ace
of defence, and a defence it was, and not much more.

For its time it was of great proportions and of an ideal situation from
a strategic point of view; far more so than the isolated Palais de la
Cite in the middle of the Seine.

Four gates led out from the inner courtyard of the Old Louvre: one to
the Seine; one to the south, facing Saint Germain l'Auxerrois; another
towards the site of the later Tuileries; and the other to about where
the Rue Marengo cuts the Rue de Rivoli of to-day.

With the endorsement given it by Philippe Auguste the Louvre now became
the official residence of the kings of the Capetian race, whereas
previously they had dwelt but intermittently at Paris, chiefly in the
Palais de la Cite.

The monarch, as if to test the efficiency of his new residence as a
stronghold, made a dungeon tower, his greatest constructive achievement
until he built the castle of Gisors, and in the tower imprisoned the
Comte de Flandre, whom he had taken prisoner at Bouvines. Louis IX
(Saint Louis), in his turn, built a spacious annex to Philippe Auguste's
Louvre, to which he attached his name.

[Illustration: THE XIV CENTURY LOUVRE]

Charles V totally changed the aspect of the palace from what it had
formerly been--half-fortress, half-residence--and made of it a veritable
palace in truth as well as in name, by the addition of numerous
dependencies.

Within a tower which was built during the reign of this monarch, called
the Tour de la Librairie, he assembled his royal bibelots and founded
what was afterwards known as the Bibliotheque du Louvre, the egg from
which was hatched the present magnificently endowed _Bibliotheque
Nationale_ in the Rue Richelieu.

It is related that in 1373 the valet-de-chambre of Charles V made a
catalogue of the nine hundred and ten volumes which formed this
collection, an immense number for the time when it is known that his
predecessor, Jean-le-Bon, possessed but seven volumes of history and
four devotional books as his entire literary treasure.

This seems to be a bibliographical note of interest which has hitherto
been overlooked. Charles V was evidently a man of taste, or he would not
have built so well, though all is hearsay, as not a fragment remains of
the work upon which he spent his talents and energies.

From the death of Charles V, in 1364, until 1557 the Louvre by some
caprice ceased to be a permanent royal residence. At the latter epoch
the ambitious, art-loving F