The celure and tester were fixed to the wall and ceiling of the apartment, and were not in any way attached to the bed itself; for the large four-post bedsteads were introduced in the sixteenth century. In some illuminations the bed is seen placed within a square compartment separated from the room by curtains which seem to be suspended from the roof. This appears to have been the first step towards the more modern four-post bedsteads. In one of the plates to D’Agincourt’s “Histoire de l’Art” (Peinture, pl. 109), taken from a Greek fresco of the twelfth or thirteenth century in a church at Florence, we have the curtains arranged thus in a square tent in the room, where the cords are not suspended from the roof, but supported by four corner-posts. The bed is placed within, totally detached from the surrounding posts and curtains. The space thus left between the bed and the curtains was perhaps what was originally called in French the _ruelle_ (literally, the “little street”) of the bed, a term which was afterwards given to the space between the curtains of the bed and the wall, which held rather an important place in old French chamber life, and especially in the stories of chamber intrigue. [Illustration: _No. 259. A Bed of the Fifteenth Century._] The bedstead itself was still a very simple structure of wood, as shown in our cut No. 259, which represents the bed of a countess. It is taken from the manuscript of the romance of the “Comte d’Artois,” which has already furnished subjects for our previous chapters on the manners of the fifteenth century. The lady’s footstool is no less rude than the bedstead. The bed here evidently consists of a hard mattress. It was still often made of straw, and the bed is spoken of in the glossaries as placed upon a _stramentum_, which is interpreted by the English word “litter;” but feather-beds were certainly in general use during the whole of the fifteenth century. In the latter part of the fourteenth century, Chaucer (Dreme, v. 250) thus described a very rich bed:-- _Of downe of pure dovis white_ _I wol yeve him a fethir bed,_ _Rayid with gold, and right well cled_ _In fine blacke sattin d’outremere,_ _And many a pilowe, and every bere_ (pillow cover) _Of clothe of Raines to slepe on softe;_ _Him thare_ (need) _not to turnen ofte_.