IV.

Your business at Tours is to make excursions; and

if you make them all, you will be very well occupied.

Touraine is rich in antiquities; and an hour's drive

from the town in almost any direction will bring you

to the knowledge of some curious fragment of domestic

or ecclesiastical architecture, some turreted manor,

some lonely tower, some gabled village, or historic

site. Even, however, if you do everything, - which was

not my case, - you cannot hope to relate everything,

and, fortunately for you, the excursions divide them-

selves into the greater and the less. You may achieve

most of the greater in a week or two; but a summer

in Touraine (which, by the way must be a charming

thing) would contain none too many days for the others.

If you come down to Tours from Paris, your best

economy is to spend a few days at Blois, where a

clumsy, but rather attractive little inn, on the edge of

the river, will offer you a certain amount of that

familiar and intermittent hospitality which a few weeks

spent in the French provinces teaches you to regard

as the highest attainable form of accommodation. Such

an economy I was unable to practise. I could only go

to Blois (from Tours) to spend the day; but this feat

I accomplished twice over. It is a very sympathetic

little town, as we say nowadays, and one might easily

resign one's self to a week there. Seated on the north

bank of the Loire, it presents a bright, clean face to

the sun, and has that aspect of cheerful leisure which

belongs to all white towns that reflect, themselves in

shining waters. It is the water-front only of Blois,

however, that exhibits, this fresh complexion; the in-

terior is of a proper brownness, as befits a signally

historic city. The only disappointment I had there

was the discovery that the castle, which is the special

object of one's pilgrimage, does not overhang the river,

as I had always allowed myself to understand. It

overhangs the town, but it is scarcely visible from the

stream. That peculiar good fortune is reserved for

Amboise and Chaurnont.

The Chateau de Blois is one of the most beautiful

and elaborate of all the old royal residences of this

part of France, and I suppose it should have all the

honors of my description. As you cross its threshold,

you step straight into the brilliant movement of the

French Renaissance. But it is too rich to describe, -

I can only touch it here and there. It must be pre-

mised that in speaking of it as one sees it to-day,

one speaks of a monument unsparingly restored. The

work of restoration has been as ingenious as it is pro-

fuse, but it rather chills the imagination. This is

perhaps almost the first thing you feel as you ap-

proach the castle from the streets of the town. These

little streets, as they, leave the river, have pretensions

to romantic steepness; one of them, indeed, which

resolves itself into a high staircase with divergent

wings (the _escalier monumental_), achieved this result

so successfully as to remind me vaguely - I hardly

know why - of the great slope of the Capitol, beside

the Ara Coeli, at Rome. The view of that part of the

castle which figures to-day as the back (it is the only

aspect I had seen reproduced) exhibits the marks of

restoration with the greatest assurance. The long

facade, consisting only of balconied windows deeply

recessed, erects itself on the summit of a considerable

hill, which gives a fine, plunging movement to its

foundations. The deep niches of the windows are all

aglow with color. They have been repainted with red

and blue, relieved with gold figures; and each of them

looks more like the royal box at a theatre than like

the aperture of a palace dark with memories. For all

this, however, and in spite of the fact that, as in some

others of the chateaux of Touraine, (always excepting

the colossal Chambord, which is not in Touraine!)

there is less vastness than one had expected, the least

hospitable aspect of Blois is abundantly impressive.

Here, as elsewhere, lightness and grace are the key-

note; and the recesses of the windows, with their

happy proportions, their sculpture, and their color, are

the empty frames of brilliant pictures. They need

the figure of a Francis I. to complete them, or of a

Diane de Poitiers, or even of a Henry III. The base

of this exquisite structure emerges from a bed of light

verdure, which has been allowed to mass itself there,

and which contributes to the springing look of the

walls; while on the right it joins the most modern

portion of the castle, - the building erected, on founda-

tions of enormous height and solidity, in 1635, by

Gaston d'Orleans. This fine, frigid mansion - the proper

view of it is from the court within - is one of the

masterpieces of Francois Mansard, whom. a kind pro-

vidence did not allow to make over the whole palace

in the superior manner of his superior age. This had

been a part of Gaston's plan, - he was a blunderer

born, and this precious project was worthy of him.

This execution of it would surely have been one of

the great misdeeds of history. Partially performed,

the misdeed is not altogether to be regretted; for as

one stands in the court of the castle, and lets one's

eye wander from the splendid wing of Francis I. -

which is the last work of free and joyous invention -

to the ruled lines and blank spaces of the ponderous

pavilion of Mansard, one makes one's reflections upon

the advantage, in even the least personaI of the arts,

of having something to say, and upon the stupidity of

a taste which had ended by becoming an aggregation

of negatives. Gaston's wing, taken by itself, has much

of the _bel air_ which was to belong to the architecture

of Louis XIV.; but, taken in contrast to its flowering,

laughing, living neighbor, it marks the difference be-

tween inspiration and calculation. We scarcely grudge

it its place, however, for it adds a price to the rest of

the chateau.

