"On Friday, the 5th day of the month, the king came to the Louvre to see his collection of pictures, which have been placed in a new series of rooms by the side of the superb gallery known as the Apollo Gallery. The gold which glitters on all sides is the least brilliant of its adornments. What is called 'the cabinet of his Majesty's pictures' occupies seven large and lofty halls, some of which are more than 50 feet long. There are, moreover, four additional rooms for the collection in the old Hôtel de Grammont adjoining the Louvre. So many pictures in so many rooms make the entire number appear almost infinite. The walls of the highest rooms are covered with pictures up to the ceiling. The following will give some idea of the number of pictures, by the greatest masters, contained in the eleven rooms:--There are sixteen by Raphael, six by Correggio, five by Giulio Romano, ten by Leonardo da Vinci, eight by Giorgione, twenty-three by Titian, sixteen by Carraccio, eight by Domenichino, twelve by Guido, six by Tintoretto, eighteen by Paul Veronese, fourteen by Van Dyck, seventeen by Poussin, and six by M. Lebrun, among whose works there are some (the battles of Alexander) which are 40 feet long. Besides these pictures there are a quantity of others by Rubens, Albano, Antonio Moro, and other masters of equal renown. Apart from the pictures, there are in the old Hôtel de Grammont many groups of figures and low reliefs in bronze and ivory." The royal visit, as described by the writer in _La Mercure Galant_, was followed by the dispersion of the collection. Louis XIV. was so pleased by the wonderful sight that he ordered a number of the pictures to be removed to Versailles, where, according to the _Mercure_, there were already twenty-six pictures by the first masters; and so long as Versailles was the royal residence the greater part of the king's collection was lost to the public, and served only to furnish the rooms, except, indeed, when the pictures had fallen to the ground and lay there covered with dust. Under the reign of Louis XIV. a critic whose name is worth preserving, Lafont de St. Yenne, complained that so many beautiful works were allowed to lie heaped up together and buried in "the obscure prison of Versailles," and demanded that all these treasures, "immense but unknown," should be "arranged in becoming order and preserved in the best condition" in a gallery built expressly for their reception in the Louvre, where they would be "exhibited to the admiration and joy of the French or the curiosity of foreigners, or finally to the study and emulation of our young scholars."