CHILDREN PLAY WHERE ONCE KINGS STROLLED.

Shannon News, 27 August 1929, Page 4

CHILDREN PLAY WHERE ONCE KINGS STROLLED.

* PALAIS-ROYAL GARDENS. MUSIC OF FOUNTAIN'S WATERS MINGLE WITH PIGEON'S WHIR. PARIS. Children and pigeons have taken possession of the famous old garden close to the Avenue de I'Opera where once kings strolled. It is the garden which is attached to the Palais-Royal, and which lies placidly like a lagoon left by the broad river, of the Avenue de I'Opera rolling southward to the Seine. /

! The "Royal Palace'' was first the "Cardinal's Palace," being erected by Richelieu in the seventeenth century. By him it was bequeathed to Louis XIII, from whom it passed to Anne of Austria. She resided there with her son, Louis XIV. It was the scene of Camille Dosmoulins' rousing of the Paris populace to destroy the Bastille in 1759. Napoleon was accorded hereditary rights by the Tribunate sitting hi this palace, and it is now the headquarters of the Council of State. To most people, however, the name "Palais-Royal" is associated more with the garden at the back of the palace and with the galleries surrounding the garden than with the main building itself. It was between the years 1781 and 178(3 that the garden became enclosed with those galleries and buildings which one now sees. Their character has changed' with the epochs: now fashionable, now less than respectable, now a passageway for streams of people walking across this part of the city, now vacant, now animated. Cardinal, King, revolutionary, citizen, and child have one after another taken possession of the garden; To-day scarcely a pleasanter spot could be found in the vicinity of the Avenue de I'Opera, in which to rest for a moment than this garden of the Pa-lais-Royal. A high fountain dances a\: and out of a wide pond in the centre, the lawns are green, and the avenues of lime and elm trees give shade. The music of the waters mingle;* with the children's laughter and the whir of pigeons settling to the gravel. Among the groups of statuary is one by Rodin of Victor Hugo. A little cannon is fired by the sun's rays at noon each day. Apart from these many fascinating things, there are the galleries to north and west to shops. A theatre is imbedded in one corner of the galleries, and the shops are given over to medals, stamps and antiques for the most part—'incidental reminders of past events and times. Visitors like them all, but invariably return with greatest pleasure to the sprinkling fountain and the children feeding crumbs to ,the pigeons.