We have entered the court, by the way, by jump-

ing over the walls. The more orthodox method is to

follow a modern, terrace, which leads to the left, from

the side of the chateau that I began by speaking of,

and passes round, ascending, to a little square on a

considerably higher level, which is not, like a very

modern square on which the back (as I have called

it) looks out, a thoroughfare. This small, empty _place,_

oblong in form, at once bright and quiet, with a cer-

tain grass-grown look, offers an excellent setting to the

entrance-front of the palace, - the wing of Louis XII.

The restoration here has been lavish; but it was per-

haps but an inevitable reaction against the injuries,

still more lavish, by which the unfortunate building

had long been overwhelmed. It had fallen into a state

of ruinous neglect, relieved only by the misuse pro-

ceeding from successive generations of soldiers, for

whom its charming chambers served as barrack-room.

Whitewashed, mutilated, dishonored, the castle of Blois

may be said to have escaped simply with its life. This

is the history of Amboise as well, and is to a certain

extent the history of Chambord. Delightful, at any

rate, was the refreshed facade of Louis XII. as I stood

and looked at it one bright September morning. In

that soft, clear, merry light of Touraine, everything

shows, everything speaks. Charming are the taste, the

happy proportions, the color of this beautiful front, to

which the new feeling for a purely domestic architec-

ture - an architecture of security and tranquillity, in

which art could indulge itself - gave an air of youth

and gladness. It is true that for a long time to come

the castle of Blois was neither very safe nor very

quiet; but its dangers came from within, from the evil

passions of its inhabitants, and not from siege or in-

vasion. The front of Louis XII. is of red brick, crossed

here and there with purple; and the purple slate of

the high roof, relieved with chimneys beautifully

treated, and with the embroidered caps of pinnacles

and arches, with the porcupine of Louis, the ermine

and the festooned rope which formed the devices of

Anne of Brittany, - the tone of this rich-looking roof

carries out the mild glow of the wall. The wide, fair

windows look as if they had expanded to let in the

rosy dawn of the Renaissance. Charming, for that

matter, are the windows of all the chateaux of Touraine,

with their squareness corrected (as it is not in the

Tudor architecture) by the curve of the upper corners,

which makes this line look - above the expressive

aperture - like a pencilled eyebrow. The low door of

this front is crowned by a high, deep niche, in which,

under a splendid canopy, stiffly astride of a stiffly

draped charger, sits in profile an image of the good

King Louis. Good as he had been, - the father of

his people, as he was called (I believe he remitted

various taxes), - he was not good enough to pass

muster at the Revolution; and the effigy I have just

described is no more than a reproduction of the

primitive statue demolished at that period.

Pass beneath it into the court, and the sixteenth

century closes round you. It is a pardonable flight

of fancy to say that the expressive faces of an age

in which human passions lay very near the surface

seem to look out at you from the windows, from the

balconies, from the thick foliage of the sculpture. The

portion of the wing of Louis XII. that looks toward

the court is supported on a deep arcade. On your

right is the wing erected by Francis I., the reverse of

the mass of building which you see on approaching

the castle. This exquisite, this extravagant, this trans-

cendent piece of architecture is the most joyous ut-

terance of the French Renaissance. It is covered with

an embroidery of sculpture, in which every detail is

worthy of the hand of a goldsmith. In the middle of

it, or rather a little to the left, rises the famous wind-

ing staircase (plausibly, but I believe not religiously,

restored), which even the ages which most misused it

must vaguely have admired. It forms a kind of chiselled

cylinder, with wide interstices, so that the stairs are

open to the air. Every inch of this structure, of its

balconies, its pillars, its great central columns, is

wrought over with lovely images, strange and ingenious

devices, prime among which is the great heraldic sala-

mander of Francis I. The salamander is everywhere

at Blois, - over the chimneys, over the doors, on the

walls. This whole quarter , of the castle bears the

stamp of that eminently pictorial prince. The run-

ning cornice along the top of the front is like all un-

folded, an elongated, bracelet. The windows of the

attic are like shrines for saints. The gargoyles, the

medallions, the statuettes, the festoons, are like the

elaboration of some precious cabinet rather than the

details of a building exposed to the weather and to

the ages. In the interior there is a profusion of res-

toration, and it is all restoration in color. This has

been, evidently, a work of great energy and cost, but

it will easily strike you as overdone. The universal

freshness is a discord, a false note; it seems to light

up the dusky past with an unnatural glare. Begun in

the reign of Louis Philippe, this terrible process - the

more terrible always the more you admit that it has

been necessary - has been carried so far that there is

now scarcely a square inch of the interior that has the

color of the past upon it. It is true that the place

had been so coated over with modern abuse that

something was needed to keep it alive; it is only, per-

haps, a pity that the restorers, not content with saving

its life, should have undertaken to restore its youth.

