Tower of St. Étienne du Mont.
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After the death of Da Vinci Francis never succeeded in retaining a first-rate painter in his service. Andrea del Sarto and Paris Bordone did little more than pay passing visits, and the famous school of Fontainebleau was founded by Rosso and Primaticcio, two decadent followers of Michel Angelo. The adventures of that second-rate artist and first-rate bully, Benvenuto Cellini, at Paris, form one of the most piquant episodes in artistic autobiography. After a gracious welcome from the king he was offered an annual retaining fee of three hundred crowns. He at once dismissed his two apprentices and left in a towering rage, only returning on being offered the same appointments that had been enjoyed by Leonardo da Vinci—seven hundred crowns a year, and payment for every finished work. The Petit Nesle[105] was assigned to Cellini and his pupils as a workshop, the king assuring him that force would be needed to evict the possessor—it had been assigned to the provost—adding, "Take great care you are not assassinated." On complaining to the king of the difficulties he met with and the insults offered to him on attempting to gain possession, he was answered: "If you are the Benvenuto I have heard of, live up to your reputation; I give you full leave." Benvenuto took the hint, armed himself, his servants and two apprentices, and bullied the occupants and rival claimants out of their wits. It was at this Tour de Nesle that Francis paid Cellini a surprise visit with his mistress Madame d'Estampes, his sister Margaret of Valois, the Dauphin and his wife Catherine de' Medici, the Cardinal of Lorraine, Henry II. of Navarre, and a numerous train of courtiers. The artist and his merry men were at work on the famous silver statue of Jupiter for Fontainebleau, and amid the noise of the hammering the king entered unperceived. Cellini had the torso of the statue in his hand, and at that moment a French lad who had caused him some little displeasure had felt the weight of the master's foot, which sent him flying against the king. But the artist had done a bad day's work by evicting a servant of Madame d'Estampes from the tower, and the injured lady and Primaticcio, her protégé, decided to work his ruin. When Cellini arrived at Fontainebleau with the statue, Francis ordered it to be placed in the grand gallery decorated by Rosso. Primaticcio had just arranged there the casts which he had been commissioned to bring from Rome, and Benvenuto saw what was meant—his own work was to be eclipsed by the splendour of the masterpieces of ancient art. "Heaven help me!" cried he, "this is indeed to fall against the pikes!" Now the god held the globe of the earth in the left hand, the thunderbolt in the right. The artist contrived to thrust a portion of a large wax candle as a torch between the flames of the bolt, and set the statue up on its gilded pedestal. Madame entertained the king late at table, hoping that he would either forget the work or see it in a bad light; but when Francis entered the gallery late at night, followed by his courtiers, "which by God's grace was my salvation," says Cellini, the statue was illuminated by a flood of light from the torch which so enhanced its beauty that the king was ravished with delight, and expressed himself in ecstatic praise, declaring the statue to be more beautiful and more marvellous than any of the antique casts around. His enemies were thus discomfited, and on Madame d'Estampes endeavouring to depreciate the work, she was grossly mocked by the artist in a very characteristic and quite untranscribable way. Benvenuto was more than ever patronised by the king, who did him the great honour of accosting him as mon ami, and approving his scheme for the fortification of Paris. Cellini often recalled with pleasure the four years he spent with the gran re Francesco at Paris.

"The French are remembered in Italy only by the graves they left there," said De Comines, and once again the Italian campaigns ended in disaster. At the defeat of Pavia, in 1525—the Armageddon of the French in Italy—the efforts and sacrifices of three reigns were lost and the gran re, whose favourite oath is said to have been foi de gentilhomme, went captive to the king of Spain in Madrid, whence he issued, stained by perjury, and three years later, signed "the moral annihilation of France in Europe," at Cambray.

