Considering that Chambord was not a product of feudal times, these disfigurements seem out of place; still its peaceful motives could hardly have been expected to have lasted always.
The southern façade is not excelled by the elevation of any residential structure of any age, and its outlines are varied and pleasing enough to satisfy the most critical; if one pardons the little pepper-boxes on the north and south towers, and perforce one has to pardon them when he recalls the magnificence of the general disposition and sky-line of this marvellously imposing château of the Renaissance.
François Premier made Chambord his favourite residence, and in fact endowed Pierre Nepveu—who for this work alone will be considered one of the foremost architects of the French Renaissance—with the inspiration for its erection in 1526.
![[Château de Chambord]](#3662465787148151151_illus143.jpg.id-1659445170083512657.wrap-0.html.html){kind=link}
A prodigious amount of sculpture by Jean Cousin, Pierre Bontemps, Jean Goujon, and Germain Pilon was interpolated above the doorways and windows, in the framing thereof, and above the great fireplaces. Inside and out, above and below, were vast areas to be covered, and François allowed his taste to have full sway.
The presumptuous François made much of this noble residence, perhaps because of his love of la chasse, for game abounded hereabouts, or perhaps because of his regard for the Comtesse Thoury, who occupied a neighbouring château.
For some time before his death, François still lingered on at Chambord. Marguerite and her brother, both now considerably aged since the happier times of their childhood in Touraine, always had an indissoluble fondness for Chambord. Marguerite had now become Queen of Navarre, but her beauty had been dimmed with the march of time, and she no longer was able to comfort and amuse her kingly brother as of yore. His old pleasures and topics of conversation irritated him, and he had even tired of poetry, art, and political affairs.
Above all, he shamefully and shamelessly abused women, at once the prop and the undermining influence of his kingly power in days gone by. There is an existing record to the effect that he wrote some "window-pane" verse on the window of his private apartment to the following effect:
"Souvent femme varie;
Mal habile quis'y fie!"