It shows the futile effort to preserve that which is dying and to bring back that which has fled.
Strange to say, it is all very melancholy, but not at all imposing.
And then it seems as if everything had contributed to injure poor Chambord, designed by Le Primatice and chiselled and sculptured by Germain Pilon and Jean Cousin.

Upreared by Francis the First, on his return from Spain, after the humiliating treaty of Madrid (1526), it is the monument of a pride that sought to dazzle itself in order to forget defeat.

It first harbours Gaston d'Orleans, a crushed pretender, who is exiled within its walls; then it is Louis XIV, who, out of one floor, builds three, thus ruining the beautiful double staircase which extended without interruption from the top to the bottom.

Then one day, on the second floor, facing the front, under the magnificent ceiling covered with salamanders and painted ornaments which are now crumbling away, Moliere produced for the first time _Le Bourgeois gentilhomme_.

Then it was given to the Marechal de Saxe; then to the Polignacs, and finally to a plain soldier, Berthier.