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"off, all except Josephine, and she married Napoleon and he made it a Senate."

Concise and accurate. A little more at length the facts are these:

While the palace was being hurried to completion and all that art and wealth could do to make it beautiful, two parties were being formed at Court. Louis XIII was little more than a child, but was of a gloomy, morose temperament and very jealous of his mother's power and angry with her haughtiness and pride. Not only the young King but all the Court and people hated the Queen's favorite the Italian adventurer Concini, whom she had raised from one of the lowest positions and honors to another until he was prime minister and had acquired a vast amount of money.

His wife was Leonora Galigai, the favorite lady in waiting of the Queen, a woman of very great ability, who aided her husband in all his schemes for power. Louis' favor it was Albert de Luynes, and their party included most of the nobility and the Protestants, ranked against the Queen, Concini and the Catholics.

De Luynes finally persuaded the King to have Concini arrested. This was attempted in April, 1617, two years after the palace of the Luxembourg had been begun. When he resisted the captain of the guards shot him.

The populace, who hated him, dragged his bleeding body through the streets, plundered his magnificent home and threw his wife into the Bastille. She was accused of sorcery, and at her trial the judge demanded by what power she had controlled the Queen and gained her own and her husband's ends. She replied: "By the ascendency of a strong soul over a weak mind." She was beheaded and then burned, and their vast property was given by the King to his favorite De Luynes.

The Queen, involved in all this trouble, became exceedingly unpopular and was forced to go into exile for several years. Finally she became reconciled to her son and returned to Paris in 1620 to find her palace nearly completed. She amused herself by seeing how sumptuous she could make even the smallest details of its furnishings. For instance, the panes of glass in her windows were set, not in lead, but in silver, and the great andirons were made of solid silver. She sent for the painter Rubens and he painted for the long gallery, which led out of her private rooms, a series of 24 pictures, depicting allegorically all the events of her life. These are now hung in a special salon of the Louvre.

Unhappy Queen, misfortune pursued her. She had never the art of being popular and keeping friends. Those whom she raised from humble life to highest favor invariably turned against her. Cardinal Richelieu, whom she had made cardinal and helped upward from the starting point of his career, gained complete ascendency over the King and persuaded him finally that it was better his mother should leave Paris. She went into exile again, this time never to return. She gave the palace in which she had scarcely lived at all to her third son, Gaston, Duke of Orleans.

This was in 1631, and it was then known as the Palais D'Orleans. It passed to his celebrated daughter, "the great Mademoiselle." From her to the Regent Philippe D'Orleans and later to his daughter, the young Duchess Du Barry, who lived such a scandalous life that even in that corrupt age no one could be found willing to preach her funeral sermon when she died at the age of only 24.

During her residency the garden of the Luxembourg, which had been very fashionable promenade, was closed to the public. It was afterward owned and occupied by the Comte de Provence, who held his brief court there.

(Continued on Page Thirteen).