That part of the structure built by Mansart for Gaston d'Orleans appears strange, solemn, and superfluous in connection with the sumptuousness of the earlier portions. With what poverty the architectural art of the seventeenth century expressed itself! What an inferiority came with the passing of the sixteenth century and the advent of the following! One finds a certain grandeur in the outlines of this last wing, with its majestic cupola over the entrance pavilion, but the general effect of the decorations is one of a great paucity of invention when compared to the more brilliant Renaissance forerunners on the opposite side of the courtyard. It was under the régime of Gaston d'Orleans that the gardens of the Château de Blois came to their greatest excellence and beauty. In 1653 Abel Brunyer, the first physician of Gaston's suite, published a catalogue of the fruits 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 colour. The _pomme de terre_ 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; from which it may be judged that Gaston did not intend to lack the good things of life. All these facts are recounted in Brunyer's "Hortus Regius Blesensis," and, in addition, one Morrison, an expatriate Scotch doctor, who had attached himself to Gaston, also wrote a competing work which was published in London in 1669 under the title of "Preludia Botanica," and which dealt at great length with the already celebrated gardens of the Château de Blois. Morrison placed at the head of his work a Latin verse which came in time to be graven over the gateway of the gardens. This--as well as pretty much all record of it--has disappeared, but a repetition of the lines will serve to show with what admiration this paradise was held: "Hinc, nulli biferi miranda rosaria Pesti, Nec mala Hesperidum, vigili servata dracone. Si paradisiacis quicquam (sine crimine) campis Conferri possit, Blaesis mirabile specta. Magnifici Gastonis opus! Qui terra capaci ... * * * * * JACOBUS METELANUS SCOTUS." Not merely in history has the famous château at Blois played its part. Writers of fiction have more than once used it as an accessory or the principal scenic background of their sword and cloak novels; none more effectively than Dumas in the D'Artagnan series.