The power of Catherine de Médicis was now beginning to assert itself, and she had the bad taste to interrupt the plans of Pierre Lescot, and to order new constructions of her own designing to be carried out by her own Italian architects. The Louvre was carried forward to the bank of the river; and the Italian painter Romanelli was employed to decorate a new suite of rooms, which became known as the apartments of the queen. The new work, while possessing a beauty of its own, was quite out of harmony with the severer style followed by Pierre Lescot in connection with the old Louvre. At the southern extremity of the wing built by Catherine de Médicis looks out upon the Seine a window of noble construction, from which, according to popular tradition, Charles IX. amused himself during the massacre of St. Bartholomew by firing on the unhappy Huguenots who were swimming to the other side of the river. Modern historians have, of course, discovered that the window in question did not exist at the time; also that Charles IX. on the day of the massacre was not at the Louvre, but at the Hôtel de Bourbon close by. It was possibly from one of the windows of the Hôtel de Bourbon that he fired. Henri IV. inhabited the Louvre; and it was there that he expired, mortally wounded by the dagger of Ravaillac. This sovereign had added a new gallery to the wing built by Catherine de Médicis, and had filled it with paintings by the most celebrated artists of the time. It perished, however, in a fire; and it was to replace it that Louis XIV. constructed what is now known as the Apollo Gallery. Henri IV. was the first moreover to connect the Tuileries with the Louvre, or, at least, to prolong the Tuileries along the Seine in the direction of the Louvre without completing the junction. The son of Henri IV., Louis XIII., continued the work left unfinished by Pierre Lescot; though, as happens with so many architectural continuations, he departed greatly from the original plan. [Illustration: THE COLONNADE OF THE LOUVRE.] The "queen's apartments," constructed by Catherine de Médicis, were successively occupied by Marie de Médicis and Anne of Austria; and under each reign new decorations and new pictures were added. Particularly admirable was a series of portraits of Queens of France ending with Marie de Médicis, whose likeness by Porbus was said to be a masterpiece.