remain in its unfinished state, more especially as Henri's ailing and weak-minded successor was too young when he came to the throne to be interested in it. The suit appears to have been put together comparatively recently, iron wire having been used instead of rivets. What is still more conclusive of its unfinished state is the fact that the ornamentation of the sollerets is only sketched by the craftsman and has not been chased; on the cuisses, too, the chasing appears to be unfinished (Fig. 1095). The whole suit is of the steely tone peculiar to pieces still in the hands of the chaser, and destined later on to be gilded or blued.
The suit, as seen to-day, was, like the gold helmet and shield of Charles IX in the same Museum, originally in the Musée des Souverains, which once formed part of the Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris. In 1872 this Museum ceded to the Musée d'Artillerie thirty-seven suits, pieces of armour and various arms attributed to the ownership of the kings of France or to that of the dauphins of the XVIth and XVIIth centuries. Barbet de Jouy in his notice of the Musée des Souverains, published in Paris 1856, speaks of it when it was there as having once been in the Louvre; so we see that it was sent back to its old resting place together with the gold helmet and shield of Charles IX, the only two pieces of plate armour of the Musée des Souverains which were not handed over to the Musée d'Artillerie. It was after the Napoleonic Wars that the Musée des Souverains was formed; so whether the Henri II suit came from the Sedan gallery, from some private collection, or from abroad, before being originally placed in the Louvre, we are unable to say. There is the possibility, however, that it formed part of the French National Collection of armour housed very early in the XIXth century in the Rue de l'Université.
Before quitting the subject of the Louvre suit, we should like now to describe certain fine pieces of horse armour which in our opinion were made for and belong to it—although they are in a finished condition. They are now in the Museum of Lyons; but they were obtained originally from the fine cabinet of antiquities which M. de Migieu formed in the XVIIIth century at Dijon. There is nearly the complete armour for the horse, armour which in decoration and perfection of technique absolutely corresponds with the Louvre suit. We illustrate the chanfron, the crinet, and the pommel steel of the saddle (Fig. 1096). It will be noted that the base of the chanfron has been cut away, a circumstance which renders it a little difficult to determine the original form of the plate. But it must be added that there is a general likeness in the shape of the saddle steels to those with the
