The masterpiece of its constructive elements is its wonderful doubly spiralled central staircase, which permits one to ascend or descend without passing another proceeding in the opposite direction at the same time. Whatever may have been the real significance of this great double spiral, it has been said that it played its not unimportant part in the intrigue and scandal of the time. It certainly is a wonder of its kind, more marvellous even than that spiral at Blois, attributed, with some doubt perhaps, to Leonardo da Vinci, and certainly far more beautiful than the clumsy round tower up which horses and carriages were once driven at Amboise. At all events, it probably meant something more than mere constructive ability, and a staircase which allows one individual to mount and another to descend without knowing of the presence of the other may assuredly be classed with those other mediæval accessories, sliding panels, hidden doorways, and secret cabinets. Beneath the dome which terminates the staircase in the Orleans wing are three caryatides representing--it is doubtfully stated--François Premier, La Duchesse d'Étampes, and Madame la Comtesse de Châteaubriand,--a trinity of boon companions in intrigue. In reality Chambord presents the curiously contrived arrangement of one edifice within another, as a glance of the eye at the plan will show. The fosse, the usual attribute of a great mediæval château--it may be a dry one or a wet one, in this case it was a wet one--has disappeared, though Brantôme writes that he saw great iron rings let into the walls to which were attached "_barques et grands bateaux_," which had made their way from the Loire via the dribbling Cosson. The Cosson still dribbles its life away to-day, its moisture having, to a great part, gone to irrigate the sandy Sologne, but formerly it was doubtless a much more ample stream. From the park the ornate gables and dormer-windows loom high above the green-swarded banks of the Cosson. It was so in François's time, and it is so to-day; nothing has been added to break the spread of lawn, except an iron-framed wash-house with red tiles and a sheet-iron chimney-pot beside the little river, and a tin-roofed garage for automobiles connected with the little inn outside the gates. The rest is as it was of yore, at least, the same as the old engravings of a couple of hundreds of years ago picture it, hence it is a great shame, since the needs of the tiny village could not have demanded it, that the foreground could not have been left as it originally was.