CHÂTEAU DE CHAMBORD.
We walked through the empty galleries and deserted rooms where spiders
spin their cobwebs over the salamanders of Francis the First. One is
overcome by a feeling of distress at the sight of this poverty which has
no grandeur. It is not absolute ruin, with the luxury of blackened and
mouldy débris, the delicate embroidery of flowers, and the drapery of
waving vines undulating in the breeze, like pieces of damask. It is a
conscious poverty, for it brushes its threadbare coat and endeavours to
appear respectable. The floor has been repaired in one room, while in
the next it has been allowed to rot. It shows the futile effort to
preserve that which is dying and to bring back that which has fled.
Strange to say, it is all very melancholy, but not at all imposing.
And then it seems as if everything had contributed to injure poor
Chambord, designed by Le Primatice and chiselled and sculptured by
Germain Pilon and Jean Cousin. Upreared by Francis the First, on his
return from Spain, after the humiliating treaty of Madrid (1526), it is
the monument of a pride that sought to dazzle itself in order to forget
defeat. It first harbours Gaston d'Orléans, a crushed pretender, who is
exiled within its walls; then it is Louis XIV, who, out of one floor,
builds three, thus ruining the beautiful double staircase which extended
without interruption from the top to the bottom. Then one day, on the
second floor, facing the front, under the magnificent ceiling covered
with salamanders and painted ornaments which are now crumbling away,
Molière produced for the first time _Le Bourgeois gentilhomme_. Then it
was given to the Maréchal de Saxe; then to the Polignacs, and finally to
a plain soldier, Berthier. It was afterwards bought back by subscription
and presented to the Duc de Bordeaux. It has been given to everybody, as
if nobody cared to have it or desired to keep it. It looks as if it had
hardly ever been used, and as if it had always been too spacious. It is
like a deserted hostelry where transient guests have not left even their
names on the walls.
When we walked through an outside gallery to the Orléans staircase, in
order to examine the caryatids which are supposed to represent Francis
the First, M. de Chateaubriand, and Madame d'Étampes, and turned around
the celebrated lantern that terminates the big staircase, we stuck our
heads several times through the railing to look down. In the courtyard
was a little donkey nursing its mother, rubbing up against her, shaking
its long ears and playfully jumping around. This is what we found in the
court of honour of the Château de Chambord; these are its present hosts:
a dog rolling in the grass, and a nursing, braying donkey frolicking on
the threshold of kings!
CHÂTEAU D'AMBOISE.
The Château d'Amboise, which dominates the whole city that appears to be
thrown at its feet like a mass of pebbles at the foot of a rock, looks
like an imposing fortress, with its large towers pierced by long, narrow
windows; its arched gallery that extends from the one to the other, and
the brownish tint of its walls, darkened by the contrast of the flowers,
which droop over them like a nodding plume on the bronzed forehead of an
old soldier. We spent fully a quarter of an hour admiring the tower on
the left; it is superb, imbrowned and yellowish in some places and
coated with soot in others; it has charming charlocks hanging from its
battlements, and is, in a word, one of those speaking monuments that
seem to breathe and hold one spellbound and pensive under their gaze,
like those paintings, the originals of which are unknown to us, but whom
we love without knowing why.
The Château is reached by a slight incline which leads to a garden
elevated like a terrace, from which the view extends on the whole
surrounding country. It was of a delicate green; poplar trees lined the
banks of the river; the meadows advanced to its edge, mingling their
grey border with the bluish and vapourous horizon, vaguely enclosed by
indistinct hills. The Loire flowed in the middle, bathing its islands,
wetting the edge of the meadows, turning the wheels of the mills and
letting the big boats glide peacefully, two by two, over its silvery
surface, lulled to sleep by the creaking of the heavy rudders; and in
the distance two big white sails gleamed in the sun.