The love of consistency, in such a business, is a

dangerous lure. All the old apartments have been

rechristened, as it were; the geography of the castle

has been re-established. The guardrooms, the bed-

rooms, the closets, the oratories, have recovered their

identity. Every spot connected with the murder of

the Duke of Guise is pointed out by a small, shrill

boy, who takes you from room to room, and who has

learned his lesson in perfection. The place is full of

Catherine de' Medici, of Henry III., of memories, of

ghosts, of echoes, of possible evocations and revivals.

It is covered with crimson and gold. The fireplaces

and the ceilings are magnificent; they look like ex-

pensive "sets" at the grand opera.

I should have mentioned that below, in the court,

the front of the wing of Gaston d'Orleans faces you

as you enter, so that the place is a course of French

history. Inferior in beauty and grace to the other

portions of the castle, the wing is yet a nobler monu-

ment than the memory of Gaston deserves. The second

of the sons of Henry IV., - who was no more fortunate as

a father than as a husband, - younger brother of Louis

XIII., and father of the great Mademoiselle, the most

celebrated, most ambitious, most self-complacent, and

most unsuccessful _fille a marier_ in French history,

passed in enforced retirement at the castle of Blois

the close of a life of clumsy intrigues against Cardinal

Richelieu, in which his rashness was only equalled by

his pusillanimity and his ill-luck by his inaccessibility

to correction, and which, after so many follies and

shames, was properly summed up in the project - be-

gun, but not completed - of demolishing the beautiful

habitation of his exile in order to erect a better one.

With Gaston d'Orleans, however, who lived there with-

out dignity, the history of the Chateau de Blois de-

clines. Its interesting period is that of the wars of

religion. It was the chief residence of Henry III., and

the scene of the principal events of his depraved and

dramatic reign. It has been restored more than enough,

as I have said, by architects and decorators; the visitor,

as he moves through its empty rooms, which are at

once brilliant and ill-lighted (they have not been re-

furnished), undertakes a little restoration of his own.

His imagination helps itself from the things that re-

main; he tries to see the life of the sixteenth century

in its form and dress, - its turbulence, its passions, its

loves and hates, its treacheries, falsities, touches of

faith, its latitude of personal development, its presen-

tation of the whole nature, its nobleness of costume,

charm of speech, splendor of taste, unequalled pic-

turesqueness. The picture is full of movement, of

contrasted light and darkness, full altogether of abomi-

nations. Mixed up with them all is the great name of

religion, so that the drama wants nothing to make it

complete. What episode was ever more perfect - looked

at as a dramatic occurrence - than the murder of the

Duke of Guise? The insolent prosperity of the victim;

the weakness, the vices, the terrors, of the author of

the deed; the perfect execution of the plot; the accu-

mulation of horror in what followed it, - give it, as a

crime, a kind of immortal solidity.

But we must not take the Chateau de Blois too

hard: I went there, after all, by way of entertainment.

If among these sinister memories your visit should

threaten to prove a tragedy, there is an excellent way

of removing the impression. You may treat yourself

at Blois to a very cheerful afterpiece. There is a

charming industry practised there, and practised in

charming conditions. Follow the bright little quay

down the river till you get quite out of the town, and

reach the point where the road beside the Loire be-

comes sinuous and attractive, turns the corner of dimi-

nutive headlands, and makes you wonder what is be-

yond. Let not your curiosity induce you, however, to

pass by a modest white villa which overlooks the

stream, enclosed in a fresh little court; for here dwells

an artist, - an artist in faience. There is no sort of

sign, and the place looks peculiarly private. But if

you ring at the gate, you will not be turned away.

You will, on the contrary, be ushered upstairs into a

parlor - there is nothing resembling a shop- encum-

bered with specimens - of remarkably handsome pottery.

The work is of the best, - a careful reproduction of

old forms, colors, devices; and the master of the

establishment is one of those completely artistic types

that are often found in France. His reception is as

friendly as his work is ingenious; and I think it is not

too much to say that you like the work the better be-

cause he has produced it. His vases, cups and jars,

lamps, platters, _plaques,_ with their brilliant glaze, their

innumerable figures, their family likeness, and wide

variations, are scattered, through his occupied rooms;

they serve at once as his stock-in-trade and as house-

hold ornament. As we all know, this is an age of

prose, of machinery, of wholesale production, of coarse

and hasty processes. But one brings away from the

establishment of the very intelligent M. Ulysse the

sense of a less eager activity and a greater search for

perfection. He has but a few workmen, and he gives

them plenty of time. The place makes a little vignette,

leaves an impression, - the quiet white house in its

garden on the road by the wide, clear river, without

the smoke, the bustle, the ugliness, of so much of our

modern industry. It ought to gratify Mr. Ruskin.