The Car That Went Abroad Part 16

Certainly pride goes before a fall. Five minutes before we were sailing along in glory, exulting over the prowess of our vehicle. Now all in the wink of an eye our precious conveyance, stricken and helpless, was being towed to the hospital, its owners trudging mournfully behind.

The village was Poix, and if one had to be wrecked anywhere, I cannot think of a lovelier spot for disaster than Poix de la Somme. It is just across in Picardy, and the Somme there is a little brook that ripples and winds through poplar-shaded pastures, sweet meadows, and deep groves. In every direction were the loveliest walks, with landscape pictures at every turn. The village itself was drowsy, kindly, simple-hearted. The landlady at our inn was a motherly soul that during the week of our stay the Joy and I learned to love.

For the others did not linger. Paris was not far away and had a good deal in the way of shopping to recommend it. The new radiator ordered from London might be delayed. So early next morning they were off for Paris by way of Amiens and Beauvais, and the Joy and I settled down to such employments and amus.e.m.e.nts as we could find, while waiting for repairs.

We got acquainted with the garageman's family, for one thing. They lived in the same little court with the shop, and we exchanged Swiss French for their Picardese, and were bosom friends in no time. We spruced up the car, too, and every day took long walks, and every afternoon took some luncheon and our little stove and followed down the Somme to a tiny bridge, and there made our tea. Then sometimes we read, and once when I was reading aloud from Mark Twain's _Joan of Arc_, and had finished the great battle of Patay, we suddenly remembered that it had happened on the very day on which we were reading, the 18th of June. How little we guessed that in such a short time our peaceful little river would give its name to a battle a thousand times greater than any that Joan ever fought!

Once when we were resting by the roadside a little old lady with a basket stopped and sat with us while she told us her history--how her husband had been a great physician and invented cures that to-day are used in all the hospitals of France. Now she was poor, she said, and lived alone in a little house, but if we would visit her she would give us some good Picardese cooking. I wish we might have gone. One day I hired a bicycle for the Joy and entertained the village by pushing her around the public square until she learned to ride alone. Then I hired one for myself and we went out on the road together. About the end of the third day we began to look for our radiator, and visited the express office with considerable regularity. Presently the village knew us, why we were there and what we were expecting. They became as anxious about it as ourselves.

Chapter XXI

THE DAMAGE REPAIRED--BEAUVAIS AND COMPIeGNE

One morning as we started toward the express office a man in a wagon pa.s.sed and called out something. We did not catch it, but presently another met us and with a glad look told us that our goods had arrived and were now in the delivery wagon on the way to the garage. We did not recognize either of those good souls, but they were interested in our welfare. Our box was at the garage when we arrived there, and in a little more it was opened and the new radiator in place. The other repairs had been made, and once more we were complete. We decided to start next morning to join the others in Paris.

Morning comes early on the longest days of the year, and we had eaten our breakfast, had our belongings put into the car, and were ready to be off by seven o'clock. What a delicious morning it was! Calm, glistening, the dew on everything. As long as I live I shall remember that golden morning when the Joy, aged eleven, and I went gypsying together, following the winding roads and byways that led us through pleasant woods, under sparkling banks, and along the poplar-planted streams of Picardy. We did not keep to highways at all. We were in no hurry and we took any lane that seemed to lead in the right direction, so that much of the time we appeared to be crossing fields--fields of flowers, many of them, scarlet poppies, often mingled with blue cornflowers and yellow mustard--fancy the vividness of that color.

Traveling in that wandering fashion, it was noon before we got down to Beauvais, where we stopped for luncheon supplies and to see what is perhaps the most remarkable cathedral in the world. It is one of the most beautiful, and, though it consists only of choir and transepts, it is one of the largest. Its inner height, from floor to vaulting, is one hundred and fifty-eight feet. The average ten-story building could sit inside of it. There was once a steeple that towered to the giddy heights of five hundred feet, but in 1573, when it had been standing three hundred years, it fell down, from having insufficient support. The inner work is of white stone, marble, and the whole place seems filled with light. It was in this cool, heavenly sanctuary that Cauchon, who hounded Joan to the stake, officiated as bishop. I never saw a place so unsuited to a man. I should think that spire would have tumbled off then instead of waiting until he had been dead a hundred years. There is a clock in this church--a modern clock--that records everything, even the age of the world, which at the moment of our visit was 5,914 years. It is a very large affair, but we did not find it very exciting. In the public square of Beauvais there is a bronze statue of Jeanne Laine, called "Jeanne Hachette," because, armed with a hatchet, she led others of her s.e.x against Charles the Bold in 1472 and captured a banner with her own hands.

