Henri II expired the same night in a bedchamber of the Palais des Tournelles, whither he had been carried, at the age of forty-one, the victim of chance, or the wile of the Sieur de Montgomeri, the ancestor of England's present Earl of Eglinton. The captain of the Scotch Guards, Montgomeri, was not immediately pursued (he meantime had fled the court), but Catherine de Medici harboured for him a most bitter rancour. Pro and con ran his cause, for he had his partisans, but the Marechal de Matignon finally caught up with him in Normandy and he was tortured and condemned to death for the crime of _lese majeste_--beating the king at his own game. The widowed queen angrily ordered Diane de Poitiers from the court, and caused the Palais des Tournelles to be razed. This was her only means of showing her contempt for the woman who had played her royal spouse to his death as the Romans played the gladiators of old; and Tournelles, as a palatial monument of its time, blotted out the rest when it disappeared from view. A forest of spirelets soared aloft from the gables and rooftrees of the Palais des Tournelles. There was no spectacle of the time more imposing than this sky-line silhouette of a Paris palace; not at Chambord nor Chenonceaux was the spectacle more fine. It was like a fairy castle, albeit that it was in the heart of a great city. To the right of the Palais des Tournelles, beyond the Porte Saint Antoine, was the ink-black, frowning donjon of the Bastille, its severity in strong contrast with the more luxurious palaces of the princes which surrounded it not far away. The charming Place des Vosges, which occupies the site of Tournelles to-day, is another of Paris's breathing spaces. Well may it be called a royal garden--a park virtually on a diminutive scale--since it was originally known as the Place Royale, under Henri IV. With the advent of the gascon Henri de Bearn this delightful little unspoiled corner of old Paris took on the aspect which it now has. Within this enclosure were the usual garden or park attributes, more or less artificially disposed, but making an ideal open-air playground for the court, shut in from outside surroundings by the outlines of the old palace walls, and not too far away from the royal palace of the Louvre. The first and greatest historic souvenir of this garden was a Carrousel given in 1612, by Marie de Medici, two years after the tragic death of Henri IV, celebrating the alliance between France and Spain. Under Richelieu the square became known as the Place des Vosges, and, in spite of the law against duelling, which had by this time come into force, it became a celebrated meeting place for duellists like Ivry, the "Grand' Roue" or the "Vel' Hiver" of to-day.