The kings and queens of France were not only rulers of the nation, but they dominated the life of the capital as well. Upon their crowning or entry into Paris it was the custom to command a gift by right from the inhabitants. In 1389 Isabeau de Bavière, of dire memory, got sixty thousand couronnes d'or, and in 1501, and again in 1504, was presented with six thousand and ten thousand livres parisis respectively.
The king levied personal taxes on the inhabitants, who were thus forced to pay for the privilege of having him live among them, those of the professions and craftsmen, who might from time to time serve the royal household, paying the highest fees.
It was during the period of Richelieu's ministry that Paris flowered the most profusely. The constructions of this epoch were so numerous and imposing that Corneille in his comedy "Le Menteur," first produced in 1642, made his characters speak thus:
Dorante: Paris semble à mes yeux un pays de roman
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En superbes palais a changé ses buissons
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Aux superbes dehors du palais Cardinal
Tout la ville entière, avec pomp bâtie
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In 1701, Louis XIV divided the capital into twenty quartiers, or wards, and in 1726-1728 Louis XV built a new city wall; but it was only with Louis XVI that the faubourgs were at last brought within the city limits. Under the Empire and the Restoration but few changes were made, and with the piercing of the new boulevards under Napoleon III and Baron Haussmann the city came to be of much the same general plan that it is to-day.
In the olden time, between the Palais de la Cité and the Louvre and the Palais des Tournelles, extending even to the walls of Charenton, was a gigantic garden, a carpet embroidered with as varied a colouring as the tapis d'orient of the poets, and cut here and there by alleys which separated it into little checker-board squares.
Within this maze was the celebrated Jardin Dedalus that Louis XI gave to Coictier, and above it rose the observatory of the savant like a signal tower of the Romans. This centered upon what is now the Place des Vosges, formerly the Place Royale.
To-day, how changed is all this "intermediate, indeterminate" region! How changed, indeed! There is nothing vague and indeterminate about it to-day.
The earliest of the little known Paris palaces was the Palais des Thermes. It may be dismissed almost in a word from any consideration of the royal dwellings of Paris, though it was the residence of several Roman emperors and two queens of France. A single apartment of the old palace of the Romans exists to-day—the old Roman Baths—but nothing of the days of the Emperor Constantius Chlorus, who founded the palace in honour of Julian who was proclaimed Emperor by his soldiers in 360 A.D. The Frankish monarchs, if they ever resided here at all, soon transferred their headquarters to the Palais de la Cité, the ruins falling into the possession of the monks of Cluny, who built the present Hotel de Cluny on the site.
Of all the minor French palaces the Luxembourg and the Elysée are the most often heard of in connection with the life of modern times. The first is something a good deal more than an art museum, and the latter more than the residence for the Republican president, though the guide-book makers hardly think it worth while to write down the facts.