Ruggieri's observatory was above his apartment. It was at Chaumont that the astrologer overstepped himself, and would have used his magic against Charles IX. He did go so far as to make an image and inflict certain indignities upon it, with the belief that the same would befall the monarch himself. Ruggieri went to the galleys for this, but the scheming Catherine soon had him out again, and at work with his poisons and philtres. Finally there is the Chambre de Diane de Poitiers, Catherine's more than successful rival, with a bed (modern, it is said) and a series of sixteenth-century tapestries, with various other pieces of contemporary furniture. A portrait of Diane which decorates the apartment is supposed to be one of the three authentic portraits of the fair huntress. The chapel has a fine tiled pavement and some excellent glass. Chaumont is eighteen kilometres from Blois and the same distance from Amboise. It has not the splendour of Chambord, but it has a greater antiquity, and an incomparably finer situation, which displays its coiffed towers and their _mâchicoulis_ and cornices in a manner not otherwise possible. It is one of those picture châteaux which tell a silent story quite independent of guide-book or historical narrative. It was M. Donatien Le Ray de Chaumont, the superintendent of the forests of Berry and the Blaisois, under Louis XVI., who gave hospitality to Benjamin Franklin, and turned over to the first American ambassador to France the occupancy of his house at Passy, where Franklin lived for nine consecutive years. Of this same M. de Chaumont Americans cannot have too high a regard, for his timely and judicious hospitality has associated his name, only less permanently than Franklin's, with the early fortunes of the American republic. Besides his other offices, M. de Chaumont was the intendant of the Hôtel des Invalides, at Paris, holding confidential relations with the ministry of the young king, and was in the immediate enjoyment of a fortune which amounted to two and a half million of francs, besides owning, in addition to Chaumont on the Loire, another château in the Blaisois. This château he afterward tendered to John Adams, who declined the offer in a letter, written at Passy-sur-Seine, February 25, 1779, in the following words: "... To a mind as much addicted to retirement as mine, the situation you propose would be delicious indeed, provided my country were at peace and my family with me; but, separated from my family and with a heart bleeding with the wounds of its country, I should be the most miserable being on earth...."