tower, requiring at each landing transversal corbels which are
decorated with arabesque carvings without and within. This bewildering
creation of ingenious and delicate details, of marvels which give
speech to stones, can be compared only to the deeply worked and
crowded carving of the Chinese ivories. Stone is made to look like
lace-work. The flowers, the figures of men and animals clinging to the
structure of the stairway, are multiplied, step by step, until they
crown the tower with a key-stone on which the chisels of the art of
the sixteenth century have contended against the naive cutters of
images who fifty years earlier had carved the key-stones of Louis
XII.'s two stairways.

However dazzled we may be by these recurring forms of indefatigable
labor, we cannot fail to see that money was lacking to Francois I. for
Blois, as it was to Louis XIV. for Versailles. More than one figurine
lifts its delicate head from a block of rough stone behind it; more
than one fantastic flower is merely indicated by chiselled touches on
the abandoned stone, though dampness has since laid its blossoms of
mouldy greenery upon it. On the facade, side by side with the tracery
of one window, another window presents its masses of jagged stone
carved only by the hand of time. Here, to the least artistic and the
least trained eye, is a ravishing contrast between this frontage,
where marvels throng, and the interior frontage of the chateau of
Louis XII., which is composed of a ground-floor of arcades of fairy
lightness supported by tiny columns resting at their base on a
graceful platform, and of two storeys above it, the windows of which
are carved with delightful sobriety. Beneath the arcade is a gallery,
the walls of which are painted in fresco, the ceiling also being
painted; traces can still be found of this magnificence, derived from
Italy, and testifying to the expeditions of our kings, to which the