Beauvais has many interesting things, but the day had become very warm and we did not linger. We found some of the most satisfactory pastries I have ever seen in France, fresh and dripping with richness; also a few other delicacies, and, by and by, under a cool apple tree on the road to Compiegne, the Joy and I spread out our feast and ate it and listened to some little French birds singing, "_Vite! Vite! Vite!_" meaning that we must be "Quick! Quick! Quick!" so they could have the crumbs.

It was at Compiegne that Joan of Arc was captured by her enemies, just a year before that last fearful day at Rouen. She had relieved Orleans, she had fought Patay, she had crowned the king at Rheims; she would have had her army safely in Paris if she had not been withheld by a weakling, influenced by his shuffling, time-serving counselors. She had delivered Compiegne the year before, but now again it was in trouble, besieged by the Duke of Burgundy. Joan had been kept in partial inactivity in the Loire district below Paris during the winter, but with the news from Compiegne she could no longer be restrained.

"I will go to my good friends of Compiegne," she said, and, taking such force as she could muster, in number about six hundred cavalry, she went to their relief.

From a green hill commanding the valley of the Oise we looked down upon the bright river and pretty city which Joan had seen on that long-ago afternoon of her final battle for France. Somewhere on that plain the battle had taken place, and Joan's little force for the first time had failed. There had been a panic; Joan, still fighting and trying to rally her men, had been surrounded, dragged from her horse, and made a prisoner. She had led her last charge.

We crossed a bridge and entered the city and stopped in the big public square facing Leroux's beautiful statue of Joan, which the later "friends of Compiegne" have raised to her memory. It is Joan in semi-armor, holding aloft her banner, and on the base in old French is inscribed "_Je Yray voir mes bons amys de Compiegne_" ("I will go to see my good friends of Compiegne").

Many things in Compiegne are beautiful, but not many of them are very old. Joan's statue looks toward the handsome and richly ornamented Hotel de Ville, but Joan could not have seen it in life, for it dates a hundred years after death. There are two handsome churches, in one or both of which she doubtless worshiped when she had first delivered the city; possibly a few houses of that ancient time still survive.

We looked into the churches, but they seemed better on the outside. Then I discovered that one of our back tires was down, and we drew up in a secluded nook at the rear of St. Jacques for repairs. It was dusk by the time we had finished, the end of that long June day, and we had no time to hunt for a cozy inn. So we went to a hotel which stands opposite the great palace which the architect Gabriel built for Louis XV, and looked across to it while we ate our dinner, and talked of our day's wanderings, and of palaces in general and especially queens; also of Joan, and of the beautiful roads and fields of flowers, and of the little birds that tried to hurry us along, and so were very happy and very tired indeed.

Next morning we visited the palace. It has been much occupied by royalty, for Compiegne was always a favorite residence of the rulers of France. Napoleon came there with the Empress Marie Louise, and Louis Philippe and Napoleon III both found retirement there.

I think it could not have been a very inviting or restful home. There are long halls and picture galleries, all with shiny floors and stiffly placed properties, and the royal suites are just a series of square, prettily decorated and upholstered boxes, strung together, with doors between. One might as well set up a series of screens in a long hall.

Even with the doors shut there could not have been much sense of privacy, certainly none of snugness. But then palaces were not meant to be cozy. We saw the bedrooms and dressing rooms and what not of the various queens, and we looked from an upper window down a long forest avenue that was finer than anything inside. Then we went back to the car and drove into the big forest for ten miles or more, to an old feudal castle--such a magnificent old castle, all towers and turrets and battlements--the chateau of Pierrefonds, one of the finest in France.

It stands upon a rocky height overlooking a lake, and it does not seem so old, though it had been there forty years when Joan of Arc came, and it looks as if it might be there about as long as the hill it stands on.

It was built by Louis of Orleans, brother of Charles VI, and the storm of battle has raged often about its base. Here and there it still shows the mark of bombardment, and two cannon b.a.l.l.s stick fast in the wall of one of its solid towers. Pierrefonds was in bad repair, had become well-nigh a ruin, in fact, when Napoleon III, at his own expense, engaged Viollet le Duc to restore it, in order that France might have a perfect type of the feudal castle in its original form. It stands to-day as complete in its structure and decoration as it was when Louis of Orleans moved in, more than five hundred years ago, and it conveys exactly the solid home surroundings of the mediaeval lord. It is just a show place now, and its vast court, its chapel and its halls of state are all splendid enough, though nothing inside can be quite so magnificent as its mighty a.s.semblage of towers and turrets rising above the trees and reflecting in the blue waters of a placid lake.

