, eagles, phœnix-like, sprang up in their place, only in their turn to disappear when the Republican device of '48 (now brought to light again), Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité—replaced them.

During the Commune of 1870 a part of the left wing and the central pavilion suffered by fire, but restorations under the architect, Chabrol, brought them back again to much their original outlines. Through all its changes of tenure and political vicissitudes little transformation took place as to the ground plan, or sky-line silhouette, of the chameleon palace of cardinal, king and emperor, and while in no sense is it architecturally imposing or luxurious, it is now, as ever in the past, one of the most distinctive of Paris's public monuments.

To-day the Palais Royal proper may be said to face on Place du Palais Royal, with its principal entrance at the end of a shallow courtyard separated from the street by an iron grille and flanked by two unimposing pavilions. The principal façade hides the lodging of the Conseil d'État and is composed of but the ground floor, a story above and an attic.