The royal palaces of those days, like great abbeys, were fitted with everything that was needed for their upkeep and the sustenance of their staff. Workmen, materials, provisions were at hand, all on the premises. A farm, a Court of Justice, a prison were among the most essential elements of palace buildings and domains. Yet the Louvre with its prestige and its immense accommodation was never inhabited continuously by the Kings of France, and in the sixteenth century the Palace was so completely abandoned as to be on the verge of ruin. Then François I, looking forward to the state visit of the Emperor Charles-Quint, sent workmen in haste and in vast numbers to the Louvre, to repair and enlarge. Pierre Lescot, the most distinguished architect of the day, took the great task in hand. The Grosse Tour had already been razed to the ground. The ancient walls to the south and west were now knocked down. One wall of the Salle des Cariatides, and the steps leading from the underground parts of the palace to the ground floor, are all that remain of the Louvre of Philippe-Auguste. It is from this sixteenth-century restoration that the Old Louvre as we know it dates in its chief lines. Much of the work of decoration was done by Jean Goujon and by Paul Pouce, a pupil of Michael Angelo. But the Louvre nevermore stood still. Thenceforward each successive sovereign, at some period of his reign, took the palace in hand to beautify, rebuild or enlarge--sometimes, however, getting little beyond the designing of plans. Richelieu, that arch-conceiver of plans, architectural as well as political, would fain have enlarged the old palace on a very vast scale. His King, Louis XIII, laid the first stone of the Tour de l’Horloge. As soon as the wars of the Fronde were over, Louis XIV, the greatest builder of that and succeeding ages, determined to enlarge in his own grand way. An Italian architect of repute was summoned from Italy; but he and Louis did not agree, and the Italian went back to his own land. [Illustration: THE LOUVRE OF TO-DAY]