It began raining before we got to Paris, so we did not stop at Crepy-en-Valois, or Senlis, or Chantilly, or St. Denis, though all that land has been famous for kings and castles and bloodshed from a time farther back than the days of Caesar. We were interested in all those things, but we agreed we could not see everything. Some things we saw as we went by; great gray walls and crumbling church towers, and then we were at the gates of Paris and presently threading our way through a tangle of streets, barred, many of them, because the top of the subway had been tumbling in a few days before and travel was dangerous. It was Sunday, too, and the streets were especially full of automobiles and pedestrians. It was almost impossible to keep from injuring something. I do not care for Paris, not from the driving seat of a car.

Chapter XXII

FROM PARIS TO CHARTRES AND CHaTEAUDUN

In fact, neither the Joy nor I hungered for any more Paris, while the others had seen their fill. So we were off, with only a day's delay, this time taking the road to Versailles. There we put in an hour or two wandering through the vast magnificence of the palace where the great Louis XIV lived, loved, and died, and would seem to have spent a good part of his time having himself painted in a variety of advantageous situations, such as riding at the head of victorious armies, or occupying a comfortable seat in Paradise, giving orders to the G.o.ds.

They were weak kings who followed him. The great Louis reigned seventy-two years--prodigal years, but a period of military and artistic conquest--the golden age of French literature. His successor reigned long enough--fifty-nine years--but he achieved nothing worth while, and the next one lost his head. We saw the little balcony where the doomed Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette showed themselves to the mob--the "deluge" which the greater Louis had once predicted.

The palace at Versailles is like other royal palaces of France--a fine show place, an excellent museum, but never in its day of purest domesticity could it have been called "a happy little home." Everything is on too extended a scale. Its garden was a tract of marshy land sixty miles in circ.u.mference until Louis XIV set thirty-six thousand men at it, turning it into fairyland. Laborers died by the score during the work, and each night the dead were carted away. When this was mentioned to the king he was troubled, fearing his supply of men might not last.

However, the garden was somehow completed. Possibly Louis went out and dug in it a little himself.

It is still a Garden of Eden, with leafy avenues, and lakes, and marvelous fountains, and labyrinths of flowers. Looking out over it from the palace windows we remembered how the king had given Madame Maintenon a summer sleigh-ride, causing long avenues to be spread with sugar and salt to gratify her idly-expressed whim. I am sorry, of course, that the later Louis had to lose his head, but on the whole I think it is very well that France discouraged that line of kings.

Versailles is full of palaces. There is the Grand Trianon, which Louis XIV built for Madame Maintenon when she had grown weary of the great palace, and the Pet.i.t Trianon, which Louis XV gave to Du Barry and where Marie Antoinette built her Swiss village and played at farm life. There is no reason I should dwell on these places. Already volumes have been written of the tragic, gay, dissolute life they have seen, the gorgeous moving panoramas that might have been pictures pa.s.sing in a looking-gla.s.s for all the substance they have left behind.

Somewhere below Versailles, in the quietest spot we could find, by a still stream that ran between the meadow and the highroad, we made our luncheon and were glad we were not kings. Being royalty was a gaudy occupation, but too doubtful, too open to criticism. One of those Louis families, for instance, could never have stopped their motor by the roadside and prepared their luncheon in our modest, unostentatious way.

They would have had all manner of attendants and guards watching them, and an audience would have collected, and some excited person might have thrown a brick and hit the jam. No, we would rather be just plain, un.o.btrusive people, without audience, and with no attendance but the car, waiting there in the shade to carry us deeper into this Land of Heart's Desire.

It was at Rambouillet that we lodged, an ancient place with a chateau and a vast park; also an excellent inn--the Croix Blanche--one of those that you enter by driving through to an inner court. Before dinner we took a walk into the park, along the lakeside and past the chateau, which is a curious architectural mixture and not very sightly. But it is mingled with history. Francis I died there in 1547, and as late as 1830 the last Charles, the tenth of that name, signed his abdication there.

It was too late for the place to be open, and in any case we did not care to go in. We had had enough of palaces for one day. We followed around the lake to an avenue of splendid Louisiana cypresses which some old king had planted. Beyond the avenue the way led into deeper wildernesses--a n.o.ble wood. We made a backward circuit at length, for it was evening and the light was fading. In the mysterious half-light there was something almost spectral in that sylvan place and we spoke in hushed voices. Presently we came to a sort of bower, and then to an artificial grotto--old trysting places. Ah, me! Monsieur and mademoiselle, or madame, are no longer there; the powdered hair, the ruffled waist-coat and looped gown, the silken hose and dainty footgear, the subdued laugh and whispered word, all have vanished. How vacant those old places seemed! We did not linger--it was a time for ghosts.

