Henry saw Lescot's admirable design for the reconstruction of the west wing of the Louvre completed. The architect had associated a famous sculptor, Jean Goujon, with him, who executed the beautiful figures in low relief which still adorn the quadrangle front between the Pavilion de l'Horloge and the south-west angle, and the noble Caryatides, which support the musicians' gallery in the Salle Basse, or Salle des Fêtes, now known as the Salle des Caryatides. The agreement, dated 5th September 1550, awards forty-six livres each for the four plaster models and eighty crowns each for the four carved figures. Lescot preserved the external wall of the old château as the kernel of his new wing, and the enormous strength of the original building of Philip Augustus may be estimated by the fact that the embrasures of each of the five casements of the first floor looking westwards now serve as offices. So _grandement satisfait_ was Henry with the perfection of Lescot's work, that he determined to continue it along the remaining three wings, that the court of the Louvre might be a _cour non-pareille_. The south wing was, however, only begun when his tragic death occurred, and the present inconsequent and huge fabric is the work of a whole tribe of architects, whose intermittent activities extended over the reigns of nine French sovereigns. Lescot and Goujon were also associated in the construction of the most beautiful Renaissance fountain in Paris, the Fontaine des Innocents, which formerly stood against the old church of the Innocents at the corner of the Rue aux Fers. Pajou added a fourth side in 1786, when the fountain was removed to the Square des Innocents. It was while working on one of the figures of this fountain that Jean Goujon is said to have been shot as a Huguenot during the massacre of St. Bartholomew. [Illustration: LUXEMBOURG GARDENS.] Europe was now in travail of a new era, and unhappy France reeled under the tempest of the Reformation. A daring spirit of enquiry and of revolt challenged every principle on which the social fabric had been based, and the only refuge in the coming storm in France was the Monarchy. Never had its power been more absolute. The king's will was law--a harbour of safety, indeed, if he were strong and wise and virtuous: a veritable quicksand, if feeble and vicious. And to pilot the state of France in these stormy times, Henry II. left a sickly progeny of four princes, miserable puppets, whose favours were disputed for thirty years by ambitious and fanatical nobles, queens and courtesans.