lined with tall gabled houses of stone, and adorned with the arms of
Paris and statues of Notre Dame and St. Denis. On its restoration in
1659 the facades of the houses were decorated with medallions of the
kings of France held by caryatides bearing baskets of fruit and
flowers on their heads. These houses were the first in Paris to be
numbered, odd numbers on one side, even on the other, and were the
first to be demolished when, on the eve of the Revolution, Louis XVI.
ordered the bridges to be cleared.

The French Renaissance is indissolubly associated with Francis I., who
in 1515 inherited a France welded into a compact, absolute monarchy,
and inhabited by a prosperous and loyal people; for the twelfth Louis
had been a good and wise ruler, who to the amazement of his people
returned to them the balance of a tax levied to meet the cost of the
Genoese Expedition, which had been over estimated, saying, "It will be
more fruitful in their hands than in mine." Commerce had so expanded
that it was said that for every merchant seen in Paris in former times
there were, in his reign, fifty. Scarce a house was built along an
important street that was not a merchant's shop or for the practice of
some art. Louis introduced the cultivation of maize and the mulberry
into France, and so rigid was his justice that poultry ran about the
open fields without risk of pillage from his soldiers. It was the
accrued wealth of his reign, and the love inspired by "Louis, father
of his people,"[101] that supported the magnificence, the luxury and
the extravagance of Francis I. The architectural creations of the new
style were first seen in Touraine, in the royal palaces of Blois and
Chambord, and other princely and noble chateaux along the luscious and
sunny valleys of the Loire. Italian architecture was late in making
itself felt in Paris, where the native art made stubborn resistance.

[Footnote 101: The good king's portrait by an Italian sculptor may be
seen in the Louvre, Room VII., and on his monument in St. Denis he
kneels beside his beloved and _chere Bretonne_, Anne of Brittany whose
loss he wept for eight days and nights.]

[Illustration: PONT NOTRE DAME.]

The story of the state entry of Francis I. into Paris after the death
of Louis XII., as told by Galtimara, Margaret of Austria's envoy, who
witnessed the scene from a window, is characteristic. After the solemn
procession which was _belle et gorgiaise_ he saw the king, clothed