Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [188]
As part of my Colette obsession, I’ve recently spent a couple of afternoons drifting around the Palais Royal. Colette—born Sidonie Gabrielle Colette—lived in a number of houses during her life, as many as fifteen by some counts, almost all of them relatively humble dwellings chosen by the author for the beauty of their settings or gardens. When a journalist pointed out to her how many times she had moved, she replied that if she could only have an apartment in the Palais Royal, she would never move again. When a fan of hers read this article, he gave up his apartment in the Palais Royal to Colette, who stayed there until her death.
For me, Colette has always been an almost mystical figure of French literature. And now that I’m reading her in French, my fascination has only grown. So on my recent visits to the Palais Royal, I imagined Colette leaning out her window—as she so often describes in her novels—and observing the quiet ambience that is so particular to the gardens and arcades of the Palais Royal. And I imagine seeing the vast courtyard that is the garden of the Palais Royal through her great, wise gray eyes.
But it’s only relatively recently in its long history that the Palais Royal became tranquil. It was conceived tranquilly enough, between the years 1634 and 1639 by then minister Cardinal Richelieu, who wanted a residence near the Louvre where he could easily—by simply crossing his vast garden—minister to the royal family. The cardinal also had a pronounced taste for theater, and an entire wing of the palace was dedicated to theatrical productions. Louis IV, whose father inherited the palace from the cardinal, opened this theater to the public. It was in this theater that Molière acted all his plays and, in a sense, where he died, subsequent to losing consciousness while playing, ironically, Le Malade imaginaire. Today, the Théâtre du Palais Royal continues the tradition.
Subsequently, the palace was inhabited by various branches of the royal family and was the scene of many famously decadent parties. It was Philippe Égalité, the grandson of Philippe II of Orléans (regent after the death of Louis XIV), who gave the Palais Royal the atmosphere it still retains today. He lined the arcades with elite shops, which enraged the inhabitants of the palace, who no longer had a direct view of the gardens. He also, from 1786 to 1790, built the theater that became today’s Théâtre du Palais Royal.
Then began a long period of upheavals and even violence, during which the Palais Royal witnessed three revolutions and was even partially burned. Poor Philippe Égalité was beheaded in the Palais Royal, and its elegant quarters became a mixture of gambling dens and brothels. It was then seized by the state and for a time harbored the tribunal of commerce and the stock exchange. When King Louis XVIII was restored to power, he gave the Palais Royal to his cousin, Louis-Philippe, the duke of Orléans, who was also the eldest son of Philippe Égalité. The work he did on the palace gave it the façade we know today. In 1830, he became Louis-Philippe I, king of the French—a supposedly more democratic king, as distinguished from the former kings of France—and promptly moved to the Tuileries. Eighteen years later, the revolution of February 1848 sacked the Palais Royal and partly burned it. Finally, in 1854 Napoléon III claimed the Palais Royal and installed his uncle Jérôme in residence. After his death, Jérôme’s son, Prince Napoléon (known as