So preoccupied was every one on this particular occasion that the merry-makers had hardly a thought for their king, who, left to his own devices, sought out four maids of honour gossiping in a bower, and, taking the mischief-loving Lauzan into his confidence, pried upon them in the ambush of the night. They were gossiping over the dancers at the ball of the night before when one of them proclaimed her fancy for the agility and grace of the king above all others. It was the first expression of "La Valliere" since she had come timidly to court. The rest is an idyll which is found set forth in all the history books at considerable length, and at this particular moment it was a genuine idyll, for the king had not then become the debauched roue that he was in later life. After Anne d'Autriche, Henriette, the widow of Charles I of England, found at Saint Germain a comfortable and luxurious refuge. From 1661 onward Louis XIV made frequent visits to Saint Germain and was so taken with the charms of the neighbourhood and the immediate site that he conjured six and a half million francs out of his Civil List, in addition to his regular stipend, for the upkeep of this palace alone. This was robbery: modern graft pales before this; candelabra by the pound and writing tables by the square yard were known before the days of machine politicians. James II of England, in 1688, found a hospitable refuge at Saint Germain, thanks to Louis XIV, and died within the palace walls in 1701, as did his wife, Maria d'Este, in 1718. Louis XV and Louis XVI gave Saint Germain scarce a thought, and under the Empire it became a cavalry school, and later, under the Restoration, sinking lower still, it merited only the denomination of a barracks. Its culminating fall arrived when it was turned into a penitentiary. Napoleon III, with finer instincts, here installed a museum, and restorations and rebuilding having gone on intermittently since that time the palace has now taken on a certain pretence to glory. Practically the palace in its present form is a restoration, not entirely a new building, but a rebuilding of an old one, first begun under the competent efforts of the architect Eugene Millet, who sought to reestablish the edifice as it was under Francis I. The great tower has been preserved but the corner pavilions of the period of Louis XIV have been demolished in accord with the carrying out of this plan.