A man of this king’s nature was not content to stay long in one place. When war was not making its demands upon him he was visiting all parts of his kingdom and spending no little time in the districts where hunting was good and where he built splendid châteaux so that he and his retinue might be comfortably housed. Fontainebleau and St. Germain-en-Laye are the two best known, while the château de Madrid in the Bois de Boulogne, adjoining the town was a charming retreat from the noise of the city. Except for a small bit included in a restaurant this building is no longer in existence, but in the Cours la Reine on the right bank facing the Seine is the small “House of Francis I” which the king built at Moret in 1572, and which an admirer bought and removed to Paris in 1826. It is an exquisite example of Renaissance architecture.
During the peaceful moments of the reign, there was a craze for building and Italian architects were offered handsome inducements to exercise their talents on French soil. It was a French architect, however, Pierre Lescot, who pulled down the Great Tower, the oldest part of the Louvre, and designed that portion which Francis and his son, Henry II, built, the southwestern corner of the eastern quadrangle. Henry’s initial, combined with the “D” and crescent of Diane de Poitiers, are visible in many places. Francis’s signature was the salamander, whose lizard-like length fitted comfortably into many decorative schemes.
Below the Great Tower there must have been a bed of soft earth of some sort, for it was found to be almost impossible to fill the huge hole left when the Tower was demolished. The populace saw in the strange sinking of the material dumped into the cavity the fulfillment of a legendary threat that, the fortress being meant to stand forever, its fall would be marked by untoward happenings. In fact it was nearly three hundred years before modern engineering knowledge was able to stop the seepage that caused the trouble.
During one of the intervals of peace with Charles V the emperor visited Paris. Indeed it was the necessity for making elaborate preparations for his visit that brought about the rebuilding of the Louvre whose dilapidation had not been appreciated before. The emperor was met outside the eastern wall and presented with the keys of the city. At the Saint Antoine gate there was a triumphal arch and the cannon of the Bastille roared a greeting as the monarch passed
THE COLLEGE OF FRANCE, FOUNDED BY FRANCIS I IN 1530.
See [page 202.]
