Madame de Maintenon did much to make the property more commodious and convenient and built the great right wing which binds the donjon to the main _corps de logis_. Her own apartments were situated in the new part of the palace. She also built the gallery which leads from the Tour de Machicoulis to the pointed chapel, which was a construction of the time of Cottereau, an accessory which every self-respecting country-house of the time was bound to have. It was by this gallery that the open tribune in the little chapel was reached, thus enabling Louis XIV to pass readily to mass while he was so frequent a visitor at that period when, at Maintenon, he was overseeing the construction of his famous aqueduct. Maintenon has had the honour, too, to count among its illustrious guests Racine, who came at the request of Madame de Maintenon, and here wrote "Esther" and "Athalie" which were later produced at Saint Cyr by Madame de Maintenon's celebrated band of "Demoiselles." Louis XIV was not the last of royal race to accept the Chateau de Maintenon's hospitality for the unhappy Charles X was obliged to ask shelter of its chatelain for himself and fleeing family. They arrived a little after midnight of a hot August night, slept as well as possible in the former apartments of Madame de Maintenon, and attended mass in the chapel on the following morning. The monarch then discharged the royal guard and the "hundred Swiss" and gave up, defeated at the game of playing monarch against the will of the people. One enters the _Cour d'Honneur_ by a great portal of the time of Louis XIV. Immediately before one is the principal facade, with its towers of brick and its slender little turrets framing in so admirably the entrance door. This facade is of the fifteenth century and on the tympan of the dormer windows one may still see the monogram of its builder, Cottereau. The drawbridge has been made way with, and the turrets over the portal have been bound together by a diminutive balcony of stone, which, while a manifest superfluity, is in no way objectionable. Under the entrance vault are doors on either side giving access to the living apartments of the _rez-de-chaussee_. In the inner courtyard is to be found the most exquisite architectural detail of the whole fabric, the tower which encloses the monumental stairway, to which entrance is had by a portal which is a veritable Gothic jewel. In the tympan of this portal, as in the dormer windows, is the device of Jean Cottereau, except in this case it is much more elaborate--a Saint Michel and the dragon, surrounded by a "_semis de coquilles_" bearing the escutcheons of the chatelain--_d'argent a lezards de sable_. At the left of this stairway tower is the principal courtyard facade, supported by four arcades, pierced with great windows and surmounted by two fine dormer windows, all in the style of Louis XII, of which the same effects to be observed at Blois and in the Hotel d'Alluye are contemporary.