Seeing Europe with Famous Authors Volume IV Part 2

As the queen-mother drew near her end, and was lying ill at Blois, great events for France were culminating at the chateau. Henry III.

had become King of France, and the Balafre, supported by Rome and Spain, was in open rebellion against the reigning house, and the word had gone forth that the Duc de Guise must die.

The States-General were to be immediately a.s.sembled, and De Guise, once the poetic lover of Marguerite, through his emissaries canva.s.sed all France to ensure the triumph of the party of the church against Henri de Navarre and his queen--the Marguerite whom De Guise once profest to love--who soon were to come to the throne of France.

The uncomfortable Henri III. had been told that he would never be king in reality until De Guise had been made away with.

The final act of the drama between the rival houses of Guise and Valois came when the king and his council came to Blois for the a.s.sembly. The sunny city of Blois was indeed to be the scene of a momentous affair, and a truly sumptuous setting it was, the roof-tops of its houses sloping downward gently to the Loire, with its chief accessory, the coiffed and turreted chateau itself, high above all else.

Details had been arranged with infinite pains, the guard doubled, and a company of Swiss posted around the courtyard and up and down the gorgeous staircase. Every nook and corner has its history in connection with this greatest event in the history of the chateau of Blois.

As Guise entered the council chamber he was told that the king would see him in his closet, to reach which one had to pa.s.s through the guard-room below. The door was barred behind him that he might not return, when the trusty guards of the Forty-fifth, under Dalahaide, already hidden behind the wall-tapestry, sprang upon the Balafre and forced him back upon the closed door through which he had just pa.s.sed.

Guise fell stabbed in the breast by Malines, and "lay long uncovered until an old carpet was found in which to wrap his corpse."

Below, in her own apartments, lay the queen-mother, dying, but listening eagerly for the rush of footsteps overhead, hoping and praying that Henri--the hitherto effeminate Henri who played with his sword as he would with a battledore, and who painted himself like a woman, and put rings in his ears--would not prejudice himself at this time in the eyes of Rome by slaying the leader of the church party....

It was under the regime of Gaston d'Orleans that the gardens of the Chateau de Blois came to their greatest excellence and beauty. In 1653, Abel Brunyer, the first physician of Gaston's suite, published a catalog of the fruit and flowers to be found here in these gardens, of which he was also director. More than five hundred varieties were included, three-quarters of which belonged to the flora of France.

Among the delicacies and novelties of the time to be found here was the Prunier de Reine Claude, from which those delicious green plums known to all the world to-day as "Reine Claudes" were propagated, also another variety which came from the Prunier de Monsieur, somewhat similar in taste, but of a deep purple color. The potato was tenderly cared for and grown as a great novelty and delicacy long before its introduction to general cultivation by Parmentier. The tomato was imported from Mexico, and even tobacco was grown....

In 1793 all the symbols and emblems of royalty were removed from the chateau and destroyed. The celebrated bust of Gaston, the chief artistic attribute of that part of the edifice built by him, was decapitated, and the statue of Louis XII. over the entrance gateway was overturned and broken up. Afterward the chateau became the property of the "domaine" and was turned into a mere barracks. The pavilion of Queen Anne became a military magazine, the Tour de l'Observatoire, a powder-magazine, and all the indignities imaginable were heaped upon the chateau.

In 1814 Blois became the last capital of Napoleon's empire, and the chateau walls sheltered the prisoners captured by the imperial army.

CHAMBORD[A]

[Footnote A: From "Old Touraine." Published by James Pott & Co.]

BY THEODORE ANDREA COOK

The road that leads from Blois to Chambord crosses the Loire by a fine stone bridge, which the inscription sets forth to be the first public work of Louis Philippe.

For some distance the rails of a small tramway followed the road by which our carriage was slowly rolling toward the level plains of the Cologne, but we gradually left such uncompromising signs of activity, and came into a flat country of endless vineyards, with here and there a small plaster tower showing its slated roof above the low green cl.u.s.ters of the vines. We pa.s.sed through several villages, whose inhabitants that day seemed to have but one care upon their minds, like the famous Scilly Islanders, to gain a precarious livelihood by taking each other's washing. On every bush and briar fluttered the household linen and the family apparel, of various textures and in different states of despair; and with that strict observance of utility which is the chief characteristic of the French peasant, the inevitable blouses, of faded blue were blown into shapeless bundles even along the railings of the churchyard tombs.

