378 



RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 



I 



358. PARIS : HOTEL MORAS (LATER BIRON), 77 RUE DE VARENNES, BY 

 J. AUBERT (1728). ELEVATION TO GARDEN. FROM MARIF.TTE. 



The saloon now approximated rather to a modern drawing-room than 

 to a hall of state, but the chambre de parade containing the state 

 bed still appears as one of the reception rooms, though the hostess 

 no longer lay upon it when receiving company. In town houses the 

 court is nearly always rounded at the end next the street, and the 

 entrance often set back in a curved recess, designed to disguise any 

 lack of parallelism between the frontage and the main buildings. 

 When space permitted, the buildings round the court were kept low, 

 the house alone rising to two or three storeys. Only in the more 

 crowded quarters has the street front more than one storey. 



As if from a desire to smooth away all the asperities of life, the 

 internal angles were rounded off, and external right angles replaced by 

 a splay, a convex or concave quadrant; and the elliptical, or other 

 curved forms, used in the planning of rooms were matched by the 



gentle sweeps and sinuous treads 

 of the stairs ; while a restless search 

 for variety is expressed in the 

 adoption of less usual geometrical 

 forms and quaint ingenuities, oc- 

 casioning projections which were 

 utilised to vary the monotony of 

 the elevations, and constitute the 

 nearest approach in French archi- 

 tecture to the English bay window. 

 Thus the grave stateliness of the 



HOTEL MORAS, OR BIRON: H6td M raS < later Bir n > ?? Rue 

 GROUND FLOOR PLAN. FROM de Varennes), by J. Aubert (1728), 

 BLONDEL. is diversified at each end of its 



359- 



