Throughout France, notably in the neighbourhood of Paris, are certain chateaux--palaces only by lack of name--of the nobility where royalties were often as much at home as under their own royal standards. One cannot attempt to confine the limits where these chateaux are to be found, for they actually covered the length and breadth of France. Journeying afield in those romantic times was probably as comfortably accomplished, by monarchs at least, as it is to-day. What was lacking was speed, but they lodged at night under roofs as hospitable as those of the white and gold caravanserai (and some more humble) which perforce come to be temporary abiding places of royalties _en tour_ to-day. The writer has seen the Dowager Queen of Italy lunching at a neighbouring table at a roadside _trattoria_ in Piedmont which would have no class distinction whatever as compared with the average suburban road-house across the Atlantic. At Biarritz, too, the automobiling monarch, Alphonse XIII, has been known to take "tea" on the terrace of the great tourist-peopled hotel in company with mere be-goggled commoners. _Le temps va!_ Were monarchs so democratic in the olden time, one wonders. The court chronicles of all ages, and all ranks, have proved a gold mine for the makers of books of all sorts and conditions. Not only court chroniclers but pamphleteers, even troubadours and players, have contributed much to the records of the life of mediaeval France. All history was not made by political intrigue or presumption; a good deal of it was born of the gentler passions, and a chap-book maker would put often into print many accounts which the recorder of mere history did not dare use. History is often enough sorry stuff when it comes to human interest, and it needs editing only too often. Courtiers and the fashionable world of France, ever since the days of the poetry-making and ballad-singing Francis and Marguerite, and before, for that matter, made of literature--at least the written and spoken chronicle of some sort--a diversion and an accomplishment. Royal or official patronage given these mediaeval story-tellers did not always produce the truest tales. Then, as now, writer folk were wont to exaggerate, but most of their work made interesting reading. These courtiers of the itching pen did not often write for money. Royal favour, or that of some fair lady, or ladies, was their chief return in many more cases than those for which their accounts were settled by mere dross. It is in the work of such chroniclers as these that one finds a fund of unrepeated historic lore.