CHÂTEAU DE CLISSON.
On a hill at the foot of which two rivers mingle their waters, in a
fresh landscape, brightened by the light colours of the inclined roofs,
that are grouped like many sketches of Hubert, near a waterfall that
turns the wheel of a mill hidden among the leaves, the Château de
Clisson raises its battered roof above the tree-tops. Everything around
it is calm and peaceful. The little dwellings seem to smile as if they
had been built under softer skies; the waters sing their song, and
patches of moss cover a stream over which hang graceful clusters of
foliage. The horizon extends on one side into a tapering perspective of
meadows, while on the other it rises abruptly and is enclosed by a
wooded valley, the trees of which crowd together and form a green ocean.
After one crosses the bridge and arrives at the steep path which leads
to the Château, one sees, standing upreared and bold on the moat on
which it is built, a formidable wall, crowned with battered
machicolations and bedecked with trees and ivy, the luxuriant growth of
which covers the grey stones and sways in the wind, like an immense
green veil which the recumbent giant moves dreamily across his
shoulders. The grass is tall and dark, the plants are strong and hardy;
the trunks of the ivy are twisted, knotted, and rough, and lift up the
walls as with levers or hold them in the network of their branches. In
one spot, a tree has grown through the wall horizontally, and, suspended
in the air, has let its branches radiate around it. The moats, the steep
slope of which is broken by the earth which has detached itself from the
embankments and the stones which have fallen from the battlements, have
a wide, deep curve, like hatred and pride; and the portal, with its
strong, slightly arched ogive, and its two bays that raise the
drawbridge, looks like a great helmet with holes in its visor.
When one enters, he is surprised and astonished at the wonderful mixture
of ruins and trees, the ruins accentuating the freshness of the trees,
while the latter in turn, render more poignant the melancholy of the
ruins. Here, indeed, is the beautiful, eternal, and brilliant laughter
of nature over the skeleton of things; here is the insolence of her
wealth and the deep grace of her encroachments, and the melodious
invasions of her silence. A grave and pensive enthusiasm fills one's
soul; one feels that the sap flows in the trees and that the grass grows
with the same strength and the same rhythm, as the stones crumble and
the walls cave in. A sublime art, in the supreme accord of secondary
discordances, has contrasted the unruly ivy with the sinuous sweep of
the ruins, the brambles with the heaps of crumbling stones, the
clearness of the atmosphere with the strong projections of the masses,
the colour of the sky with the colour of the earth, reflecting each one
in the other: that which was, and that which is. Thus history and nature
always reveal, though they may accomplish it in a circumscribed spot of
the world, the unceasing relation, the eternal hymen of dying humanity
and the growing daisy; of the stars that glow, and the men who expire,
of the heart that beats and the wave that rises. And this is so clearly
indicated here, is so overwhelming, that one shudders inwardly, as if
this dual life centred in one's own body; so brutal and immediate is the
perception of these harmonies and developments. For the eye also has its
orgies and the mind its delights.
At the foot of two large trees, the trunks of which are intersected, a
stream of light floods the grass and seems like a luminous river,
brightening the solitude. Overhead, a dome of leaves, through which one
can see the sky presenting a vivid contrast of blue, reverberates a
bright, greenish light, which illuminates the ruins, accentuating the
deep furrows, intensifying the shadows, and disclosing all the hidden
beauties. You advance and walk between those walls and under the trees,
wander along the barbicans, pass under the falling arcades from which
spring large, waving plants. The vaults, which contain corpses, echo
under your footfalls; lizards run in the grass, beetles creep along the
walls, the sky is blue, and the sleepy ruins pursue their dream.
With its triple enclosure, its dungeons, its interior court-yards, its
machicolations, its underground passages, its ramparts piled one upon
the other, like a bark on a bark and a shield on a shield, the ancient
Château of the Clissons rises before your mind and is reconstructed. The
memory of past existences exudes from its walls with the emanations of
the nettles and the coolness of the ivy. In that castle, men altogether
different from us were swayed by passions stronger than ours; their
hands were brawnier and their chests broader.
Long black streaks still mark the walls, as in the time when logs blazed
in the eighteen-foot fireplaces. Symmetrical holes in the masonry
indicate the floors to which one ascended by winding staircases now
crumbling in ruins, while their empty doors open into space. Sometimes a
bird, taking flight from its nest hanging in the branches, would pass
with spread wings through the arch of a window, and fly far away into
the country.