At last we came to an old moss-grown wall, and through a broken gateway entered what is called the Park of Chambord. There is very little of it to be seen now, the trees have been ruthlessly cut down and mutilated, and of the wild boars, which Francis I. was so fond of hunting there is left only the ghostly quarry that Thibault of Champagne chases through the air, while the sound of his ghostly horn echoes down the autumn night as the fantom pack sweeps by to Montfrault.

It is impossible for the uninstructed mind to grasp the plan or method of this ma.s.s of architecture; yet it is unsatisfactory to give it up, with Mr. Henry James, "as an irresponsible, insoluble labyrinth."

M. Viollet-le-Duc, with a sympathetic denial of any extreme and over-technical admiration, gives just that intelligible account of the chateau which is a compromise between the unmeaning adulation of its contemporary critics and the ignorance of the casual traveler.

"Chambord," says he, "must be taken for what it is; for an attempt in which the architect sought to reconcile the methods of two opposite principles, to unite in one building the fortified castle of the Middle Ages and the pleasure-palace of the sixteenth century." Granted that the attempt was an absurd one, it must be remembered that the Renaissance was but just beginning in France; Gothic art seemed out of date, yet none other had established itself to take its place. In literature, in morals, as in architecture, this particular phase in the civilization of the time has already become evident even in the course of these small wanderings in a single province, and if only this transition period is realized in all its meaning, with all the "monstrous and inform" characteristics that were inevitably a part of it, the mystery of this strange sixteenth century in France is half explained, of this "glorious devil, large in heart and brain, that did love beauty only" and would have it somewhere, somehow, at whatever cost.

Francis I. had pa.s.sed his early years at Cognac, at Amboise, or Romorantin, and when he first saw Chambord it was only the old feudal manor-house built by the Counts of Blois. He transformed it, not by the help of Primaticcio, with whose name it is tempting to a.s.sociate any building of this king's, for the methods of contemporary Italian architecture were totally different; but, as Mr. de la Saussaye proves, by the skill of that fertile school of art particularly of one Maitre Pierre Trinqueau, or Le Nepveu, whose name is connected with more successful buildings at Amboise and Blois. The plan is that of the true French chateau; in the center is the habitation of the seigneur and his family, flanked by four angle towers; on three sides is a court closed by buildings, also with towers at each angle, and like most feudal dwellings the central donjon has one of its sides on the exterior of the whole ...

It may well be imagined that Chambord is the parody of the old castles, just as the Abbey of Theleme parodies the abbeys of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Both heaped a fatal ridicule upon the bygone age, but what Rabelais could only dream Francis could realize, yet not with the unfettered perfection that was granted to the vision of Gargantua; for surely never was the spirit of the time, seized and smitten into incongruous shapes of stone at so unfortunate a moment, just when the old Renaissance was striving to take upon itself the burden which was too heavy for the failing Gothic spirit, just when success was coming, but had not yet come.

It is only from within the court, where the great towers fling their shadows over the s.p.a.ce, where pinnacles and gables soar into the air, and strange gargoyles and projectures shoot from the darkness into light, that it is possible to realize the admiration which Chambord roused when it was first created. Brantome waxes enthusiastic over its wonders, and describes how the king had drawn up plans (mercifully never carried out) to divert the waters of the Loire to his new palace, not content with the slender stream of Cosson, from which the place derived its name. Others compare it to a palace put of the Arabian Nights raised at the Prince's bidding by a Genie, or like Lippomano, the Venetian amba.s.sador, to "the abode of Morgana or Alcinous"; but this topheavy barrack is anything rather than a "fairy monument"; it might with as much humor be called a "souvenir of first loves," as M. de la Saussaye has it. Both descriptions fit Chenonceaux admirably; when used of Chambord they are out of place.

CHENONCEAUX[A]

[Footnote A: From "Castles and Chateaux of Old Touraine." By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, L.C. Page & Co. Copyright, 1906.]

BY FRANCIS MILTOUN

Chenonceaux is noted chiefly for its chateau, but the little village itself is charming. The houses of the village are not very new, nor very old, but the one long street is most attractive throughout its length, and the whole atmosphere of the place, from September to December, is odorous with the perfume of red and purple grapes. The vintage is not equal to that of the Bordeaux region, perhaps, nor of Chinon, nor Saumur, but "vin du pays" of the Cher and the Loire, around Tours, is not to be despised.

Most tourists come to Chenonceaux by train from Tours; others drive over from Amboise, and yet others come by bicycle or automobile. They are not as yet so numerous as might be expected, and accordingly here, as elsewhere in Touraine, every facility is given for visiting the chateau and its park.

