51�Թ�

I had never before realized that here lies the vestiges of an ancient Roman aqueduct, alongside the better-known 17th-century aqueduct commissioned by Marie de Médicis to carry water to the fountains of Paris.

Whenever I visit Paris, I make a point of strolling through the Luxembourg Garden, which—along with the accompanying palace—was commissioned in 1612 by Marie de Médicis, widow of France’s King Henry IV. The grand residence, modeled after Florence’s Pitti Palace, now serves as home to the French Senate, and the garden, which has undergone many changes over the years, is one the city’s most beloved public parks.

The series of pictures in the Louvre, in which Marie de Medicis is introduced in all sorts of dramatic attitudes, never stirred my admiration, as I have said more than once, when standing before those huge canvases, although one for whose opinions in such matters I had infinite respect, used to reply archly, that I "could hardly claim to be an authority in painting."

We also saw the cell where the brother of the duke was murdered the next day, and the attic entire where their bodies were burnt, after which the ashes were thrown into the Loire by order of the king; the window out of which Marie de Medicis lowered herself when her son Louis XIII. imprisoned her there; the recess where Catherine de Medicis died; and many other interesting places.

The period may, indeed, be limited to exactly sixty years if we take as the starting-point the commission issued to Samuel de Champlain on the 15th of October 1612 as "Commander in New France," under the authority of the Count de Soissons, who had been appointed by the queen regent, Marie de Medicis, as lieutenant-general of that territory.