At the top of a high, bleak wall, several square bay-windows, of unequal
length and position, let the pure sky shine through their crossed bars;
and the bright blue, framed by the stone, attracted my eye with
surprising persistency. The sparrows in the trees were chirping, and in
the midst of it all a cow, thinking, no doubt, that it was a meadow,
grazed peacefully, her horns sweeping over the grass.
There is a window, a large window that looks out into a meadow called
_la prairie des chevaliers_. It was there, from a stone bench carved in
the wall, that the high-born dames of the period watched the knights
urge their iron-barbed steeds against one another, and the lances come
down on the helmets and snap, and the men fall to the ground. On a fine
summer day, like to-day, perhaps, when the mill that enlivens the whole
landscape did not exist, when there were roofs on the walls, and Flemish
hangings, and oil-cloths on the window-sills, when there was less grass,
and when human voices and rumours filled the air, more than one heart
beat with love and anguish under its red velvet bodice. Beautiful white
hands twitched with fear on the stone, which is now covered with moss,
and the embroidered veils of high caps fluttered in the wind that plays
with my cravat and that swayed the plumes of the knights.
We went down into the vaults where Jean V was imprisoned. In the men's
dungeon we saw the large double hook that was used for executions; and
we touched curiously with our fingers the door of the women's prison. It
is about four inches thick and is plated with heavy iron bars. In the
middle is a little grating that was used to throw in whatever was
necessary to prevent the captive from starving. It was this grating
which opened instead of the door, which, being the mouth of the most
terrible confessions, was one of those that always closed but never
opened. In those days there was real hatred. If you hated a person, and
he had been kidnapped by surprise or traitorously trapped in an
interview, and was in your power, you could torture him at your own
sweet will. Every minute, every hour, you could delight in his anguish
and drink his tears. You could go down into his cell and speak to him
and bargain with him, laugh at his tortures, and discuss his ransom; you
could live on and off him, through his slowly ebbing life and his
plundered treasures. Your whole castle, from the top of the towers to
the bottom of the trenches, weighed on him, crushing, and burying him;
and thus family revenges were accomplished by the family itself, a fact
which constituted their potency and symbolised the idea.
Sometimes, however, when the wretched prisoner was an aristocrat and a
wealthy man, and he near death, and one was tired of him, and his tears
had acted upon the hatred of his master like refreshing bleedings, there
was talk of releasing him. The captive promised everything; he would
return the fortified towns, hand over the keys to his best cities, give
his daughter in marriage, endow churches and journey on foot to the Holy
Sepulchre. And money! Money! Why, he would have more of it coined by the
Jews! Then the treaty would be signed and dated and counter-signed; the
relics would be brought forth to be sworn on, and the prisoner would be
a free man once more. He would jump on his horse, gallop away, and when
he reached home he would order the drawbridge hoisted, call his vassals
together, and take down his sword from the wall. His hatred would find
an outlet in terrific explosions of wrath. It was the time of frightful
passions and victorious rages. The oath? The Pope would free him from
it, and the ransom he simply ignored.
When Clisson was imprisoned in the Château de l'Hermine, he promised for
his freedom a hundred thousand francs' worth of gold, the restitution of
the towns belonging to the duke of Penthièvre, and the cancelling of his
daughter Marguerite's betrothal to the Duke of Penthièvre. But as soon
as he was set free, he began by attacking Chateladren, Guingamp,
Lamballe and St. Malo, which cities either were taken or they
capitulated. But the people of Brittany paid for the fun.
When Jean V. was captured by the Count of Penthièvre at the bridge of
Loroux, he promised a ransom of one million; he promised his eldest
daughter, who was already betrothed to the King of Sicily. He promised
Montcontour, Sesson and Jugan, etc., but he gave neither his daughter
nor the money, nor the cities. He had promised to go to the Holy
Sepulchre. He acquitted himself of this by proxy. He had taken an oath
that he would no longer levy taxes and subsidies. The Pope freed him
from this pledge. He had promised to give Nôtre-Dame de Nantes his
weight in gold; but as he weighed nearly two hundred pounds, he remained
greatly indebted. With all that he was able to pick up or snatch away,
he quickly formed a league and compelled the house of Penthièvre to buy
the peace which they had sold to him.
