English it became the residence of Charles VII. Louis XI and
Louis XII each inhabited it, and the latter died within its walls.

The Palais des Tournelles will go down to history chiefly because of
that celebrated jousting bout held in its courtyard on the marriage day
of the two princesses, Elizabeth and Marguerite.

Henri II and the elder princes, his sons, were to ride forth in
tournament and break lances, if possible, with all comers. The court,
including Catherine de Medici and the princess Elizabeth, wife of
Philippe II, the late husband of Mary Tudor, the two Marguerites and
other high personages were seated on a dais upholstered in damascened
silk and ornamented with many-coloured streamers.

The time was July and the morning. At a signal from Catherine music
burst forth and the bouts began.

The king rode forth at the head of his chevaliers, wearing a suit of
golden armour, his sword handle set with jewels, and, in spite of the
presence of his wife, his lance flying black and white streamers, the
colours of Diane de Poitiers, who had lately turned her affections from
father unto son.

A herald proclaimed the opening of the combat, and before night the king
had broken the lances of the Ducs de Ferrare, de Guise, and de Nemours,
and was just about disarming when a masked knight approached from the
Faubourg Saint Antoine and challenged the king, who, in spite of being
implored to desist by his queen, entered the lists again and was
ultimately wounded unto death by the sable knight.

Henri II expired the same night in a bedchamber of the Palais des
Tournelles, whither he had been carried, at the age of forty-one, the
victim of chance, or the wile of the Sieur de Montgomeri, the ancestor
of England's present Earl of Eglinton. The captain of the Scotch Guards,
Montgomeri, was not immediately pursued (he meantime had fled the
court), but Catherine de Medici harboured for him a most bitter rancour.
Pro and con ran his cause, for he had his partisans, but the Marechal de
Matignon finally caught up with him in Normandy and he was tortured and
condemned to death for the crime of _lese majeste_--beating the king at
his own game.

The widowed queen angrily ordered Diane de Poitiers from the court, and
caused the Palais des Tournelles to be razed. This was her only means of
showing her contempt for the woman who had played her royal spouse to
his death as the Romans played the gladiators of old; and Tournelles, as
a