The ambitious white-plumed Henri de Navarre, when he became Henri IV of France, set about to connect the tentacle which stretched southward from the Old Louvre with the Tuileries (a continuation of the project of Catherine de Medici), and, by the end of the sixteenth century, had built a long facade under the advice of the brothers Ducerceau. This work was added to on the courtyard side under the Second Empire, when a reconstruction, more likely a strengthening of underpinning and walls because of their proximity to the swift-flowing waters of the Seine, of the work of Henri IV was undertaken. Joining the Tuileries and this work of Ducerceau was the celebrated Pavilion de Flore, a work of the Henri IV period rather than that of Catherine de Medici. From the Pavilion de Flore to the Pavilion de Lesdiguieres ran this long gallery of the Ducerceau and numerous interstices and unfinished vaults and arches leading towards the Old Louvre were, at this epoch, completed by Metezeau and Dupaira. The chief apartment of this structure became known as the _Galerie Henri IV_, and was completed in 1608. At the death of Henri IV, Richelieu, who at times builded so well, and who at others was a base destroyer of monuments, demolished that portion which remained of the edifice of Charles V. The work of Pierre Lescot was preserved, however, and to give symmetry and an additional extent of available space the rectangle facing Saint Germain l'Auxerrois to-day was completed, thus enclosing in one corner of its ample courtyard the foundations of the earlier work whose outlines are plainly traced in the pavement that those who view may build anew--if they can--the old structure of Philippe Auguste. In mere magnitude the present quadrangle is something more than four times the extent of the Louvre of the time of Charles V. This courtyard of the Louvre is perhaps that spot in all Paris which presents the greatest array of Renaissance art treasures. From ground to sky-line the facades are embroidered by the works from the magic hand of the _Siecle Italien_. Jean Goujon himself has left his brilliant souvenirs on all sides, caryatides, festoons, bas-reliefs, statues and colonnades. Enthusiasm and devotion knew no bounds among those old craftsmen, but all is well-ordered, regular and correct. "He who mentions the Louvre to a Frenchman gives a greater pleasure than that of Mehemet-Ali when one praises the pyramids." In a way the Louvre is the most magnificent edifice in the universe; "four palaces one piled up on another, _une ville entiere_." And when the Louvre was linked with the Tuileries in the real, what a splendour it must have been for former generations to marvel at! "_La plus belle et la plus grande chose sous le soleil._" This work of aggrandizement of the quadrangle was carried out by the architect Lemercier on the basis of a project adopted in 1642, and, to a great extent, completed before the arrival of Anne d'Autriche, twenty years later.