Come with me into the building, and, before I tell Margaret's story, look, for a moment, round this amazing church. The nave, though it conveys at once to the mind of the devotee of pure Gothic, a sensation of wintry decadence, that neither the richness of the lovely _jubé_, nor a glimpse, through its open door, of the wonderful marble tombs within the choir, can quite dispel, is pleasing in its grace and simplicity, qualities which the exterior would not have led you to expect. So restful, too, are the flowing lines of the columns and engaged colonnettes rising, unbroken by capitals, to the low vaults, that one imagines the architect to have planned deliberately this cool, white marble hall, in which worshippers could soothe spirits wrought to intensity by sights seen within. They may well have needed such repose, since we need it to-day; though the love which brought this church into being was left lonely four hundred years ago. Pass through that open doorway, and see for yourself. You stand in a maze of sculptures, among a thousand flowers, figures, emblems, devices, and myths, feminine fantasies carved everywhere, in regal profusion upon many a pedestal and column, upon shadowy niches and overhanging tabernacles, upon dainty shaft, and lightest fretwork pinnacle, their marble whiteness all warmed in blue, crimson, and golden light streaming from the painted windows. Whether you look down upon the blue enamelled bricks at your feet,[199] at the silent figures beneath those strangely decorated canopies, and the myriad carven shapes about them, or whether you look up at the resplendent saints, kings, and nobles ablaze upon the panes, your sensation is one of unsatisfied wonder, and you know yourself to be in a building, that, for all its faults, is unrivalled in the world of art. Let me tell how it came to be so. The story of Margaret d'Autriche, the unfortunate princess to whom we owe this extraordinary Eglise de Brou, is closely linked with events and personalities already mentioned in these pages. Born in 1480, she was the daughter of Maximilian and Marie de Bourgogne, and grand-daughter of Charles le Téméraire. In the closing years of his life, that old fox, Louis XI., had chosen her out as the future wife of his Dauphin, and would, no doubt, have had his will, had not his erstwhile ally, death, turned against him at last, and claimed forfeiture.