'The' palling-down of old houses in the Rue Louis lo Grand, one end of which joins the boulevards opposite "The Times" office at the 'erner of the Rue de la Eh @Antin, is the largest operation of this kind undertaken in the centre the city since property a little further eastward, on the north side of the Boulevard des Italiens, was removed to make room for the' con pletion of the Boulevard Haussmann, Nearly all the east side of the Rue Louis lo Grand, between the Rue da Quatre Septembre and the Boulevard des Italiens, has disappeared, as far northward as the Pavilion clu. Hanovr is doomed to destruction. A relic of considerably less historic inter~ est, the Hotel Massa, which stood at the corner of the Rue La Boetie, was saved by being taken to pieces and re-erected in the grounds of the Paris Observatory, and a similar rescue operation is being attempted in the case of the Pavilion clu Hanovee, though no one knows whether' the negotiations will succeed, 'The house was purchased in 1749, with its large garden, by the Duc de Richelieu, a gros sister of the great Cardinal, and it derived its name from the' legend that the duke, during the French occupation of Hanover, helped himself to various works of art and: decorated his acquisition with them. During the Reign of Terror, the Pavilion' clu Hanovre was the scene of some of the tragic bals des condamnés, to which the women of the French aristocracy went with their dresses cut low at the neck, {in allusion to the preparations by the executioner before guillotine ing his vietims—a fate that any of the guests at the ball might called upon to share at very short notice. For many years, the old house has been occupied by offices, most of them very pokey and in-conven
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.