a pension of five hundred. He received the whole with great coolness.

Several celebrated architects now entered the lists to complete this
grand undertaking.--MANSARD presented his plans, with which COLBERT
was extremely pleased: the king also approved of them, and absolutely
insisted on their being executed without any alteration. MANSARD
replied that he would rather renounce the glory of building this
edifice than the liberty of correcting himself, and changing his
design when he thought he could improve it. Among the competitors was
CLAUDE PERRAULT, that physician so defamed by Boileau, the poet. His
plans were preferred, and merited the preference. Many pleasantries
were circulated at the expense of the new medical architect; and
PERRAULT replied to those sarcasms by producing the beautiful
colonnade of the _Louvre_, the master-piece of French architecture,
and the admiration of all Europe.

The facade of this colonnade, which is of the Corinthian order; is
five hundred and twenty-five feet in length: it is divided into two
peristyles and three avant-corps. The principal gate is in the centre
avant-corps, which is decorated with eight double columns, crowned by
a pediment, whose raking cornices are composed of two stones only,
each fifty-four feet in length by eight in breadth, though no more
than eighteen inches in thickness. They were taken from the quarries
of Meudon, and formed but one single block, which was sawed into two.
The other two avant-corps are ornamented by six pilasters, and two
columns of the same order, and disposed in the same manner. On the
top, in lieu of a ridged roof, is a terrace, bordered by a stone
balustrade, the pedestals of which are intended to bear trophies
intermixed with vases.