Below the Great Tower there must have been a bed of soft earth of some sort, for it was found to be almost impossible to fill the huge hole left when the Tower was demolished. The populace saw in the strange sinking of the material dumped into the cavity the fulfillment of a legendary threat that, the fortress being meant to stand forever, its fall would be marked by untoward happenings. In fact it was nearly three hundred years before modern engineering knowledge was able to stop the seepage that caused the trouble. During one of the intervals of peace with Charles V the emperor visited Paris. Indeed it was the necessity for making elaborate preparations for his visit that brought about the rebuilding of the Louvre whose dilapidation had not been appreciated before. The emperor was met outside the eastern wall and presented with the keys of the city. At the Saint Antoine gate there was a triumphal arch and the cannon of the Bastille roared a greeting as the monarch passed [Illustration: THE COLLEGE OF FRANCE, FOUNDED BY FRANCIS I IN 1530. See page 202.] [Illustration: HOUSE OF FRANCIS I ON THE COURS-LA-REINE.] beneath it. Farther on the procession stopped for the imperial guest to witness an allegorical play depicting the friendship of France and Germany. Over the Notre Dame Bridge, covered with ivy, Charles went to the cathedral and then to the palace of the Cité, where he supped. During his visit of a week he stayed at the Louvre, and was so brilliantly entertained that upon his departure he exclaimed, “Other cities are merely cities; Paris is a world in itself.” The chief churches built in Francis’s reign were Saint Étienne-du-Mont (on the site of an earlier edifice) in which Sainte Geneviève’s ashes now rest, Saint Eustache, the church of the market people at the Halles, and the flamboyant tower of Saint Jacques-de-la-Boucherie. This tower is the last expression of the Gothic, while Saint Étienne and Saint Eustache show the Transition combination of Gothic and Renaissance. Étienne Marcel’s Maison aux Piliers had been but a second-hand affair. By 1530 a new City Hall was imperative. Its corner stone was laid amid feasting on the open square with bread and wine for all comers and cries of “Long live the king and the city fathers!” This enthusiastic beginning did not foretell quick work, however, for eighty years elapsed before the building was done. Its style was the same that it is to-day except in the development of details. [Illustration: CELLIER’S DRAWING OF THE HÔTEL DE VILLE IN 1583.]