The dramatists came on the scene with their plots ready-made (and have been coming ever since, if one recalls the large number of French costume plays of recent years), and whether they introduced errors of fact, or not, there was usually so much truth about their work that the very historians more than once were obliged to have recourse to the productions of their colleagues. The dramatists' early days in France, as in England, were their golden days. The mere literary man, or chronicler, was often flayed alive, but the dramatist, even though he dished up the foibles of a king, and without any dressing at that, was feted and made as much of as a record piano player of to-day. One hears a lot about the deathbed scribblers in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but there was not much of that sort of thing in France. No one here penned bitter jibes and lascivious verses merely to keep out of jail, as did Nash and Marlowe in England. In short, one must give due credit to the court chroniclers and ballad-singers of France as being something more than mere pilfering, blackmailing hacks. All the French court and its followers in the sixteenth century shouted epigrams and affected being greater poets than they really were. It was a good sign, and it left its impress on French literature. Following in the footsteps of Francis I and the two Marguerites nobles vied with each other in their efforts to produce some epoch-making work of poesy or prose, and while they did not often publish for profit they were glad enough to see themselves in print. Then there were also the professional men of letters, as distinct from the courtiers with literary ambitions, the churchmen and courtly attaches of all ranks with the literary bee humming in their bonnets. They, too, left behind them an imposing record, which has been very useful to others coming after who were concerned with getting a local colour of a brand which should look natural. It is with such guiding lights as are suggested by the foregoing resume that one seeks his clues for the repicturing of the circumstances under which French royal palaces were erected, as well as for the truthful repetition of the ceremonies and functions of the times, for the court life of old, whether in city palace or country chateau, was a very different thing from that of the Republican regime of to-day. Not only were the royal Paris dwellings, from the earliest times, of a profound luxuriance of design and execution, but the private hotels, the palaces, one may well say, of the nobility were of the same superlative order, and kings and queens alike did not disdain to lodge therein on such occasions as suited their convenience. The suggestive comparison is made because of the close liens with which royalty and the higher nobility were bound.