During the tranquil intervals that ensued on this rude awakening from dreams of an Italian Empire, and between the third and fourth wars with the emperor, the king was able to initiate a project that had long been dear to him. "Come," says Michelet, "in the still, dark night, climb the Rue St. Jacques, in the early winter's morning. See you yon lights? Men, yea, old men, mingled with children, are hurrying, a folio under one arm, in the hand an iron candlestick. Do they turn to the right? No, the old Sorbonne is yet sleeping snug in her warm sheets. The crowd is going to the Greek schools. Athens is at Paris. That man with the fine beard in majestic ermine is a descendant of emperors—Jean Lascaris: that other doctor is Alexander, who teaches Hebrew."

The schools they were pressing to were those of the Royal College of France. Already in 1517 Erasmus had been offered a salary of a thousand francs a year, with promise of further increment, to undertake the direction of the college, but declined to leave his patron the emperor. The prime movers in the great scheme were the king's confessor, Guillaume Parvi, and the famous Grecian, Guillaume Budé, who in 1530 was himself induced to undertake the task which Erasmus had declined. Twelve professors were appointed in Greek, Hebrew, mathematics, philosophy, rhetoric and medicine, each of the twelve with a salary of two hundred gold crowns (about £80), and the dignity of royal councillors. The king's vast scheme of a great college and magnificent chapel, with a revenue of 50,000 crowns for the maintenance (nourriture) of six hundred scholars, where the most famous doctors in Christendom should offer gratuitous teaching in all the sciences and learned languages, was never executed. Too much treasure had been wasted in Italy, and it was not till the reign of Louis XIII. that it was partially carried out. The first stone was laid in 1610, the works were slowly continued under succeeding reigns, and the project had only been partially carried out when the monarchy fell. The college as we now see it was not completed till 1842. Chairs were founded for Arabic by Henry III., for surgery, anatomy and botany by Henry IV., and for Syrian by Louis XIV. Little is changed to-day; the placards, so familiar to students in Paris, announcing the lectures are indited in French instead of in Latin as of old; the lectures are still free to all, and the most famous scholars of the day teach there, but in French and not in Latin.[106]

How dramatic are the contrasts of history! While the new learning was organising itself amid the pomp of royal patronage; while the young Calvin was sitting at the feet of its professors and the Lutheran heresy germinating at Paris, Ignatius Loyola, an obscure Spanish soldier and gentleman, thirty-seven years of age, was sitting—a strange mature figure—among the boisterous young students at the College of St. Barbara, patiently preparing himself for dedication to the service of the menaced Church of Rome; and in 1534, on the festival of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, a little group of six companions met around the fervent student, in the crypt of the old church at Montmartre, and decided to found on the holy hill of St. Denis' martyrdom the first house of the Society of Jesus.

In 1528, says the writer of the so-called Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris, the king began to pull down the great tower of the Louvre, in order to transform the château into a logis de plaisance, "yet was it great pity for the castle was very fair and high and strong, and a most proper prison to hold great men."

The tall, massive keep, which darkened the royal apartments in the south wing, was the tower here meant, and after some four months' work, and an expenditure of 2,500 livres, the grim pile, with its centuries of history, was cleared away. Small progress, however, had been made with the restoration of the old château up to the year 1539, when the heavy cost of preparing the west wing for the reception of the Emperor Charles V., induced Francis to consider a plan which involved the replacement of the whole fabric by a palace in the new Renaissance style, and the picturesque palace with its high crenelated walls, its strong towers, high-pitched roofs, dormer windows, and tall chimneys, its gilded emblazonry, its vanes, splendid with azure and gold glittering in the sun, as painted in the Duke of Berry's Book of Hours, was doomed. In 1546 Pierre Lescot, Seigneur de Clagny, was appointed architect without salary, but given the office of almoner to the king, and made lay abbot of Clermont. Pierre Lescot was an admirable artist, who has left us some of the finest examples of early French Renaissance architecture in Paris. But Francis lived only to see the great scheme begun, most of Lescot's work being done under Henry II.