Bagatelle now belongs to Paris and is part of the Bois, though still shut off by its walls and gateways, and you are only permitted to enter on foot. It would be pleasant to linger longer here to-day, but with Chartres in our minds we move off, passing en route the Café de Madrid, which, to the many thousands who visit or pass it by, means simply a place to get something to eat and yet it occupies the site of the villa built by Francis I. on the model of his prison in Madrid (hence the name). Here the gay monarch first caused ladies to become a necessary part of his Court, insisting that "a court without women is a year without spring time and a spring time without roses." With such power of compliment is it a marvel that he was a favourite of the fair sex, or that his taste was so perfect that his son could do no better than make his father's fair Diane the first lady of his Court? "Madrid" was a house of pleasure. After Francis, Henry II. used it with Diane de Poitiers, Charles IX. with Mlle. de Rouet. Henry III. changed it from a menagerie of women to that of beasts. Here the gay Marguerite divorced by Henry IV. spent her latter years; how, we can well imagine. History is silent concerning it after that, though it was probably used for the same purpose by the succeeding Louis until Louis XVI. ordered its demolition. There is not a vestige of it left to-day, but on its site stands the pink restaurant with its green benches and shading trees, its white covered tables and laughing throngs, but it is too early in the day for them as yet, and the place is rather silent as we flash by it towards the murmuring river. As we pass through Louveciennes, we pause a moment before the pavilion, all that remains of the Villa of Madame du Barry. Everything else has vanished and it is only the exterior of the pavilion that remains as she beheld it. What was her real character,--the daughter of a dressmaker, the mistress of a king, the power before which all the Court bowed, and whose influence over the aged monarch was unbounded? How did she use it? Should we pity her fate, or turn in disgust from a thing so degraded? Some authorities state that from the first to last she was all bad,--the mistress of one Comte du Barry, she was, by the King's orders, married to another, and so presented at Court where her power soon eclipsed that of all others. The Court was at its lowest stage of depravity during her time. She cost France thirty-five millions of francs, and died a coward, showing more fear and terror on the scaffold than any other woman who mounted its fatal platform. The only thing in her favour was her patronage of art and of the men of letters.