This style was a renewal of the classic influence. It flattened roofs and doors and windows, and decorated with designs borrowed or copied from the Greeks and Romans. An intermediate style shows a mixture of Gothic and Renaissance as was natural in this period of architectural change. While roofs and windows were flattening there were frequent combinations of pointed roofs and flat windows, of pointed windows and flat roofs. Sculptors were loath entirely to give up Gothic decoration yet were eager to show their knowledge of Renaissance. The result is called Transition, and often is too conglomerate to be pleasing. The most charming example in Paris is the Hôtel de Cluny, built adjoining the Thermes by the Abbots of Cluny and rebuilt by Louis XII.[2] Exquisite in every detail, and filled with one of the best collections of medieval domestic art in Europe it is a joy to the architect and the antiquarian. No happier afternoon can be spent in Paris than in roaming through these treasure-laden rooms and then in sitting in the Garden of the Thermes, letting the eye wander from the Roman ruins sixteen centuries old, massive and severe, to the lighter elegances of the medieval abbey, and then through the bars of the enclosure to the rushing streets of modern Paris. The French babies rolling on the grass are growing up with such contrasts so usual to them that they never will know the thrill that fires the American at the sight of these links in the chain of a great city’s history. [Illustration: CHURCH OF SAINT GERMAIN-L’AUXERROIS IN 1835. See page 193.] [Illustration: TOUR DE SAINT JACQUES DE LA BOUCHERIE. See page 207.] CHAPTER XII PARIS OF THE RENAISSANCE Charles VIII died without direct heirs and the crown fell to Louis XII, a grandson of that duke of Orleans who had played so sorry a part in the reign of Charles VI, the mad king, and who had been assassinated by the ruffians of John the Fearless. This change threw the reigning line into the hands of what is known as the Valois-Orleans family. Of that branch of the Capets the most brilliant monarch was Francis I, Louis XII’s successor, a son of his cousin, the count of Angoulême. Three score years had passed after the fall of Constantinople when Francis I came to the throne, young, alert, intelligent, progressive. He was fond of literature and the arts, and the revival of ancient letters and the importation of Italian paintings and architecture roused him to vivid interest; he was ambitious and the discovery of America spurred him to claim a share for France; the aspirations of Emperor Charles V, urged him to dispute a rivalry which threatened his own career and the integrity of his kingdom.