Set the palace all aflame.”

Whatever may be thought of this triple explanation, political, physical, and poetical, of the burning of the law courts in 1618, the unfortunate fact of the fire is certain.

Very little to-day remains, thanks to this catastrophe, — thanks, above all, to the successive restorations which have completed what it spared, — very little remains of that first dwelling of the kings of France, — of that elder palace of the Louvre, already so old in the time of Philip the Handsome, that they sought there for the traces of the magnificent buildings erected by King Robert and described by Helgaldus. Nearly everything has disappeared. What has become of the chamber of the chancellery, where Saint Louis consummated his marriage? the garden where he administered justice,