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The mediocrity of the Palais Royal is apparent to all who have the slightest acquaintance with the architectural orders, but for all that its transition from the Palais du Cardinal, Palais Egalité, Palais de la Revolution and Palais du Tribunat to the Palais Royal lends to it an interest that many more gloriously artistic Paris edifices quite lack.

A fourth subterraneous coffeehouse in the Palais du Tribunat is kept by a ventriloquist, and here many a party are amused by one of their number being repeatedly led into a mistake, in consequence of being ignorant of the faculty possessed by the master of the house. This man seems to have no small share of humour, and exercises it apparently much to his advantage.

Edgeworth's plan to knock you down with names, I will just enumerate those of our visitors, Edelcrantz, a Swede, Molard, Eisenman, Dupont, and Pictet the younger. After they went, we paid a short visit to the pictures and saw the Salle du Tribunat and the Consul's apartments at the Tuileries: on the dressing-table there were the busts of Fox and Nelson.

What wonder, then, that the one able and strong-willed man led the helpless many and re-moulded Sieyès' constitution in a fashion that was thus happily parodied: "J'ai, pour les fous, d'un Tribunat Conservé la figure; Pour les sots je laisse un Sénat, Mais ce n'est qu'en peinture; A ce stupide magistrat Ma volonté préside; Et tout le Conseil d'État Dans mon sabre réside."

On the north side, and at the back of the theatre, on the ground-floor, are several covered galleries, bordered by shops, which communicate with the Rue St. Honore and the Palais du Tribunat. The vestibule, where four stair-cases terminate, is of an elliptic form, surrounded by three rows of Doric pillars. Above the vestibule, which is on the ground-floor, are the pit and lobby.

After a lapse of almost eleven years, I again find this identical BEAUVILLIERS still in the full enjoyment of the greatest celebrity. ROBERT and NAUDET in the Palais du Tribunat, and VERY on the Terrace des Feuillant dispute with him the palm in the art of Apicius.

Different circumstances have produced considerable alterations in this palace, so that, at the present day, its numerous buildings preserve of the first architect, LE MERCIER, no more than a small part of the second court. The principal entrance of the Palais du Tribunat is from the Rue St. Honore.

But besides six or seven coffeehouses on the ground-floor of the Palais du Tribunat, there are also several subterraneous ones now open. In one of these, near the Theatre Francais, is a little stage, on which farces, composed for the purpose, are represented gratis. In another, is an orchestra consisting entirely of performers belonging to the National Institution of the Blind.

Pamphlets and other ephemeral productions usually make their first appearance in the Palais du Tribunat; and strangers may rely on being plagued by a set of fellows who here hawk about prohibited publications, of the most immoral tendency, embellished with correspondent engravings; such as Justine, ou les malheurs de la vertu, Les quarante manieres, &c.

These words of the Gospel are here not unaptly applied to the destination of this building, which is to furnish water to the garden of the Tuileries, whose basins were not, on that account, the less dry half the year. The water is raised by means of a pump, and afterwards distributed, by several conduits, to the Louvre and the Palais du Tribunat, as well as to the Tuileries.