THE STYLE OF HENRY II. 149 



The lower window sills range with the pedestals, but there being no 

 room for the upper windows below the entablature, they break through 

 it, becoming dormers in their upper portions, with arched lights under 

 a pediment. But the incongruity of interrupting the entablature, 

 emphasised as it is by exposing to view the truncated section 

 of the mouldings, reduces the use of classical elements to an 

 absurdity. 



LA FERE-EN-TARDENOIS. Another work of Bullant's was the now 

 ruinous gallery at the Constable's castle at La Fere-en-Tardenois. It 

 is about 200 feet long and u feet wide, and is carried across a ravine 

 about 60 feet deep on five tall arches. Since its elevations show much 

 greater skill in handling classical design, and each feature is carefully 

 schemed to have a proper finish, it may be assigned to his later and 

 maturer years. 



ECOUEN. Ecouen, the Constable's chief seat, was the scene of 

 Bullant's principal activity. How far he was influenced by Goujon, 

 who seems to have returned to work on the great chimney-piece in 

 1553, and what share each man had in the main entrance, is uncertain, 

 but the two great portals forming entrances to the staircases on each 

 side of the court and the loggia with its adjoining fagade on the northern 

 front are, at any rate, due to Bullant. These three features are in- 

 dividually remarkable compositions, but all labour under a double defect: 

 they do not explain their purpose and they are but imperfectly related 

 to their surroundings. 



The two-storeyed portal on the right hand of the court (Fig. 144), 

 though the least open to objection and forming an agreeable feature, 

 is the least interesting of the three. The left-hand one (Fig. 143) is an 

 early instance of an exercise in reproducing an ancient building, the 

 order being copied from that of Jupiter Stator, which Bullant is 

 supposed to have measured when in Rome. It is also an early, though 

 probably not the earliest, instance of a reasonable application of a 

 single order the whole height of a building of more than one storey 

 to give it dignity of scale. It has much of the impressiveness of 

 a Roman work, and formed a worthy setting for the " Captives " of 

 Michael Angelo placed under it. 



The most original of these additions is the great loggia on the 

 northern side of the castle containing the landings of the state 

 staircase. Though the basement with its four narrow openings is too 

 weak for the superincumbent mass and out of scale with it, the two 

 noble storeys above with their twice repeated group of arches, a large one 

 between two smaller ones, all originally unglazed, are in spite of defects 

 a very majestic conception (Fig. 145). 



The interesting "Arc de Nazareth," now standing on the south 

 side of the inner court of the H6tel Carnavalet, but originally built 