If you do not hurry off at once to worship at the abode of the fascinating Diane, one of the brightest ornaments of the court of Francois I. and his son Henri, you will enjoy your dinner at the Hotel du Bon Laboureur, tho most likely it will be a solitary one, and you will be put to bed in a great chamber over-looking the park, through which peep, in the moonlight, the turrets of the chateau, and you may hear the purling of the waters of the Cher as it flows below the walls.

Jean Jacques Rousseau, like Francois I., called Chenonceaux a beautiful place, and he was right. It is all of that and more. Here one comes into direct contact with an atmosphere which, if not feudal, or even medieval, is at least that of several hundred years ago.

Chenonceaux is moored like a ship in the middle of the rapidly running Cher, a dozen miles or more above where that stream enters the Loire.

As a matter of fact, the chateau practically bridges the river, which flows under its foundations and beneath its drawbridge on either side, besides filling the moat with water. The general effect is as if the building were set in the midst of a stream and formed a sort of island chateau. Round about is a gentle meadow and a great park, which gives to this turreted, architectural gem of Touraine a setting equalled by no other chateau.

What the chateau was in former days we can readily imagine, for nothing is changed as to the general disposition. Boats came to the water-gate, as they still might do if such boats still existed, in true, pictorial legendary fashion. To-day the present occupant has placed a curiosity on the ornamental waters in the shape of a gondola.

It is out of keeping with the grand fabric of the chateau, and it is a pity that it does not cast itself adrift some night. What has become of the gondolier, who was imported to keep the craft company, n.o.body seems to know. He is certainly not in evidence, or, if he is, has transformed himself into a groom or a chauffeur.

The chateau of Chenonceaux is not a very ample structure; not so ample as most photographs would make it appear. It is not tiny, but still it has not the magnificent proportions of Blois, of Chambord, or even of Langeais. It was more a habitation than it was a fortress, a country house, as indeed it virtually became when the Connetable de Montmorency took possession of the structure in the name of the king, when its builder, Thomas Bohier, the none too astute minister of finance in Normandy, came to grief in his affairs.

Francis I came frequently here to hunt, and his memory is still kept alive by the Chambre Francois I. Francois held possession till his death, when his son made it over to the "admired of two generations,"

Diane de Poitiers.

Diane's memory will never leave Chenonceaux. To-day it is perpetuated in the Chambre de Diane de Poitiers; but the portrait by Leonardo da Vinci, which was supposed to best show her charms, has now disappeared from the Long Gallery at the chateau. This portrait was painted at the command of Francois, before Diane transferred her affections to his son.

No one knows when or how Diane de Poitiers first came to fascinate Francois, or how or why her power waned. At any rate at the time Francois pardoned her father, the witless Comte de St. Vallier, for the treacherous part he played in the Bourbon conspiracy, he really believed her to to be the "brightest ornament of a beauty-loving court."

Certainly, Diane was a powerful factor in the politics of her time, tho Francois himself soon tired of her. Undaunted by this, she forthwith set her cap for his son Henri, the Duc d'Orleans, and won him, too. Of her beauty the present generation is able to judge for itself by reason of the three well-known and excellent portraits of contemporary times.

Diane's influence over the young Henri was absolute. At his death her power was, of course, at an end and Chenonceaux, and all else possible, was taken from her by the orders of Catherine, the long-suffering wife, who had been put aside for the fascinations of the charming huntress.

It must have been some satisfaction, however, to Diane, to know that, in his fatal joust with Montgomery, Henri really broke his lance and met his death in her honor, for the records tell that he bore her colors on his lance, besides her initials set in gold and gems on his shield.

Catherine's eagerness to drive Diane from the court was so great, that no sooner had her spouse fallen--even tho he did not actually die for some days--than she sent word to Diane "who sat weeping alone," to quit the court instantly; to give up the crown jewels--which Henri had somewhat inconsiderately given her; and to "give up Chenonceaux in Touraine," Catherine's Naboth's vineyard, which she had so long admired and coveted.

She had known it as a girl, when she often visited it in company with her father-in-law, the appreciative but dissolute Francois, and had ever longed to possess it for her own, before even her husband, now dead, had given it to "that old hag Diane de Poitiers, d.u.c.h.esse de Valentinois."

Diane paid no heed to Catherine's command. She simply asked: "Is the king yet dead?"

"No, madame," said the messenger, "but his wound is mortal; he can not live the day."

"Tell the queen, then." replied Diane, "that her reign is not yet come; that I am mistress still over her and the kingdom as long as the king breathes the breath of life."