Birds flew from the tops of the towers and the edge of the
machicolations to some other spot, described circles in the air,
chirped, and soon passed out of sight. About a hundred feet below us
were the pointed roofs of the city, the empty courtyards of the old
mansions, and the black holes of the smoky chimneys. Leaning in the
niche of a battlement, we gazed and listened, and breathed it all in,
enjoying the beautiful sunshine and balmy air impregnated with the
pungent odour of the ruins. And there, without thinking of anything in
particular, without even phrasing inwardly about something, I dreamed of
coats of mail as pliable as gloves, of shields of buffalo hide soaked
with sweat, of closed visors through which shot bloodthirsty glances, of
wild and desperate night attacks with torches that set fire to the
walls, and hatchets that mutilated the bodies; and of Louis XI, of the
lover's war, of D'Aubigné and of the charlocks, the birds, the polished
ivy, the denuded brambles, tasting in my pensive and idle occupation--what
is greatest in men, their memory;--and what is most beautiful in nature,
her ironical encroachments and eternal youth.
In the garden, among the lilac-bushes and the shrubs that droop over the
alleys, rises the chapel, a work of the sixteenth century, chiselled at
every angle, a perfect jewel, even more intricately decorated inside
than out, cut out like the paper covering of a _bonbonnière_, and
cunningly sculptured like the handle of a Chinese parasol. On the door
is a _bas-relief_ which is very amusing and ingenuous. It represents the
meeting of Saint Hubert with the mystic stag, which bears a cross
between its antlers. The saint is on his knees; above him hovers an
angel who is about to place a crown on his cap; near them stands the
saint's horse, watching the scene with a surprised expression; the dogs
are barking and on the mountain, the sides and facets of which are cut
to represent crystals, creeps the serpent. You can see its flat head
advancing toward some leafless trees that look like cauliflowers. They
are the sort of trees one comes upon in old Bibles, spare of foliage,
thick and clumsy, bearing blossoms and fruit but no leaves; the
symbolical, theological, and devout trees that are almost fantastical on
account of their impossible ugliness. A little further, Saint
Christopher is carrying Jesus on his shoulders; Saint Antony is in his
cell, which is built on a rock; a pig is retiring into its hole and
shows only its hind-quarters and its corkscrew tail, while a rabbit is
sticking its head out of its house.
Of course, it is all a little clumsy and the moulding is not faultless.
But there is so much life and movement about the figure and the animals,
so much charm in the details, that one would give a great deal to be
able to carry it away and take it home.
Inside of the Château, the insipid Empire style is reproduced in every
apartment. Almost every room is adorned with busts of Louis-Philippe and
Madame Adélaïde. The present reigning family has a craze for being
portrayed on canvas. It is the bad taste of a parvenu, the mania of a
grocer who has accumulated money and who enjoys seeing himself in red,
white, and yellow, with his watch-charms dangling over his stomach, his
bewhiskered chin and his children gathered around him.
On one of the towers, and in spite of the most ordinary common sense,
they have built a glass rotunda which is used for a dining-room. True,
the view from it is magnificent. But the building presents so shocking
an appearance from the outside, that one would, I should think, prefer
to see nothing of the environs, or else to eat in the kitchen.
In order to go back to the city, we came down by a tower that was used
by carriages to approach the Château. The sloping gravelled walk turns
around a stone axle like the steps of a staircase. The arch is dark and
lighted only by the rays that creep through the loop-holes. The columns
on which the interior end of the vault rests, are decorated with
grotesque or vulgar subjects. A dogmatic intention seems to have
presided over their composition. It would be well for travellers to
begin the inspection at the bottom, with the _Aristoteles equitatus_ (a
subject which has already been treated on one of the choir statues in
the Cathedral of Rouen) and reach by degrees a pair embracing in the
manner which both Lucretius and _l'Amour Conjugal_ have recommended. The
greater part of the intermediary subjects have been removed, to the
despair of seekers of comical things, like ourselves; they have been
removed in cold blood, with deliberate intent, for the sake of decency,
and because, as one of the servants of his Majesty informed us
convincingly, "a great many were improper for the lady visitors to see."
CHÂTEAU DE CHENONCEAUX.
