th the damp stone walls of English Gothic halls and
chambers." Of the chillness of these walls we may form some idea,
from a feeling description of a residence which was thought sufficient
for a queen some centuries later. In the year 1586, Mary, the unhappy
Queen of Scots, writes thus:--

"In regard to my lodging, my residence is a place inclosed with walls,
situated on an eminence, and consequently exposed to all the winds and
storms of heaven. Within this inclosure there is, like as at
Vincennes, a very old hunting seat, built of wood and plaister, with
chinks on all sides, with the uprights; the intervals between which
are not properly filled up, and the plaister dilapidated in the
various places. The house is about six yards distant from the walls,
and so low that the terrace on the other side is as high as the house
itself, so that neither the sun nor the fresh air can penetrate it at
that side. The damp, however, is so great there, that every article of
furniture is covered with mouldiness in the space of four days.--In a
word, the rooms for the most part are fit rather for a dungeon for the
lowest and most abject criminals, than for a residence of a person of
my rank, or even of a much inferior condition. I have for my own
accommodation only wretched little rooms, and so cold, that were it
not for the protection of the curtains and tapestries which I have had
put up, I could not endure it by day, and still less by night."[77]

The tapestries, whether wrought or woven, did not remain on the walls
as do the hangings of modern days: it was the primitive office of the
grooms of the chamber to hang up the tapestry which in a royal
progress was sent forward with the purveyor and grooms of the
chamber. And if these functionaries had not, to use a proverbial
expression, "heads on their shoulders," ridiculous or perplexing
blunders were not unlikely to arise. Of the latter we have an instance
recorded by the Duc de Sully.

"The King (Henry IV.) had not yet quitted Monceaux, when the Cardinal
of Florence, who had so great a hand in the treaty of the Vervins,
passed through Paris, as he came back from Picardy, and to return from
thence to Rome, after he had taken leave of his Majesty. The king sent
me to Paris to receive him, commanding me to pay him all imaginable
honours. He had need of a person near the Pope, so powerful as this
Cardinal, who afterwards obtained the Pontificate himself: I therefore
omitted nothing th