So, when the sentries in English uniforms had gone from the gates, and the archers in Lincoln green were seen no more in the streets, Charles VII. came back, made King of France by The Maid who had found him King of Bourges, and whom he let the English burn for her pains. He entered Paris in November, 1437, nearly twenty years after he had been carried out from the town in the arms of Tanneguy Duchâtel. That quick-witted provost, discovering that the Burgundians had got into the town by the betrayed Porte de Buci, on the night of Saturday, May 28, 1418, had hastened to the Hôtel Saint-Paul, had wrapped the sleeping boy in his bedclothes, and had carried him up Rue Saint-Antoine to the Bastille, and out into the country on the following day, and so to Melun, where the King's son was safe.
During this first short stay of three weeks, the listless and sluggish young King grew as fond as had been the Duke of Bedford of the walled-in grounds of the Tournelles. They were very extensive, covering the space bounded by present Rues Saint-Antoine, Saint-Gilles, Turenne, and Boulevard Beaumarchais. Within this vast enclosure were many buildings and outbuildings, and in the words of Sauval: "Ce n'étoit que galeries et jardins de tous côtés, sans parler des chapelles."
And henceforth, for more than a hundred years, the Tournelles, "pour la beauté et commodité du dit lieu," was the favored abode of royalty, when royalty favored Paris with infrequent visits. The sombre shapes of Louis XI. and his ignoble comrades darkened its precincts, at times. When he made his entry, already narrated, into the town after his coronation at Rheims, he passed the night of August 31, 1461, in the old Island-Palace, and on the following day he installed himself in "son hôtel des Tournelles, près la Bastille de Saint-Antoine." Here he received, in September, 1467, a visit from his second wife, Charlotte de Savoie, who came up the river from Rouen. She was met, below the Island, by a boatful of choristers, who "sang psalms and anthems after a most heavenly and melodious manner." She landed on the Island, performed her devotions at Notre-Dame, and took boat to the water-gate of Quai des Célestins opposite, and thence made her way on a white palfrey to the Tournelles. The King's physician, Dr. Coictier—most skilled in bleeding, in all possible ways, his royal patient—had an astrological tower in the grounds, and in the centre was a maze named "Le Jardin Dædalus." About these grounds Louis prowled, seldom going beyond them, and then only by night, and with one trusted gossip. Indeed, he was less like the King of France here in his palace than anywhere else; camping rather than residing, with a small retinue of old Brabant servitors, and a larder filled mostly with cold victuals, says Michelet. It was Loches occasionally, and Plessis-les-Tours habitually, that had the pleasure of harboring the "universal spider"; in them both he spun his webs, and waited gloating, and found "many cockroaches under the King's hearthstone," as the saying went. And at last he died, triumphant and wretched, at Plessis-les-Tours.
"Le Petit Roi," Charles VIII., hardly knew Paris; and when he entered the town on February 8, 1492, with his young wife, Anne of Brittany, who had been crowned at Saint-Denis the day before, the populace was not agreeably impressed by his short stature, his bad figure, his heavy head, his big nose, his thick lips always open, and his great, blank, staring eyes. He was in curious contrast with the bride—pretty, sprightly, vivacious, and "very knowing," wrote home the Venetian Ambassador, Zaccaria Contarini. The gentle, weakly King—so strange a scion of Louis XI.—made his home in Touraine. On the terrace of Amboise, where he was born, we all know the little door, leading to the old Haquelebac Gallery, against which he struck his head as he started down to look on a game of tennis. There, on April 7, 1498, in a sordid and filthy chamber, a remnant of the old château he was just then rebuilding, he lay for hours until his death, so carrying out the curse of Savonarola, who had threatened him with the anger of God, if he failed to return to Italy with his army to cleanse the unclean Church with the sword.
Anne de Bretagne.
(From a portrait by an unknown artist in a private collection.)
"Le bon Roi Louis, Père du Peuple, est mort," is the doleful pronouncement of the crieurs du corps, starting out from the Tournelles before dawn of New Year's day, 1515. The kindly old fellow has died in the night, a martyr to a young wife and to her fashionable hours. All his life long, Louis had been subject to the fancies of women, to his undoing. We meet him first, the young and ardent Duc d'Orléans, the best horseman and swordsman in the court, riding out from Plessis with the brave Dunois—both grandsons, with different bars, of the murdered Louis d'Orléans—to snatch the girl Isabelle from the escort of Quentin Durward. The duke has already taken the eye of the capable Anne, eldest daughter of Louis XI., as Brantôme is quick to note. Getting no return for her passion, the fury of a woman scorned, backed by her father's malign humor, marries the handsome prince to her younger sister, Jeanne—ugly and deformed and uncharming. Freed by divorce from this childless union, on taking the throne, Louis hastens to marry his former flame, Anne of Brittany, now the widow of Charles VIII. This lady, fair in person and fairer in her duchy, lively and not unlearned, a blameless yet imperious spouse, gave him many happy years. The personal court he allowed "sa Bretonne" outshone his own court, and glorified the gloomy Tournelles. For all his clinging to her, she was taken from him when only thirty-seven years of age; refusing to live, when she found, for the first time, that her self-will was not allowed its own way. She would have her daughter, Claude, marry Charles of Austria, Emperor-to-be, and the powers in France would not have it, because they were unwilling that Brittany should go, with its heiress, into foreign hands. A marriage was arranged between Claude and the young Duc d'Angoulême, who was to become François I., so keeping the rich duchy for France. After Anne's death, her widower made a third venture, and yet, the chronicler plaintively assures us, he had no need of a new wife. This was Mary, sister of Henry VIII. of England, who was glad to get her out of his country; and she was as glad to return as soon as, on finding herself a widow, she could become the wife of her first love, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. And so these two were the grandparents of Lady Jane Grey.
Now the customary hour for dining in those days was from five to ten in the morning, changing a little with the seasons. A French "Poor Richard" of the period says:
"Lever à cinq, diner à neuf,