Dauphiny owes its name as a province to the rightful name of the eldest sons of the French kings down to the middle of the nineteenth century. The actual origin of the application of the name seems to have been lost, though the Comtes de Vienne bore a dolphin on their blazon from the eleventh century to the fourteenth, when Comte Humbert, the last Dauphin, made over his rights to the eldest son of Philippe de Valois, who acquired the country in 1343, bestowing it upon his offspring as his patrimony. Thus is logically explained the absorption of the title and its relations with the province, for it was then that it came first to be applied to that glorious mountain region of France lying between the high Alpine valleys and the shores of the Mediterranean.
The Dauphin, Humbert II, first established the Parlement du Dauphiné at Saint Marcellin in 1337, but within three years it was transferred to Grenoble, where it held rank as third among the provincial parliaments of France.
[Illustration: Tourelle _du_ Palais _de_ Justice GRENOBLE B. McM. '08.]
Saint Laurent, the Grenoble suburb, not the mountain town hidden away in the fastness of the mountain _massif_ of Chartreuse, occupies the site of an ancient Gaulish foundation called Cularo. Its name was later changed to Gratianopolis, out of compliment to the Emperor Gratian, which in time evolved itself into Grenoble, the capital of "the good province of our most loyal Dauphin."
Grenoble's chief architectural treasure is its present Palais de Justice, the ancient buildings of the old Parliament of Dauphiny and its Cour des Comptes. Virtually it is a chateau of state and is, moreover, the most important monument of the French Renaissance existing in the Rhône valley. Begun under Louis XI, it was terminated under François Premier, when, following upon the Italian wars, it was a place of sojourn for the kings of France.
On entering the portal at the right one comes directly to the Chambre du Tribunal of to-day, its walls panelled with a wonderful series of wood-carvings coming from the ancient Cour des Comptes, the work of a German sculptor, Paul Jude, in 1520.
The portal to the left leads to the Cour d'Appel--the Chambres des Audiences Solennelles--whose ceiling was designed in 1660 by Jean Lepautre, a great decorative artist of the court of Louis XIV, and carved by one Guillebaud, a native of Grenoble. The ancient chapel, or such of it as remains, where the parliament heard mass, is reached through this room. The ancient Chambre des Comptes dates from the reign of Charles VIII.
