The Car That Went Abroad Part 18

(From my notebook)

This morning we got away from Tours, but it was after a strenuous time. It was one of those sweltering mornings, and to forward matters at the garage I helped put on all those repaired tires and appliances, and by the time we were through I was a rag. Narcissa photographed me, because she said she had never seen me look so interesting before. She made me stand in the sun, bareheaded and holding a tube in my hand, as if I had not enough to bear already.

Oh, but it was cool and delicious gliding along the smooth, shaded road toward Chenonceaux! One can almost afford to get as hot and sweltering and cross and gasping as I was for the sake of sitting back and looking across the wheel down a leafy avenue facing the breeze of your own making, a delicious nectar that bathes you through and cools and rests and soothes--an anodyne of peace.

By and by, being really cool in mind and body, we drew up abreast of a meadow which lay a little below the road, a place with a brook and overspreading shade, and with some men and women harvesting not far away. We thought they would not mind if we lunched there, and I think they must have been as kind-hearted as they were picturesque, for they did not offer to disturb us. It was a lovely spot, and did not seem to belong to the present-day world at all. How could it, with the home of Diana of Poitiers just over there beyond the trees, with nesting places of Mary, Queen of Scots, all about, and with these haymakers, whose fashion in clothes has not much minded the centuries, to add the living human note of the past that makes imagination reality?

Chenonceaux, the real heart of the royal district, like Chinon, is not on the Loire itself, but on a small tributary, the Cher. I do not remember that I noticed the river when we entered the grounds, but it is a very important part of the chateau, which indeed is really a bridge over it--a supremely beautiful bridge, to be sure, but a bridge none the less, entirely crossing the pretty river by means of a series of high foundation arches. Upon these arches rises the rare edifice which Thomas Bohier, a receiver-general of taxes, began back in 1515 and Catherine de' Medici finished after she had turned out Diana of Poitiers and ma.s.sacred the Huguenots, and needed a quiet place for retirement and religious thought. Bohier did not extend Chenonceaux entirely across the river. The river to him merely served as a moat. The son who followed him did not have time to make additions. Francis I came along, noticed that it was different from the other chateaux he had confiscated, and added it to his collection. Our present-day collectors cut a poor figure by the side of Francis I. Think of getting together a.s.sortments of bugs and postage stamps and ginger jars when one could go out and pick up chateaux!

It was Francis's son, Henry II, that gave it to Diana of Poitiers. Henry had his own kind of a collection and he used his papa's chateaux to keep it in. As he picked about the best one for Diana, we may believe that he regarded her as his choicest specimen. Unfortunately for Diana, Henry's queen, the terrible Catherine, outlived him; and when, after the funeral, Catherine drove around by Chenonceaux and suggested to Diana that perhaps she would like to exchange the place for a very excellent chateau farther up the road, Chaumont, we may a.s.sume that Diana moved with no unseemly delay. Diana tactfully said she liked Chaumont ever so much, for a change, that perhaps living on a hilltop was healthier than over the water, anyway. Still, it must have made her sigh, I think, to know that her successor was carrying out the plan which Diana herself had conceived of extending Chenonceaux across the Cher.

We stopped a little to look at the beautiful facade of Chenonceaux, then crossed the drawbridge, or what is now the subst.i.tute for it, and were welcomed at the door by just the proper person--a fine, dignified woman of gentle voice and perfect knowledge. She showed us through the beautiful home, for it is still a home, the property to-day of M.

Meunier of chocolate fame and fortune. I cannot say how glad I am that M. Meunier owns Chenonceaux. He has done nothing to the place to spoil it, and it is not a museum. The lower rooms which we saw have many of the original furnishings. The ornaments, the tapestries, the pictures are the same. I think Diana must have regretted leaving her fine private room, with its chimney piece, supported by caryatids, and its rare Flemish tapestry. We regretted leaving, too. We do not care for interiors that have been overhauled and refurbished and made into museums, but we were in no hurry to leave Chenonceaux. There is hardly any place, I think, where one may come so nearly stepping back through the centuries.

