As Guise entered the council chamber he was told that the king would see him in his closet, to reach which one had to pass through the guard-room below.  The door was barred behind him that he might not return, when the trusty guards of the Forty-fifth, under Dalahaide, already hidden behind the wall-tapestry, sprang upon the Balafre and forced him back upon the closed door through which he had just passed.  Guise fell stabbed in the breast by Malines, and “lay long uncovered until an old carpet was found in which to wrap his corpse.”

Below, in her own apartments, lay the queen-mother, dying, but listening eagerly for the rush of footsteps overhead, hoping and praying that Henri—­the hitherto effeminate Henri who played with his sword as he would with a battledore, and who painted himself like a woman, and put rings in his ears—­would not prejudice himself at this time in the eyes of Rome by slaying the leader of the church party....

It was under the regime of Gaston d’Orleans that the gardens of the Chateau de Blois came to their greatest excellence and beauty.  In 1653, Abel Brunyer, the first physician of Gaston’s suite, published a catalog of the fruit and flowers to be found here in these gardens, of which he was also director.  More than five hundred varieties were included, three-quarters of which belonged to the flora of France.

Among the delicacies and novelties of the time to be found here was the Prunier de Reine Claude, from which those delicious green plums known to all the world to-day as “Reine Claudes” were propagated, also another variety which came from the Prunier de Monsieur, somewhat similar in taste, but of a deep purple color.  The potato was tenderly cared for and grown as a great novelty and delicacy long before its introduction to general cultivation by Parmentier.  The tomato was imported from Mexico, and even tobacco was grown....

In 1793 all the symbols and emblems of royalty were removed from the chateau and destroyed.  The celebrated bust of Gaston, the chief artistic attribute of that part of the edifice built by him, was decapitated, and the statue of Louis XII. over the entrance gateway was overturned and broken up.  Afterward the chateau became the property of the “domaine” and was turned into a mere barracks.  The pavilion of Queen Anne became a military magazine, the Tour de l’Observatoire, a powder-magazine, and all the indignities imaginable were heaped upon the chateau.

In 1814 Blois became the last capital of Napoleon’s empire, and the chateau walls sheltered the prisoners captured by the imperial army.

CHAMBORD[A]

[Footnote A:  From “Old Touraine.”  Published by James Pott & Co.]

BY THEODORE ANDREA COOK

The road that leads from Blois to Chambord crosses the Loire by a fine stone bridge, which the inscription sets forth to be the first public work of Louis Philippe.