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It is true that it may be quite possible, in the first place, that Ravaillac had no accomplices; and in the second, that if he had any, they were in no way connected with the fire of 1618 Two other very plausible explanations exist: First, the great flah, which fell from heaven, as every one knows, upon the law courts, after ht on the seventh of March; second, Théophile's quatrain,-"Sure, 'twas but a sorry ga eaten too much spice, Set the palace all aflaht of this triple explanation, political, physical, and poetical, of the burning of the law courts in 1618, the unfortunate fact of the fire is certain Very little to-day remains, thanks to this catastrophe,--thanks, above all, to the successive restorations which have completed what it spared,--very little res of France,--of that elder palace of the Louvre, already so old in the tiht there for the traces of theRobert and described by Helgaldus Nearly everything has disappeared What has become of the chamber of the chancellery, where Saint Louis consuarden where he administered justice, "clad in a coat of camelot, a surcoat of linsey-woolsey, without sleeves, and a sur-mantle of black sandal, as he lay upon the carpet with Joinville?" Where is the chaismond? and that of Charles IV? that of Jean the Landless? Where is the staircase, froated his edict of pardon? the slab where Marcel cut the throats of Robert de Clerne, in the presence of the dauphin? the wicket where the bulls of Pope Benedict were torn, and whence those who had brought them departed decked out, in derision, in copes and rand hall, with its gilding, its azure, its statues, its pointed arches, its pillars, its iilded chamber? and the stone lion, which stood at the door, with lowered head and tail between his legs, like the lions on the throne of Solomon, in the humiliated attitude which befits force in the presence of justice? and the beautiful doors? and the stained glass? and the chased ironwork, which drove Biscornette to despair? and the delicate ork of Hancy? What has tiiven us in return for all this Gallic history, for all this Gothic art? The heavy flattened arches of M de Brosse, that aard architect of the Saint-Gervais portal Sore with the tattle of the Patru