governor of the king a few days later.

At the moment when this little private council ended, Cardinal de
Tournon announced to the queen the arrival of the emissaries sent to
Calvin. Admiral Coligny accompanied the party in order that his presence
might ensure them due respect at the Louvre. The queen gathered the
formidable phalanx of her maids of honor about her, and passed into
the reception hall, built by her husband, which no longer exists in the
Louvre of to-day.

At the period of which we write the staircase of the Louvre occupied
the clock tower. Catherine's apartments were in the old buildings which
still exist in the court of the Musee. The present staircase of the
museum was built in what was formerly the _salle des ballets_. The
ballet of those days was a sort of dramatic entertainment performed by
the whole court.

Revolutionary passions gave rise to a most laughable error about Charles
IX., in connection with the Louvre. During the Revolution hostile
opinions as to this king, whose real character was masked, made a
monster of him. Joseph Cheniers tragedy was written under the influence
of certain words scratched on the window of the projecting wing of the
Louvre, looking toward the quay. The words were as follows: "It was from
this window that Charles IX., of execrable memory, fired upon French
citizens." It is well to inform future historians and all sensible
persons that this portion of the Louvre--called to-day the old
Louvre--which projects upon the quay and is connected with the Louvre by
the room called the Apollo gallery (while the great halls of the Museum
connect the Louvre with the Tuileries) did not exist in the time of
Charles IX. The greater part of the space where the frontage on the quay
now stands, and where the Garden of the Infanta is laid out, was
then occupied by the hotel de Bourbon, which belonged to and was
the residence of the house of Navarre. It was absolutely impossible,
therefore, for Charles IX. to fire from the Louvre of Henri II. upon
a boat full of Huguenots crossing the river, although _at the present
time_ the Seine can be seen from its windows. Even if learned men and
libraries did not possess maps of the Louvre made in the time of Charles
IX., on which its then position is clearly indicated, the building
itself refutes the error. All the kings who co-operated in the work
of erecting this enormous mass of buildings never failed to put their
initials or some special mo