2l8 



RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 



in the uses to which- various rooms were put. Meals were served, 

 dancing indulged in, music and plays performed, according to the host's 

 fancy, or wherever the company happened to be sitting.* 



ENTRANCES. Even in important mansions there was little attempt 

 to make a display in the public eye. Shops were even sometimes 

 introduced in the front blocks, which otherwise usually presented a 

 forbidding blank wall, at least in the lower storey, where a monu- 

 mental coach entrance is the only thing to proclaim the presence of 

 a great house. The entrance-pavilion disappears in hotels and tends 

 to do so even in chateaux. But the gateway was often, as in the Hotel 

 de Longueville (Fig. 216), a very elaborate feature. A severer fashion 

 introduced by Francois Mansart in the gateway of the Hotel de Conti 



still in existence in the 

 Impasse Conti was much 

 admired and followed (cf. 

 Fig. 217). It is treated as 

 a great rusticated niche, to 

 which sculpture in the tym- 

 panum or on the skyline, or 

 pilasters and a pediment 

 might be added. In the 

 court of honour the archi- 

 tecture became more genial 

 than externally, though often 

 kept small in scale as befitted 

 what was, in effect, an open- 

 air room, while only in the 

 garden front, which was re- 

 served for the eye of the 

 family and honoured guests, 

 and where space permitted 

 a more monumental scale, 

 were the fullest splendours 

 unfolded. 



* The desire for greater com- 

 fort did not always conduce to 

 better sanitation. The practice of 

 replacing the old privy, open to 

 the air, by a night stool (chaise 

 percte), placed in a sometimes 

 unventilated cabinet, or garde- 

 robe, came in at this time in the 

 better houses, and both words 

 have become synonymous with 

 W.C- in modern French, 



.;< p 



217. 



CHATEAU DE COURANCES: 

 ENTRANCE PAVILION. 



Drawn by P. Ilepworth. 



