The _Louvre_, far from being cheerful from its construction, received also from this enormous tower a melancholy and terrifying aspect which rendered it unworthy of being a royal residence. Charles V. endeavoured to enliven and embellish this gloomy abode, and made it tolerably commodious for those times. Several foreign monarchs successively lodged in it; such as Manuel, emperor of Constantinople; Sigismund, emperor of Germany; and the emperor Charles the Fifth. This large tower of the _Louvre_, which had, at different periods, served as a palace to the kings of France, as a prison to the great lords, and as a treasury to the state, was at length taken down in 1528. The _Tower of the Library_ was famous, among several others, because it contained that of Charles V. the most considerable one of the time, and in which the number of volumes amounted to nine hundred. OLD LOUVRE The part of this palace which, at the present day, is called the _Old Louvre_, was begun under Francis I. from the plan of PIERRE LESCOT, abbot of Clugny; and the sculpture was executed by JEAN GOUGEON, whose minute correctness is particularly remarkable in the festoons of the frieze of the second order, and in the devices emblematic of the amours of Henry II. This edifice, though finished, was not inhabited during the reign of that king, but it was by his son Charles IX. Under him, the _Louvre_ became the bloody theatre of treacheries and massacres which time will never efface from the memory of mankind, and which, till the merciless reign of Robespierre, were unexampled in the history of this country. I mean the horrors of St. Bartholemew's day. While the alarmed citizens were swimming across the river to escape from death, Charles IX. from a window of this palace, was firing at them with his arquebuse. During that period of the revolution, when all means were employed to excite and strengthen the enmity of the people against their kings, this act of atrocity was called to their mind by an inscription placed under the very window, which looks on the _Quai du Louvre_.