Page:Reminisences of Captain Gronow.djvu/137

The Palais Royal after the Restoration.—France has often been called the centre of European fashion and gaiety; and the Palais Royal, at the period to which I refer, might be called the very heart of French dissipation. It was a theatre in which all the great actors of fashion of all nations met to play their parts: on this spot were congregated daily an immense multitude, for no other purpose than to watch the busy comedy of real life that animated the corridors, gardens, and saloons of that vast building, which was founded by Richelieu and Mazarin, and modified by Philippe Egalité. Mingled together, and moving about the area of this oblong-square block of buildings, might be seen, about seven o'clock p.m., a crowd of English, Russian, Prussian, Austrian, and other officers of the Allied armies, together with countless foreigners from all parts of the world. Here, too, might have been seen the present King of Prussia, with his father and brother, the late king, the Dukes of Nassau, Baden, and a host of continental princes, who entered familiarly into the amusements of ordinary mortals, dining incog. at the most renowned restaurants, and flirting with painted female frailty.