Charles V totally changed the aspect of the palace from what it had formerly been—half-fortress, half-residence—and made of it a veritable palace in truth as well as in name, by the addition of numerous dependencies.
Within a tower which was built during the reign of this monarch, called the Tour de la Librairie, he assembled his royal bibelots and founded what was afterwards known as the Bibliothèque du Louvre, the egg from which was hatched the present magnificently endowed Bibliothèque Nationale in the Rue Richelieu.
It is related that in 1373 the valet-de-chambre of Charles V made a catalogue of the nine hundred and ten volumes which formed this collection, an immense number for the time when it is known that his predecessor, Jean-le-Bon, possessed but seven volumes of history and four devotional books as his entire literary treasure.
This seems to be a bibliographical note of interest which has hitherto been overlooked. Charles V was evidently a man of taste, or he would not have built so well, though all is hearsay, as not a fragment remains of the work upon which he spent his talents and energies.
From the death of Charles V, in 1364, until 1557 the Louvre by some caprice ceased to be a permanent royal residence. At the latter epoch the ambitious, art-loving Francis I conceived the idea that here was a wealth of scaffolding upon which to graft some of his Renaissance luxuries and, by a process of "restoration" (perhaps an unfortunate word for him to have employed, since it meant the razing of the fine tower built by Charles V), added somewhat to the splendours thereof, though in a fickle moment, as was his wont, allowed a gap of a dozen years to intervene between the outlining of his project and the terrifically earnest work which finally resulted in the magnificent structure accredited to him, though indeed it meant the demolition of the original edifice.
It was at this period that Charles V entered into the ambitious part which Francis was to henceforth play in the Louvre, so perhaps the interruption was pardonable.
CHAPTER VI
THE LOUVRE OF FRANCIS I AND ITS SUCCESSORS
One can attribute the demise of the Old Louvre to the coming of Charles V to Paris in 1539. This royal residence, hastily put in order to receive his august presence, seemed so coldly inconvenient and inhospitable to his host, Francis I, that that monarch decided forthwith upon its complete reconstruction and enlargement. Owing to various combinations of circumstances the actual work of reconstruction was put off until 1546, thus the New Louvre as properly belongs to the reign of Henri II as to that of his father.