Like all his race, Henry was susceptible to the charms of the daughters of Eve, but, unlike his descendants, he never sacrificed France to their tears and wiles. When the question of the succession was urgent and he thought of marrying Gabrielle d'Estrées, Sully opposed the union. The impatient Gabrielle used all her powers of fascination to compass the dismissal of the great minister, who was present at the interview in her room at the cloister of St. Germain, and who has left us a vivid description of the scene. Gabrielle burst into passionate reproaches and employed in turn all the arts of feminine guile. Her eyes streaming with tears, sobbing and wailing, she seized her royal lover's hand and smothered it with kisses; she called for a poignard that by plunging it into her heart he might behold his image graven there; she appealed to his love for their children and flung herself hysterically on the bed, protesting she could live no longer seeing herself disgraced, and a servant whom so many complained of, preferred to a mistress whom all praised. It was of no avail. "Let me tell you," answered Henry, calmly, "if I must choose between you and Sully, I would sooner part with ten mistresses such as you than one faithful servant such as he."

In 1610 the king was making great preparations for a war with Austria, and, on the 14th May, desiring to consult Sully, who was unwell in his rooms at the Arsenal, he determined to spare him the fatigue of travelling to the Louvre, and to drive to the Arsenal. With much foreboding the king had agreed to the coronation of Marie de' Medici, which had been celebrated at St. Denis with great pomp. The ceremony was attended by two sinister incidents: the Gospel for the day, taken from Mark x., included the answer of Jesus to the Pharisees who tempted Him by asking—"Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife?"—the Gospel was hurriedly changed; and when the usual largesse of gold and silver pieces was thrown to the crowd not a voice cried, "Vive le roi," or "Vive la reine." That night the king tossed restless on his bed, pursued by evil dreams. On the morrow his counsellors begged him to defer his journey, but nineteen plots to assassinate him had already failed: he gently put aside their warnings, and repeated his favourite maxim that fear had no place in a generous heart. It was a warm day, and the king entered his open carriage, attended by the Dukes of Epernon and Montbazon and five other courtiers; a number of valets de pied followed him. In the narrow Rue de la Ferronnerie the carriage was stopped by a block in the traffic, and the servants were sent round by the cemetery of the Innocents. While the king was listening to the reading of a letter by the Duke of Epernon, one Francis Ravaillac, who had been watching his opportunity for twelve months, placed his foot on a wheel of the coach, leaned forward, and plunged a knife into the king's breast. Before he could be seized he pulled out the fatal steel and doubled his thrust, piercing him to the heart. "Je suis blessé," cried Henry, and never spoke again. Ravaillac was seized, and all the refined cruelties inflicted on regicides were practised upon him. He was dragged to the Place de Grève, his right hand cut off, and, with the fatal knife, flung into the flames; the flesh was torn from his arms, breast and legs; melted lead and boiling oil were poured into the wounds. Horses were then tied to each of his four limbs, the body was torn to pieces and burnt to ashes.[126] Some writers have inculpated the Jesuits for the murder, but it may more reasonably be attributed to the fury of a crazy fanatic. Certain it is that Henry's heart was given to the Jesuits for the church of their college of la Flèche, which was founded by him.

The first Bourbon king has left his impress on the architecture of Paris. "Soon as he was master of Paris," says a contemporary, "one saw naught but masons at work." Small progress had been made during the reign of Henry II.'s three sons with their father's plans for the rebuilding of the Louvre. The work had been continued along the river front after Lescot's death in 1578 by Baptiste du Cerceau, and Catherine de' Medici had erected a gallery on the south, known as the Petite Galerie—a ground-floor building with a terrace on top, intended for a meeting-place and promenade but not for residence. She had also begun in 1564 the palace of the Tuileries, which, like the Louvre, was designed to be a quadrangular building and of which the west wing alone was ever constructed, but abandoned it on being warned by her astrologer, Ruggieri, that she should die under the ruins of a house near St Germain.[127] Henry, soon after he had entered Paris, elaborated a vast scheme for finishing the Tuileries, demolishing the churches of St. Thomas and St. Nicholas, quadrupling the size of the old Louvre, and joining the two palaces by continuing the Grande Galerie, already begun by Catherine, to the west, to afford a means of escape in the event of an attack on the Louvre. Towards the east the hôtels d'Alençon, de Bourbon and the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois were to be demolished, and a great open space was to be levelled between the new east front of the Louvre and the Pont Neuf. At Henry's accession Catherine's architects, Philibert de l'Orme and Jean Bullant, had completed the superb domed central pavilion of the Tuileries, with its two contiguous galleries, and begun the end pavilions, the former using the Ionic order as a delicate flattery of Catherine, "since among the ancients that order was employed in temples dedicated to a goddess." The gardens, with the famous maze and Palissy's beautiful grotto or fountain, had been completed in 1476, and for some years were a favourite promenade for Catherine and her court. Henry's plans were so far carried out that on New Year's day, 1606, he could lead the Dauphin along the Grande Galerie to the Pavilion de Flore at the extreme west of the river front, and enter the south wing of the Tuileries which had been extended to meet it. The Pavilion de Flore thus became the angle of junction between the two palaces. An upper floor was imposed on the Petite Galerie, and adorned with paintings representing the kings of France. Unhappily the fire of 1661 destroyed all the portraits save that of Marie de' Medici by Porbus, and all the subsequent decorations by Poussin. Henry intended the ground floor of the Grande Galerie for the accommodation of his best craftsmen—painters, sculptors, goldsmiths, tapestry weavers, smiths, and others. The quadrangle, however, remained as the last Valois had left it—half Renaissance, half Gothic—and the north-east and south-east towers of the original château were still standing to be drawn by Sylvestre towards the middle of the seventeenth century.

