O, share and bless the crown By valor given to me! War made the prize my own, My love awards it thee! Parting, perchance our last! Day, marked unblest to prove! O, that my life were past, Or else my hapless love! Let all my trumpets swell, And every echo round The words of my farewell Repeat with mournful sound! Parting, perchance our last! Day, marked unblest to prove! O, that my life were past, Or else my hapless love! The most ambitious architectural work of Henry’s reign was the addition which he made to the Louvre. Catherine de Medicis had begun a wing extending from the right angle of Francis I and Henry II toward the Seine, and then continued it in a gallery parallel with the river, and intended to meet the palace of the Tuileries. Henry IV finished both and added the story which was rebuilt in Louis XIV’s reign after a fire. It is now called the Gallery of Apollo and contains to-day a few of the crown jewels kept when the rest were sold twenty-five years ago. Out of this splendid hall opens the small square room in which hung Leonardo’s “Mona Lisa” until its unexplained disappearance two years ago. Popular as Henry was personally the political situation was so embroiled that he had many enemies. Soon after his triumphal entry into Paris he was unsuccessfully attacked by a youth named Chastel, and it is a testimony to the king’s openness of mind and tact that after a few year’s he caused the demolition of the monument which enthusiasts raised to commemorate his escape. As a further expression of the people’s horror at Chastel’s act his house, opposite the Cour du Mai, was razed and on its site the public executioner branded his victims. A half dozen other attempts upon Henry’s life followed, and at last one was successful. Driving in an open carriage through a narrow street (rue de la Ferronerie) near the markets, he was stabbed by one Ravaillac who leaped upon the wheel of the carriage as it halted in a press of traffic. A fortnight later the assassin was tortured to death on the Grève. The body of the most popular sovereign that France has ever known lay in state in the Hall of the Cariatides, that huge gallery of the Louvre which had served as a guardroom in the days of Henry II and Catherine de Medicis. There could be no better testimony to the regard in which the “_roi galant_” was held not only in his own time but later than the fact that during the Revolution his body and tomb at Saint Denis were not disturbed. CHAPTER XV PARIS OF RICHELIEU