In due time François did receive his brother king at Amboise and it was amid great ceremony and splendour. His guest could not, or would not, mount steps, so that great inclined plane, up which a state coach and its horses might go, was built. Probably there was a good reason for the emperor's peculiarity, for that worthy or unworthy monarch finally died of gout in the monastery of San Juste. The meeting here at Amboise was a grand and ceremonious affair and the Spanish monarch soon came to recognize a possible enemy in the royal favourite, Anne de Pisselieu. The emperor's eyes, however, melted with admiration, and he told her that only in France could one see such a perfection of elegance and beauty, with the result that--as is popularly adduced--the susceptible, ambitious, and unfaithful duchess betrayed François more than once in the affairs attendant upon the subsequent wars between France, England, and Spain. From Touraine, in the sixteenth century, spread that influence which left its impress even on the capital of the kingdom itself, not only in respect to architectural art, but in manners and customs as well. Whatever may be the real value of the Renaissance as an artistic expression, the discussion of it shall have no place here, beyond the qualifying statement that what we have come to know as the French Renaissance--which undeniably grew up from a transplanted Italian germ--proved highly tempting to the mediæval builder for all manner of edifices, whereas it were better if it had been confined to civic and domestic establishments and left the church pure in its full-blown Gothic forms. Curiously enough, here in Touraine, this is just what did happen. The Renaissance influence crept into church-building here and there--and it is but a short step from the "_gothique rayonnant_" to what are recognized as well-defined Renaissance features; but it is more particularly in respect to the great châteaux, and even smaller dwellings, that the superimposed Italian details were used. A notable illustration of this is seen in the Cathedral of St. Gatien at Tours. It is very beautiful and has some admirable Gothic features, but there are occasional constructive details, as well as those for decorative effect alone, which are decidedly not good Gothic; but, as they are, likewise, not Renaissance, they hence cannot be laid to its door, but rather to the architect's eccentricity. In the smaller wayside churches, such as one sees at Cormery, at Cheverny, and at Cour-Cheverny, there is scarcely a sign of Renaissance, while their neighbouring châteaux are nothing else, both in construction and in decoration.