We went out into the long wing that is built on the arches above the river, and looked down at the water flowing below. Our conductor told us that the supporting arches had been built on the foundations of an ancient mill. The beautiful gallery which the bridge supports must have known much gayety; much dancing and promenading up and down; much lovemaking and some heartache.

Jean Jacques Rousseau seems to have been everywhere. We could not run amiss of him in eastern France and in Switzerland; now here again he turns up at Chenonceaux. Chenonceaux in the eighteenth century fell to M. Claude Dupin, farmer-general, who surrounded himself with the foremost artists and social leaders of his time. He engaged Rousseau to superintend the education of his son.

"We amused ourselves greatly at this fine place," writes Rousseau; "the living was of the best, and I became as fat as a monk. We made a great deal of music and acted comedies."

The period of M. Dupin's ownership, one of the most brilliant, and certainly the most moral in the earlier history of Chenonceaux, has left many memories. Of the brief, insipid honeymoon of the puny Francis II and Mary Stuart no breath remains.

Amboise is on the Loire, and there is a good inn on the quay. It was evening when we got there, and we did nothing after dinner but sit on the high masonry embankment that b.u.t.tresses the river, and watch the men who fished, while the light faded from the water; though we occasionally turned to look at the imposing profile of the great chateau on the high cliff above the Loire.

We drove up there next morning--that is, we drove as high as one may drive, and climbed stairs the remaining distance. Amboise is a splendid structure from without, but, unlike Chenonceaux, it is interesting within only for what it has been. It is occupied by the superannuated servants of the present owner, one of the Orleans family, which is fine for them, and proper enough, but bad for the atmosphere. There are a bareness and a whitewashed feeling about the place that are death to romance. Even the circular inclined plane by which one may ride or drive to the top of the great tower suggested some sort of temporary structure at an amus.e.m.e.nt park rather than a convenience for kings. I was more interested in a low doorway against the lintel of which Charles VIII knocked his head and died. But I wish I could have picked Charles VII for that accident, to punish him for having abandoned Joan of Arc.

Though about a hundred years older, Amboise, like Chenonceaux, belongs mainly to the period of Francis I, and was inhabited by the same society. The Francises and the Henrys enjoyed its hospitality, and Catherine de' Medici, and Mary, Queen of Scots. Also some twelve or fifteen hundred Huguenots who were invited there, and, at Catherine's suggestion, butchered on the terrace just in front of the castle windows. There is a balcony overlooking the terrace, and it is said that Catherine and Mary, also Mary's husband and his two brothers, sat on the balcony better to observe the spectacle. Tradition does not say whether they had ices served or not. Some of the Huguenots did not wait, and the soldiers had to drown what they could catch of them in the Loire, likewise in view from the royal balcony. When the show was over there was suspended from the balcony a fringe of Huguenot heads. Those were frivolous times.

There is a flower garden to-day on the terrace where the Huguenots were murdered, and one may imagine, if he chooses, the scarlet posies to be brighter for that history. But then there are few enough places in France where blossoms have not been richened by the human stain.

Consider those vivid seas of poppies! Mary Stuart, by the way, seems ent.i.tled to all the pity that the centuries have accorded her. There were few influences in her early life that were not vile.

On the ramparts at Amboise we were shown a chapel, with the grave of Leonardo Da Vinci, who was summoned to Amboise by Francis I, and died there in 1519. There is a question about da Vinci's ashes resting here, I believe, but it does not matter--it is his grave.

If I were going back to Amboise I would view it only from the outside.

With its immense tower and its beautiful Gothic and Renaissance facade surmounting the heights above the Loire, nothing--nothing in the world could be more beautiful.

Chapter XXVII

CHAMBORD AND CLeRY

Francis I had a fine taste for collecting chateaux picturesquely located, but when he built one for himself he located it in the most unbeautiful situation in France. It requires patience and talent to find monotony of prospect in France, but our hero succeeded, and discovered a dead flat tract of thirteen thousand acres with an approach through as dreary a level of unprosperous-looking farm district as may be found on the continent of Europe.

