rivulet descended from Menilmontant and mingled with the Seine
somewhere near the Garden of the Tuileries.

Clovis and his Franks attacked the city opposite the isle, and, upon the
actual achievement of their conquest, threw up an entrenched camp on the
approved Roman plan in what is now the courtyard of the old Louvre, and
filled the moat with the waters of this rivulet. The ensemble was,
according to certain authorities, baptized the Louvre, or Lower, meaning
a fortified camp. This entrenchment was made necessary in order that the
Franks might sustain themselves against the Gallo-Roman occupants of
Lutetia, and in time enabled them to acquire the whole surrounding
region for their own dominion. This the Lower, or Louvre, made possible,
and it is well deserved that its name should be thus perpetuated, though
actually the origin of the name is in debate, as will be seen by a
further explanation which follows.

Little by little this half-barbaric camp--in contradistinction to the
more solid works of the Romans--became a _placefort_, then a chateau,
then a palace and, finally, as the young lady tourist said, an art
museum. Well, at any rate, it was a dignified evolution.

Two Louvres disappeared before the crystallization of the present rather
irregularly cut gem. From the Merovingians dates the Louvre des Champs,
the hostile, militant Louvre, with its high wood and stone tower,
familiar only in old engravings. After this the moyen-age Louvre,
attributable to Saint Louis and Charles V, with its great tower, its
thick walls of stone and its deep-dug moats, came into being. With
Francis I came a more sympathetic, a more subtle era of architectural
display, a softening of outlines and an interpolation of flowering
gables. It was thus that was born that noble monument known as the New
Louvre, which combined all the arts and graces of a fastidious ambition.

Nothing remains of the old Louverie (to which the name had become
corrupted) which Philippe Auguste early in the thirteenth century caused
to be turned into an ambitious quadrangular castle from a somewhat more
humble establishment which had evolved itself on the site of the
Frankish camp, save the white marble outline sunken in the pavement of
the courtyard of the palace of to-day. By destiny this palace, set down
in the very heart of Paris, was to dominate everything round about.
From the date of its birth, and since that time, it has had no rivals
among Paris or sub