To the south of the Champs Elysées is the Cours de la Reine, planted by Catherine de' Medici, for two years the most fashionable carriage drive in Paris. The charming Maison François I. brought from Moret, stone by stone, in 1826 stands re-erected at the further corner of the Cours. To the north, in the Cours de Gabriel, a fine gilded grille, surmounted with the arms of the Republic, gives access to the Elysée, the official residence of the President. It was once Madame Pompadour's favourite house in Paris, and the piece of land she appropriated from the public to round off her gardens is still retained in its grounds. In the Avenue Montaigne (once the Allée des Veuves, a retired walk used by widows during their term of seclusion) Nos. 51 and 53 stand on the site of the notorious Bal Mabille,[176] the temple of the bacchanalia of the gay world of the Second Empire. In 1764 the Champs Elysées ended at Chaillot, an old feudal property which Louis XI. gave to Phillipe de Comines in 1450, and which in 1651 sheltered the unhappy widow of Charles I. Here Catherine de' Medici built a château, but château and a nunnery of the Filles de Sainte Marie, founded by the English queen, disappeared in 1790. As we descend the Rue de Chaillot and pass the Trocadero we see across the Pont de Jéna the gilded dome of the Invalides and the vast field of Mars, the scene of the Feast of Pikes, and now encumbered by the relics of four World's Fairs. [Illustration: LICTORS BRINGING TO BRUTUS THE BODIES OF HIS SONS. DAVID.]