It is not on the Loire, but on a little stream called the Cosson, and when we had left the Loire and found the country getting flatter and poorer and less promising with every mile, we could not believe that we were on the right road. But when we inquired, our informants still pointed ahead, and by and by, in the midst of nowhere and surrounded by nothing, we came to a great inclosure of undersized trees, with an entrance. Driving in, we looked down a long avenue to an expanse of architecture that seemed to be growing from a dead level of sandy park, and to have attained about two thirds its proper height.

An old man was raking around the entrance and we asked him if one was allowed to lunch in the park. He said, "Oh yes, anywhere," and gave a general wave that comprehended the whole tract. So we turned into a side road and found a place that was shady enough, but not cool, for there seemed to be no large overspreading trees in this park, but only small, close, bushy ones. It is said that Francis built Chambord for two reasons, one of them being the memory of an old sweetheart who used to live in the neighborhood, the other on account of the abundant game to be found there. I am inclined to the latter idea. There is nothing in the location to suggest romance; there is everything to suggest game.

The twenty square miles of thicket that go with Chambord could hardly be surpa.s.sed as a harbor for beast and bird.

If Chambord was built, so to speak, as a sort of hunting lodge, it is the largest one on record. Francis kept eighteen hundred men busy at it for twelve years, and then did not get it done. He lived in it, more or less, for some seven years, however; then went to Rambouillet to die, and left his son, Henry II, to carry on the work. Henry did not care for Chambord--the marshy place gave him fever, but he kept the building going until he was killed in a tourney, when the construction stopped.

His widow, the b.l.o.o.d.y Catherine de' Medici, retired to Chambord in her old age, and set the place in order. She was terribly superst.i.tious and surrounded herself with astrologers and soothsayers. At night she used to go up to the great lantern tower to read her fortune in the stars. It is my opinion that she did not go up there alone, not with that record of hers.

Mansard, who laid a blight on architecture that lasted for two hundred years, once got hold of Chambord and spoiled what he could, and had planned to do worse things, but something--death, perhaps--interfered.

That was when Louis XIV brought Queen Maria Theresa to Chambord, and held high and splendid court there, surrounding himself with brilliant men and women, among them Moliere and the widow of the poet Scarron, Francoise d'Aubigne, the same that later became queen, under the t.i.tle of Madame de Maintenon. That was the heyday of Chambord's history. A large guardroom was gilded and converted into a theater. Moliere gave first presentations there and received public compliment from the king.

Diversion was the order of the day and night.

"The court is very gay--the king hunts much," wrote Maintenon; "one eats always with him; there is one day a ball, and the next a comedy."

Nothing very startling has happened at Chambord since Louis' time. Its tenants have been numerous enough, and royal, or distinguished, but they could not maintain the pace set by Louis XIV. Stanislas Leckzinski, the exiled Polish king, occupied it during the early years of the eighteenth century, and succeeded in marrying his daughter to the dissolute Louis XV. Seventy years later the revolution came along. An order was issued to sell the contents of Chambord, and a greedy rabble came and stripped it clean. There was a further decree to efface all signs of royalty, but when it was discovered that every bit of carving within and without the vast place expressed royalty in some manner, and that it would cost twenty thousand dollars to cut it away, this project was happily abandoned. Chambord was left empty but intact. Whatever has been done since has been in the way of restoration.

There is not a particle of shade around Chambord. It stands as bare and exposed to the blazing sky to-day as it did when those eighteen hundred workmen laid down their tools four hundred years ago. There is hardly a shrub. Even the gra.s.s looks discouraged. A location, indeed, for a royal palace!

We left the car under the shade of a wall and crossed a dazzling open s.p.a.ce to the entrance of a court where we bought entrance tickets. Then we crossed the blinding court and were in a cool place at last, the wide castle entrance. We were surprised a little, though, to find a ticket box and a registering turnstile. Things are on a business basis at Chambord. I suppose the money collected is used for repairs.

The best advertised feature of Chambord is the one you see first, the great spiral double stairway arranged one flight above the other, so that persons may be ascending without meeting others who are descending at the same moment. Many persons would not visit Chambord but for this special show feature. Our conductor made us ascend and descend to prove that this unrivaled attraction would really work as advertised. It is designed on the principle of the double stripes on a barber pole.

