The interior court is partly surrounded by a colonnade, quite cloister-like in effect.  At the right center of the Francois I. wing is that wonderful spiral staircase, concerning the invention of which so much speculation has been launched.

The apartments of Catherine de Medici were directly beneath the guard-room where the Balafre was murdered, and that event, taking place at the very moment when the queen-mother was dying, can not be said to have been conducive to a peaceful demise.

Here, on the first floor of the Francois I. wing, the queen-mother, held her court, as did the king his.  The great gallery over-looked the town on the side of the present Place du Chateau.  It was, and is, a truly grand apartment, with diamond-paned windows, and rich, dark wall decorations on which Catherine’s device, a crowned C and her monogram in gold, frequently appears.  There was, moreover, a great oval window, opposite which stood her altar, and a doorway led to her writing-closet, with its secret drawers and wall panels, which well served her purpose of intrigue and deceit.

A hidden stair-way led to the floor above, and there was a chambre-a-coucher, with a deep recess for the bed, the same to which she called her son Henri, as she lay dying, admonishing him to give up the thought of murdering Guise.  “What,” said Henri, on this embarrassing occasion, “spare Guise, when he, triumphant in Paris, dared lay his hand on the hilt of his sword.  Spare him who drove me a fugitive from the capital.  Spare them who never spared me.  No, mother, I will not.”

As the queen-mother drew near her end, and was lying ill at Blois, great events for France were culminating at the chateau.  Henry III. had become King of France, and the Balafre, supported by Rome and Spain, was in open rebellion against the reigning house, and the word had gone forth that the Duc de Guise must die.

The States-General were to be immediately assembled, and De Guise, once the poetic lover of Marguerite, through his emissaries canvassed all France to ensure the triumph of the party of the church against Henri de Navarre and his queen—­the Marguerite whom De Guise once profest to love—­who soon were to come to the throne of France.

The uncomfortable Henri III. had been told that he would never be king in reality until De Guise had been made away with.

The final act of the drama between the rival houses of Guise and Valois came when the king and his council came to Blois for the assembly.  The sunny city of Blois was indeed to be the scene of a momentous affair, and a truly sumptuous setting it was, the roof-tops of its houses sloping downward gently to the Loire, with its chief accessory, the coiffed and turreted chateau itself, high above all else.

Details had been arranged with infinite pains, the guard doubled, and a company of Swiss posted around the courtyard and up and down the gorgeous staircase.  Every nook and corner has its history in connection with this greatest event in the history of the chateau of Blois.