We were off next morning, halting for a little at Maintenon on the road to Chartres. The chateau attracted us and the beautiful river Eure. The widow of the poet Scarron, who married Louis XIV and became Marquise de Maintenon, owned the chateau, and it belongs to the family to this day.

An attendant permitted us to see the picture gallery and a portion of the grounds. All seemed as luxurious as Versailles. It is thirty-five miles from Maintenon to Versailles, but Louis started to build an aqueduct to carry the waters of the Eure to his gardens. He kept thirty thousand soldiers working on it for four years, but they died faster than he could replace them, which was such a bother that he abandoned the undertaking.

Following the rich and lovely valley of the Eure, we came to Chartres, and made our way to the Cathedral square. We had seen the towers from a long distance, and remembered the saying that "The choir of Beauvais, the nave of Amiens, the portal of Rheims, and the towers of Chartres would together make the finest church in the world." To confess the truth, I did not think the towers of Chartres as handsome as those of either Rouen or Amiens. But then I am not a purist in cathedral architecture. Certainly the cathedral itself is glorious. I shall not attempt to describe it. Any number of men have written books, trying to do that, and most of them have failed. I only know that the wonder of its architecture--the marvel of its relief carving, "lace in stone," and the sublime glory of its windows--somehow possessed us, and we did not know when to go. I met a woman once who said she had spent a month at Chartres and had put in most of it sitting in the cathedral looking at those windows. When she told me of it I had been inclined to be scornful. I was not so any more. Those windows, made by some unknown artist, dead five hundred years, invite a lifetime of contemplation.

It is about nine hundred years since the cathedral of Chartres was begun, and it has known many changes. Four hundred years ago one of its towers was rebuilt in an altogether different pattern from the other. I believe this variation is regarded as a special feature of their combined beauty. Chapels have been added, wings extended; changes inside and out were always going on during the first five hundred years or so, but if the builders made any mistakes we failed to notice them. It remains a unity, so far as we could see--a supreme expression of the old faith, whose material labor was more than half spiritual, and for whom no sacrifice of money or endeavor was too great.

We left Chartres by one of the old city gates, and took the wrong road, and presently found ourselves in an open field, where our way dwindled out and stopped. Imagine a road good enough to be mistaken for a highway, leading only to a farmer's grainfield. So we went back and got set right, and through a heavenly June afternoon followed the straight level way to Chateaudun, an ancient town perched upon the high cliffs above the valley of the Loir, which is a different river from the Loire--much smaller and more picturesque.

The chateau itself hangs on the very edge of the cliffs with startling effect and looks out over a picture valley as beautiful as any in France. This was the home of Dunois, b.a.s.t.a.r.d of Orleans, who left it to fight under Joan of Arc. He was a great soldier, one of her most loved and trusted generals. We spent an hour or more wandering through Dunois's ancient seat, with an old guardian who clearly was in love with every stone of it, and who time and again reminded us that it was more interesting than many of the great chateaux of the Loire, Blois especially, in that it had been scarcely restored at all. About the latest addition to Chateaudun was a beautiful open stairway of the sixteenth century, in perfect condition to-day. On the other side is another fine facade and stairway, which Dunois himself added. In a niche there stands a fine statue of the famous soldier, probably made from life. If only some sculptor or painter might have preserved for us the features of Joan!

Chapter XXIII

WE REACH TOURS

Through that golden land which lies between the Loir and the Loire we drifted through a long summer afternoon and came at evening to a n.o.ble bridge that crossed a wide, tranquil river, beyond which rose the towers of ancient Tours, capital of Touraine. One can hardly cross the river Loire for the first time without long reflections. Henry James calls the Touraine "a gallery of architectural specimens ... the heart of the old French monarchy," and adds, "as that monarchy was splendid and picturesque, a reflection of the splendor still glitters in the Loire.

Some of the most striking events of French history have occurred on the banks of that river, and the soil it waters bloomed for a while with the flower of the Renaissance."

Touraine was a favorite place for kings, and the early Henrys and Francises, especially, built their magnificent country palaces in all directions. There are more than fifty chateaux within easy driving distance of Tours, and most of the great ones have been owned or occupied by Francis I, or by Henry II, or by one of their particular favorites.

We did not intend to visit all of the chateaux by any means, for chateau visiting, from a diversion may easily degenerate into labor. We intended especially to visit Chinon, where Joan of Arc went to meet the king to ask for soldiers, and a few others, but we had no wish to put in long summer days mousing about old dungeons and dim corridors, or being led through stiffly set royal suites, garishly furnished and restored.

It was better to glide restfully along the poppied way and see the landscape presentment of those stately piles crowning the hilltops or reflected in the bright waters of the Loire. The outward semblance of the land of romance remains oftenest undisturbed; cross the threshold and the illusion is in danger.