But there are other worth-while features at Chambord. We wandered through the great cool rooms, not furnished, yet not empty, containing as they do some rare pictures, old statuary and historic furniture, despoiled by the revolutionists, now restored to their original setting. Chambord is not a museum. It belongs to a Duke of Parma, a direct descendant from Louis XIV. Under Louis XVIII the estate was sold, but in 1821 three hundred thousand dollars was raised by public subscription to purchase the place for the remaining heir of the Bourbon dynasty, the Duke of Bordeaux, who accepted with the gift the t.i.tle of the Count of Chambord. But he was in exile and did not come to see his property for fifty years; even then only to write a letter renouncing his claim to the throne and to say once more good-by to France. He willed the property to the children of his sister, the d.u.c.h.ess of Parma, and it is to the next generation that it belongs to-day. Our conductor told us that the present Duke of Parma comes now and then for the shooting, which is still of the best.

We ascended to the roof, which is Chambord's chief ornament. It is an architectural garden. Such elaboration of turrets with carved leafwork and symbolism, such richness of incrustation and detail, did, in fact, suggest some fantastic and fabulous culture. If it had not been all fairly leaping with heat I should have wished to stay longer.

But I would not care to go to Chambord again. As we drove down the long drive, and turned a little for a last look at that enormous frontage, those immense low towers, that superb roof structure--all that magnificence dropped down there in a dreary level--I thought, "If ever a house was a white elephant that one is, and if one had to rename it it might well be called Francis's Folly."

I suppose it was two hours later when we had been drifting drowsily up the valley of the Loire that we stopped in a village for water. There was an old church across the way, and as usual we stepped inside, as much for the cool refreshment as for anything, expecting nothing else worth while.

How easily we might have missed the wealth we found there. We did not know the name of the village. We did not recognize Clery, even when we heard it, and the guidebook gives it just four lines. But we had been inside only a moment when we realized that the Church of Our Lady of Clery is an ancient and sacred shrine. A great tablet told us that since 1325 kings of France, sinners and saints have made pilgrimages there; Charles IV, Philippe VI, Charles VII, St. Francois Xavier, and so down the centuries to Marshal MacMahon of our own time. But to us greater than all the rest are the names of Dunois and Joan of Arc. Joan had pa.s.sed this way with her army, of course; for the moment we had forgotten that we were following her footsteps to Orleans.

The place was rich in relics. Among these the tomb of Louis XI and a column which inclosed the heart of Charles VIII. There could hardly have been a shrine in France more venerated in the past than this forgotten church by the roadside, in this forgotten village where, I suppose, tourists to-day never stop at all. It was hard to believe in the reality of our discovery, even when we stood there. But there were the tablets and inscriptions--they could not be denied.

We wandered about, finding something new and precious at every turn, until the afternoon light faded. Then we crossed a long bridge over the Loire to the larger village of Meung, where there was the Hotel St.

Jacques, one of the kind we like best and one of the best of the kind.

Chapter XXVIII

ORLeANS

There is some sight-seeing to be done in Meung, but we were too anxious to get to Orleans to stop for it. Yet we did not hurry through our last summer morning along the Loire. I do not know what could be more lovely than our leisurely hour--the distance was fifteen miles--under cool, outspreading branches, with glimpses of the bright river and vistas of happy fields.

We did not even try to imagine, as we approached the outskirts, that the Orleans of Joan's time presented anything of its appearance to-day.

Orleans is a modern, or modernized, city, and, except the river, there could hardly be anything in the present prospect that Joan saw. That it is the scene of her first military conquest and added its name to the t.i.tle by which she belongs to history is, however, enough to make it one of the holy places of France.

It has been always a military city, a place of battles. Caesar burned it, Attila attacked it, Clovis captured it--there was nearly always war of one sort or another going on there. The English and Burgundians would have had it in 1429 but for the arrival of Joan's army. Since then war has visited Orleans less frequently. Its latest experience was with the Germans who invested it in 1870-71.