In consequence of the information he received from the Sire de Pons, the constable Montmorency determined, as the only means of averting the fate which threatened his ingenious workman, to apply himself, in person, to the queen mother, through whose influence the court might be induced to protect him. In fact, Catherine was herself virtually monarch, and a word from her would suffice. The sole redeeming quality of this woman of evil renown was, an enlightened taste for literature and the fine arts, a taste which seems to have been hereditary in her family. She enriched the royal library with many precious manuscripts of Greece and Italy, and presented to it half the volumes which her great ancestor Lorenzo de Medici had purchased of the Turks, after the taking of Constantinople. Especially she excelled in her love of the fine arts, and her taste and genius were displayed in the erection of many châteaux in various provinces, remarkable for the exactness of their proportions and their style, at a period when the French had scarcely a notion of the principles of architecture. At the present time she had just conceived the purpose of constructing a new residence for herself; and Montmorency found her, in one of the apartments assigned to her use, in the palace of the Louvre, busily engaged in looking over some manuscript plans. As the constable was announced, she raised her eyes from the table on which these designs were placed, and after receiving his salutations, begged him to be seated beside her, and pointing with her hand (the most beautiful one ever beheld, according to a contemporary historian), she smilingly requested his assistance in her choice. “Allow me, monsieur,” she said, “to appeal to your judgment, for in the matter now under consideration, I could not have an adviser whose opinion I should more highly value. You are aware that the château des Tournelles has been destined to demolition, and I have, therefore, determined to build me a new palace, the site of which I am anxious to fix upon. The plan now before his majesty”—and she glanced at her son, the poor young boy king, who sat opposite her—“appears to me to present no small advantages.” The paper to which the queen referred was the plan of a plot of ground close to the trenches of the Louvre, situated, at that time, out of Paris, and which had been purchased, some half century before, by king Francis I., as a present to his mother, Marie Louise, of Savoy. It had been originally occupied by tuileries (_i.e._, tile-kilns), and in the old drawings which Catherine was inspecting, the spots where formerly stood the wood-yards and baking-houses used in making the bricks and tiles, were marked out. “Its situation by the river, and the large space suitable for garden ground attached to it, seem much in its favour, madame,” said the constable. “And its neighbourhood to the royal dwelling also,” said the queen, at the same time she unrolled another