At the period of which we write the staircase of the Louvre occupied the clock tower.  Catherine’s apartments were in the old buildings which still exist in the court of the Musee.  The present staircase of the museum was built in what was formerly the salle des ballets.  The ballet of those days was a sort of dramatic entertainment performed by the whole court.

Revolutionary passions gave rise to a most laughable error about Charles IX., in connection with the Louvre.  During the Revolution hostile opinions as to this king, whose real character was masked, made a monster of him.  Joseph Cheniers tragedy was written under the influence of certain words scratched on the window of the projecting wing of the Louvre, looking toward the quay.  The words were as follows:  “It was from this window that Charles IX., of execrable memory, fired upon French citizens.”  It is well to inform future historians and all sensible persons that this portion of the Louvre —­called to-day the old Louvre—­which projects upon the quay and is connected with the Louvre by the room called the Apollo gallery (while the great halls of the Museum connect the Louvre with the Tuileries) did not exist in the time of Charles IX.  The greater part of the space where the frontage on the quay now stands, and where the Garden of the Infanta is laid out, was then occupied by the hotel de Bourbon, which belonged to and was the residence of the house of Navarre.  It was absolutely impossible, therefore, for Charles IX. to fire from the Louvre of Henri II. upon a boat full of Huguenots crossing the river, although at the present time the Seine can be seen from its windows.  Even if learned men and libraries did not possess maps of the Louvre made in the time of Charles IX., on which its then position is clearly indicated, the building itself refutes the error.  All the kings who co-operated in the work of erecting this enormous mass of buildings never failed to put their initials or some special monogram on the parts they had severally built.  Now the part we speak of, the venerable and now blackened wing of the Louvre, projecting on the quay and overlooking the garden of the Infanta, bears the monograms of Henri III. and Henri IV., which are totally different from that of Henri II., who invariably joined his H to the two C’s of Catherine, forming a D,—­which, by the bye, has constantly deceived superficial persons into fancying that the king put the initial of his mistress, Diane, on great public buildings.  Henri IV. united the Louvre with his own hotel de Bourbon, its garden and dependencies.  He was the first to think of connecting Catherine de’ Medici’s palace of the Tuileries with the Louvre by his unfinished galleries, the precious sculptures of which have been so cruelly neglected.  Even if the map of Paris, and the monograms of Henri III. and Henri IV. did not exist, the difference of architecture is refutation enough to the calumny.  The vermiculated stone