—smitten by the gods with madness—went lightly up the steps to meet his doom.
This is the story that Blois has to tell, and she tells it with terrible distinctness. She is so steeped in blood, so shadowed by the memory of her crime, that there is scant need for her guides to play their official parts, nor for her museum walls to be hung round with feeble representations of the tragedy. But it is strange, after all, that the beautiful home of Francis the First should not speak to us more audibly of him. He built its right wing, "the most joyous utterance of the French Renaissance." He stamped his own exuberant gayety upon every detail. His salamander curls its carven tail over stairs and doors and window sills. He is surely a figure striking enough, and familiar enough to enchain attention. Why do we not think about him, and about those ladies of "mutable connections" whose names echo buoyantly from his little page of history? Why do our minds turn obstinately to the Cabinet Vieux, or to those still more mirthless rooms above where Catherine de Medici lived and died. "Il y a de méchantes qualités qui font de grandes tal-
