The part of this palace which, at the present day, is called the _Old
Louvre_, was begun under Francis I. from the plan of PIERRE LESCOT,
abbot of Clugny; and the sculpture was executed by JEAN GOUGEON,
whose minute correctness is particularly remarkable in the festoons
of the frieze of the second order, and in the devices emblematic of
the amours of Henry II. This edifice, though finished, was not
inhabited during the reign of that king, but it was by his son
Charles IX.
Under him, the _Louvre_ became the bloody theatre of treacheries and
massacres which time will never efface from the memory of mankind,
and which, till the merciless reign of Robespierre, were unexampled
in the history of this country. I mean the horrors of St.
Bartholemew's day.
While the alarmed citizens were swimming across the river to escape
from death, Charles IX. from a window of this palace, was firing at
them with his arquebuse. During that period of the revolution, when
all means were employed to excite and strengthen the enmity of the
people against their kings, this act of atrocity was called to their
mind by an inscription placed under the very window, which looks on
the _Quai du Louvre_.
Indeed, this instance of Charles's barbarity is fully corroborated by
historians. "When it was day-light," says Brantome, "the king peeped
out of his chamber-window, and seeing some people in the _Faubourg
St. Germain_ moving about and running away, he took a large arquebuse
which he had ready at hand, and, calling out incessantly: _Kill,
kill!_ fired a great many shots at them, but in vain; for the piece
did not carry so far."--This prince, according to Masson, piqued
himself on his dexterity in cutting off at a single blow the head of
the asses and pigs which he met with on his way. Lansac, one of his
favourites, having found him one day with his sword drawn and ready
to strike his mule, asked him seriously: "What quarrel has then
happened between His Most Christian Majesty and my mule?" Murad Bey
far surpassed this blood-thirsty monarch in address and strength. The
former, we are told by travellers in Egypt, has been known, when
riding past an ox, to cut off its head with one stroke of his
scimitar.
The capital was dyed with the blood of Charles's murdered subjects.
Into this very _Louvre_, into the chamber of Marguerite de Valois,
the king's sister, and even to her bed, in which she was then lying,
did the fanatics pursue the officers belonging to the court itself,
as is circumstantially related by that princess in her Memoirs.
Let us draw the curtain on these scenes of horror, and pass rapidly
from this period of fanaticism and cruelty, when the _Louvre_ was
stained by so many crimes to times more happy, when this palace
became the quiet cradle of the arts and sciences, the school for
talents, the _arena_ for genius, and the asylum of artists and
literati.
The centre pavilion over the principal gate of the _Old Louvre_, was
erected under the reign of Lewis XIII. from the designs of LE
MERCIER, as well as the angle of the left part of the building,
parallel to that built by Henry II. The eight gigantic cariatides
which are there seen, were sculptured by SARRASIN.
The façade towards the _Jardin de l'Infante_, (as it is called), that
towards the _Place du Louvre_, and that over the little gate, towards
the river, which were constructed under the reigns of Charles IX. and
Henry III. in the midst of the civil wars of the League, partake of
the taste of the time, in regard to the multiplicity of the
ornaments; but the interior announces, by the majesty of its
decorations, the refined taste of Lewis XIV.