In those parts of the vast châteaux of Blois and Chambord that were built in the time of Francis I a richer phase of this early French Renaissance architecture is found. The eastern wing of Blois, which had been begun by Louis XII, illustrates this. On the side facing the court the walls are panelled, not as they sometimes were in the earlier buildings, as at La Rochefoucauld, by interpenetrating mouldings of Flamboyant profiling, but by three superimposed orders of pilasters, in which a continuity of upright lines is given by shallow ressauts in the entablatures (Fig. 115). The pilasters are here irregularly spaced in conformity with the window openings of the work that had been begun, and considerably advanced, under the preceding reign; and have the novel addition of ornamented bead mouldings set on the edges of the pilasters, and along the under edges of the entablatures, while in each of the panels thus framed the salamander and crown are carved in relief. In the deep and elaborate cornice, dentils and modillions and the egg and dart are worked in with Gothic gargoyles and a corbel-table; while a rich parapet crowns the whole, and dormers of picturesque form, with pseudo-classic orders surmounted by gables and pinnacles, rise against the vast high-pitched roofs which are further broken by ornamented chimney-stacks. A survival of the later Gothic habit of design is further shown in the continuity of upright lines obtained by the ressauts already remarked. But the most remarkable feature of this façade is the great polygonal staircase tower that rises through it. Four vast piers like buttresses, reaching from the ground to the main cornice which is carried out so as to crown them, are treated like colossal pilasters with rich Corinthianesque capitals, and are banded above the middle with mouldings of classic profiling. Yet on the face of each of these members is a corbelled niche, with a rich canopy and statue in late Gothic style. These piers are connected by three stages of ramps with panelled parapets elaborately ornamented with small pilasters, carvings in relief, and gargoyles issuing from their base mouldings. The whole composition is crowned with a dormer having a square opening on each side, grouped pilasters on the angles, an entablature with compound ressauts over the pilasters, and with gargoyles reaching from the cornice, and a balustrade over all. The reader should consider well the meaning of all this, and observe how the persistence of the native French habits of design, without the logic of the former time, was still giving a largely mediæval aspect to works in which details from the Italian Renaissance, modified and combined in strangely new ways, were being more and more freely introduced.