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 gods.
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 circumference 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 Petit 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 passing in a
looking-glass 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,
unobtrusive 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 noble 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, Bastard 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!