Then to rooms hallowed by noble Marie Antoinette, lovely alike in felicity and in ruin. Smaller, prettier, more home-like rooms came next, where the Citizen King and his gentle wife tasted the sweetness of calm domestic joys; a tranquil gracious family circle; to be transferred, with but a brief interval of stormy weather, to the quiet reaches of the Thames, in Horace Walpole’s beloved ‘County of Twits.’ Then back to the age of tournaments and tented fields; and, lo! they were in the rooms which courtly Francis built and adorned, and glorified by his august presence. Here, amidst glitter of gold and glow of colour, the great King—Charles the Fifth’s rival and victor—lived and loved, and shed sunshine upon an adoring court. Here from many a canvas, fresh as if painted yesterday, looked the faces of the past. Names fraught with romantic memories sanctify every nook and corner of the palace. Everywhere appears the cypher of Diana of Poitiers linked with that of her royal lover, Henry the Second. Catherine de Médicis must have looked upon those interlaced initials many a time in the period of her probation, looked, and held her peace, and schooled herself to patience, waiting till Fortune’s wheel should turn and bring her day of power. Here in this long, lofty chamber, sunlit, beautiful, the fated Monaldeschi’s life-blood stained the polished floor. ‘To say the least of it, the act was an impertinence on Queen Christina’s part, seeing that she was only a visitor at Fontainebleau,’ said the stranger languidly. ‘Don’t you think so, Poppæa?’ Daphne required to have the whole story told her; that particular event not having impressed itself on her mind. ‘I have read all through Bonnechose’s history of France, and half way from the beginning again,’ she explained. ‘But when one sits droning history in a row of droning girls, even a murder doesn’t make much impression upon one. It’s all put in the same dull, dry way. This year there was a great scarcity of corn. The poor in the provinces suffered extreme privations. Queen Christina, of Sweden, while on a visit at Fontainebleau, ordered the execution of her counsellor Monaldeschi. There was also a plague at Marseilles. The Dauphin died suddenly in the fifteenth year of his age. The king held a Bed of Justice for the first time since he ascended the throne. That is the kind of thing, you know.’ ‘I can conceive that so bald a calendar would scarcely take a firm grip upon one’s memory,’ assented the stranger. ‘Details are apt to impress the mind more than events.’