The unfinished Hôtel de Ville was taken in hand after more than half-a-century and practically completed.[128] The larger, north portion of the Pont Neuf was built, the two islets west of the Cité were incorporated with the island to form the Place Dauphine and the ground that now divides the two sections of the bridge—a new street, the Rue Dauphine, being cut through the garden of the Augustins and the ruins of the college of St. Denis. The Place Royale (now des Vosges) was designed and partly built—that charming relic of seventeenth and eighteenth century fashionable Paris, where Molière's Précieuses lived.

Henry also partly rebuilt the Hôtel Dieu, created new streets, and widened others.[129] New fountains and quays were built; the Porte du Temple was reopened, and the Porte des Tournelles constructed. Unhappily, some of the old wooden bridges remained, and on Sunday, 22nd December 1596, the Pont aux Meuniers (Miller's Bridge), just below the Pont au Change, suddenly collapsed, with all its shops and houses, and sixty persons perished. They were not much regretted, for most of them had enriched themselves by the plunder of Huguenots, and during the troubles of the League. The bridge was rebuilt of wood, at the cost of the captain of the corps of archers, and as the houses were painted each with the figure of a bird, the new bridge was known as the Pont aux Oiseaux (Bridge of Birds). It spanned the river from the end of the Rue St. Denis and the arch of the Grand Châtelet to the Tour de l'Horloge of the Palais de Justice. In 1621, however, it and the Pont au Change were consumed by fire in a few hours and, in 1639, the two wooden bridges were replaced by a bridge of stone, the Pont au Change, which stood until rebuilt in 1858.

Old houses near Pont St. Michel, showing spire of the Ste. Chapelle.
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We are able to give the impression which the Paris of Henri Quatre made on an English traveller, a friend of Ben Jonson and author of Coryat's Crudities, hastily gobbled up in five months' Travell. The first objects that met Coryat's eye are characteristic. As he travelled along the St. Denis road he passed "seven[130] faire pillars of freestone at equal distances, each with an image of St. Denis and his two companions, and a little this side of Paris was the fairest gallows I ever saw, built on Montfaucon, which consisted of fourteene fair pillars of freestone." He notes "the fourteene gates of Paris, the goodly buildings, mostly of fair, white stone and"—a detail always unpleasantly impressed on travellers—"the evil-smelling streets, which are the dirtiest and the most stinking I ever saw in any city in my life. Lutetia! well dothe it brooke being so called from the Latin word lutum, which signifieth dirt." Coryat was impressed by the bridges—"the goodly bridge of white freestone nearly finished (the Pont Neuf); a famous bridge that far exceedeth this, having one of the fairest streets in Paris called our Ladies street; the bridge of Exchange where the goldsmiths live; St. Michael's bridge, and the bridge of Birds." He admires the "Via Jacobea, full of booke-sellers' faire shoppes, most plentifully furnished with bookes, and the fair building, very spacious and broad, where the Judges sit in the Palais de Justice, the roofs sumptuously gilt and embossed, with an exceeding multitude of great, long bosses hanging downward." Coryat next visited the fine quadrangle of the Louvre, whose outside was exquisitely wrought with festoons, and decked with many stately pillars and images. From Queen Mary's bedroom he went to a room[131] "which excelleth not only all that are now in the world but also all that were since the creation thereof, even a gallery, a perfect description whereof would require a large volume, with a roofe of most glittering and admirable beauty. Yea, so unspeakably fair is it that a man can hardly comprehend it in his mind that hath not seen it with his bodily eyes." The Tuileries gardens were the finest he ever beheld for length of delectable walks.

Next day Coryat saw the one thing above all he desired to see, "that most rare ornament of learning Isaac Casaubon," who told him to observe "a certain profane, superstitious ceremony of the papists—a bedde carried after a very ethnicall manner, or rather a canopy in the form of a bedde, under which the Bishop of the city, with certain priests, carry the Sacrament. The procession of Corpus Christi," he adds, "though the papists esteemed it very holy, was methinks very pitiful. The streets were sumptuously adorned with paintings and rich cloth of arras, the costliest they could provide, the shews of Our Lady street being so hyperbolical in pomp that it exceedeth all the rest by many degrees. Upon public tables in the streets they exposed rich plate as ever I saw in my life, exceeding costly goblets and what not tending to pomp; and on the middest of the tables stood a golden crucifix and divers other gorgeous images. Following the clergy, in capes exceeding rich, came many couples of little singing choristers, which, pretty innocent punies, were so egregiously deformed that moved great pity in any relenting spectator, being so clean shaved round about their heads that a man could perceive no more than the very rootes of their hair."

At the royal suburb Coryat saw "St. Denis, his head enclosed in a wonderful, rich helmet, beset with exceeding abundant pretious stones," but the skull itself he "beheld not plainly, only the forepart through a pretty, crystall glass, and by light of a wax candle."