A something of infinite suavity and aristocratic serenity pervades the
Château de Chenonceaux. It is situated outside of the village, which
keeps at a respectful distance. It can be seen through a large avenue of
trees, and is enclosed by woods and an extensive park with beautiful
lawns. Built on the water, it proudly uprears its turrets and its square
chimneys. The Cher flows below, and murmurs at the foot of its arches,
the pointed corners of which form eddies in the tide. It is all very
peaceful and charming, graceful yet robust. Its calm is not wearying and
its melancholy has no tinge of bitterness.
One enters through the end of a long, arched hallway, which used to be a
fencing-room. It is decorated with some armours, which, in spite of the
obvious necessity of their presence, do not shock one's taste or appear
out of place. The whole scheme of interior decoration is tastefully
carried out; the furniture and hangings of the period have been
preserved and cared for intelligently. The great, venerable mantel-pieces
of the sixteenth century do not shelter the hideous and economical German
stoves, which might easily be hidden in some of them.
In the kitchen, situated in a wing of the castle, which we visited
later, a maid was peeling vegetables and a scullion was washing dishes,
while the cook was standing in front of the stove, superintending a
reasonable number of shining saucepans. It was all very delightful, and
bespoke the idle and intelligent home life of a gentleman. I like the
owners of Chenonceaux.
In fact, have you not often seen charming old paintings that make you
gaze at them indefinitely, because they portray the period in which
their owners lived, the ballets in which the farthingales of all those
beautiful pink ladies whirled around, and the sword-thrusts which those
noblemen gave each other with their rapiers? Here are some temptations
of history. One would like to know whether those people loved as we do,
and what difference existed between their passions and our own. One
would like them to open their lips and tell their history, tell us
everything they used to do, no matter how futile, and what their cares
and pleasures used to be. It is an irritating and seductive curiosity, a
dreamy desire for knowledge, such as one feels regarding the past life
of a mistress.... But they are deaf to the questions our eyes put to
them, they remain dumb and motionless in their wooden frames, and we
pass on. The moths attack their canvases, but the latter are
revarnished; and the pictures will smile on when we are buried and
forgotten. And others will come and gaze upon them, till the day they
crumble to dust; then people will dream in the same old way before our
own likenesses, and ask themselves what used to happen in our day, and
whether life was not more alluring then.
I should not have spoken again of those handsome dames, if the large,
full-length portrait of Madame Deshoulières, in an elaborate white
_dêshabille_, (it was really a fine picture, and, like the much decried
and seldom read efforts of the poetess, better at the second look than
at the first), had not reminded me, by the expression of the mouth,
which is large, full, and sensual, of the peculiar coarseness of Madame
de Staël's portrait by Gérard. When I saw it two years ago, at Coppet,
in bright sunshine, I could not help being impressed by those red,
vinous lips and the wide, aspiring nostrils. George Sand's face offers a
similar peculiarity. In all those women who were half masculine,
spirituality revealed itself only in the eyes. All the rest remained
material.
In point of amusing incidents, there is still at Chenonceaux, in Diane
de Poitiers's room, the wide canopy bedstead of the royal favourite,
done in white and red. If it belonged to me, it would be very hard for
me not to use it once in a while. To sleep in the bed of Diane de
Poitiers, even though it be empty, is worth as much as sleeping in that
of many more palpable realities. Moreover, has it not been said that all
the pleasure in these things was only imagination? Then, can you
conceive of the peculiar and historical voluptuousness, for one who
possesses some imagination, to lay his head on the pillow that belonged
to the mistress of Francis the First, and to stretch his limbs on her
mattress? (Oh! how willingly I would give all the women in the world for
the mummy of Cleopatra!) But I would not dare to touch, for fear of
breaking them, the porcelains belonging to Catherine de Médicis, in the
dining-room, nor place my foot in the stirrup of Francis the First, for
fear it might remain there, nor put my lips to the mouth-piece of the
huge trumpet in the fencing-room, for fear of rupturing my lungs.