n-Laye.

The English, by coercion, induced a monk of a neighbouring establishment
at Nanterre to deliver up a set of false keys by which the great gates
of the castle were surreptitiously opened, and, for a time, the
descendants of the Conqueror held possession.

The establishment of Charles V in no way satisfying the artistic
ambitions of Francis I, that monarch gave the task of reconstruction to
the architect Pierre Chambiges, in 1539, preserving only the Saint
Chapelle of Saint Louis and the donjon.

The building must have gone forward with an extreme rapidity for at the
architect's death, in 1544, it had reached nearly the level of the
rooftop.

Chambiges' successor was his son-in-law, Guillaume Guillain, who,
without changing the primitive plan, completed the work in 1548.

Saint Germain, above the first story, is essentially a construction of
bricks, but the effect is even now, as Chambiges originally intended, an
edifice with its main constructive elements of lower sustaining walls
and buttresses of stone binding together the slighter fabric, or
filling, above. Although it is Renaissance through and through, Saint
Germain shows not the slightest reminiscence of anything Italian and
must be considered entirely as an achievement of French genius.

This edifice of Francis I was more a fortress than a palace in spite of
its decorative features, and Henri II, desiring something more of a
luxurious royal residence, began what the historians and savants know as
the Chateau Neuf--the palace of to-day which stands high on the hill
overlooking the winding Seine, to which seducing stream the gardens
originally descended in terraces.

Chiefly it is to Henri IV that this structure owes its distinction, for
previously work went on but intermittently, and very slowly. Henri IV
brought the work to completion and made the chateau his preferred and
most prolonged place of residence, as indeed did his successor.

It is the Chateau Neuf of the time of Henri IV which is to-day known as
the Palais de Saint Germain-en-Laye. Of the Vieux Chateau only some
fragmentary walls and piles of debris, the Pavillon Henri IV, and, in
part, the old royal chapel remain.

Actually the structure of to-day includes that part of the Hotel du
Pavillon Henri IV which is used as a restaurant.

Henri IV and Louis XIII gave Saint Germain its first great _eclat_ as a
suburban place of sojourn, and from the comings and goings of the court
of that