Down to the reign of St. Louis the furniture of castles had preserved a character of primitive simplicity which did not, however, lack grandeur.  The stone remained uncovered in most of the halls, or else it was whitened with mortar and ornamented with moulded roses and leaves, coloured in distemper.  Against the wall, and also against the pillars supporting the arches, arms and armour of all sorts were hung, arranged in suits, and interspersed with banners and pennants or emblazoned standards.  In the great middle hall, or dining-room, there was a long massive oak table, with benches and stools of the same wood.  At the end of this table, there was a large arm-chair, overhung with a canopy of golden or silken stuff, which was occupied by the owner of the castle, and only relinquished by him in favour of his superior or sovereign.  Often the walls of the hall of state were hung with tapestry, representing groves with cattle, heroes of ancient history, or events in the romance of chivalry.  The floor was generally paved with hard stone, or covered with enamelled tiles.  It was carefully strewn with scented herbs in summer, and straw in winter.  Philip Augustus ordered that the Hotel Dieu of Paris should receive the herbs and straw which was daily removed from the floors of his palace.  It was only very much later that this troublesome system was replaced by mats and carpets.

The bedrooms were generally at the top of the towers, and had little else by way of furniture, besides a very large bed, with or without curtains, a box in which clothes were kept, and which also served as a seat, and a priedieu chair, which sometimes contained prayer and other books of devotion.  These lofty rooms, whose thick walls kept out the heat in summer, and the cold in winter, were only lighted by a small window or loophole, closed with a square of oiled paper or of thin horn.

A great change took place in the abodes of the nobility in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (Fig. 51).  We find, for instance, in Sauval’s “History and Researches of the Antiquities of the City of Paris,” that the abodes of the kings of the first dynasty had been transformed into Palaces of Justice by Philip le Bel; the same author also gives us a vivid description of the Chateau du Louvre, and the Hotel St. Paul, which the kings inhabited when their court was in the capital.  But even without examining into all the royal abodes, it will suffice to give an account of the Hotel de Boheme, which, after having been the home of the Sires de Nesles, of Queen Blanche of Castille, and other great persons, was given by Charles VI., in 1388, to his brother, the famous Duke Louis of Orleans.

[Illustration:  Fig. 51.—­The Knight and his Lady.—­Costumes of the Court of Burgundy in the Fourteenth Century; Furnished Chamber.—­Miniature in “Othea,” Poem by Christine de Pisan (Brussels Library).]