On the other side of the Sèvre, a forest covers the hill with its fresh,
green maze of trees; it is _La Garenne_, a park that is beautiful in
itself, in spite of the artificial embellishments that have been
introduced. M. Semot, (the father of the present owner), was a painter
of the Empire and a laureate, and he tried to reproduce to the best of
his ability that cold Italian, republican, Roman style, which was so
popular in the time of Canova and of Madame de Staël. In those days
people were inclined to be pompous and noble. They used to place
chiselled urns on graves and paint everybody in a flowing cloak, and
with long hair; then Corinne sang to the accompaniment of her lyre
beside Oswald, who wore Russian boots; and it was thought proper to have
everybody's head adorned with a profusion of dishevelled locks and to
have a multitude of ruins in every landscape.
This style of embellishment abounds throughout La Garenne. There is a
temple erected to Vesta, and directly opposite it another erected to
Friendship....
Inscriptions, artificial rocks, factitious ruins, are scattered
lavishly, with artlessness and conviction.... But the poetical riches
centre in the grotto of Héloïse, a sort of natural dolmen on the bank of
the Sèvre.
Why have people made Héloïse, who was such a great and noble figure,
appear commonplace and silly, the prototype of all crossed loves and the
narrow ideal of sentimental schoolgirls? The unfortunate mistress of the
great Abélard deserved a better fate, for she loved him with devoted
admiration, although he was hard and taciturn at times and spared her
neither bitterness nor blows. She dreaded offending him more than she
dreaded offending God, and strove harder to please him. She did not wish
him to marry her, because she thought that "it was wrong and deplorable
that the one whom nature had created for all ... should be appropriated
by one woman." She found, she said, "more happiness in the appellation
of mistress or concubine, than in that of wife or empress," and by
humiliating herself in him, she hoped to gain a stronger hold over his
heart.
* * * * *
The park is really delightful. Alleys wind through the woods and
clusters of trees bend over the meandering stream. You can hear the
bubbling water and feel the coolness of the foliage. If we were
irritated by the bad taste displayed here, it was because we had just
left Clisson, which has a real, simple, and solid beauty, and after all,
this bad taste is not that of our contemporaries. But what is, in fact,
bad taste? Invariably it is the taste of the period which has preceded
ours. Bad taste at the time of Ronsard was represented by Marot; at the
time of Boileau, by Ronsard; at the time of Voltaire, by Corneille, and
by Voltaire in the day of Chateaubriand, whom many people nowadays begin
to think a trifle weak. O men of taste in future centuries, let me
recommend you the men of taste of to-day! You will laugh at their
cramps, their superb disdain, their preference for veal and milk, and
the faces they make when underdone meat and too ardent poetry is served
to them. Everything that is beautiful will then appear ugly; everything
that is graceful, stupid; everything that is rich, poor; and oh! how our
delightful boudoirs, our charming salons, our exquisite costumes, our
palpitating plays, our interesting novels, our serious books will all be
consigned to the garret or be used for old paper and manure! O
posterity, above all things do not forget our gothic salons, our
Renaissance furniture, M. Pasquier's discourses, the shape of our hats,
and the aesthetics of _La Revue des Deux Mondes!_
While we were pondering upon these lofty philosophical considerations,
our wagon had hauled us over to Tiffanges. Seated side by side in a sort
of tin tub, our weight crushed the tiny horse, which swayed to and fro
between the shafts. It was like the twitching of an eel in the body of a
musk-rat. Going down hill pushed him forward, going up hill pulled him
backward, while uneven places in the road threw him from side to side,
and the wind and the whip lashed him alternately. The poor brute! I
cannot think of him now without a certain feeling of remorse.
The road down hill is curved and its edges are covered with clumps of
sea-rushes or large patches of a certain reddish moss. To the right, on
an eminence that starts from the bottom of the dale and swells in the
middle like the carapace of a tortoise, one perceives high, unequal
walls, the crumbling tops of which appear one above another.
One follows a hedge, climbs a path, and enters an open portal which has
sunken into the ground to the depth of one third of its ogive. The men
who used to pass through it on horseback would be obliged to bend over
their saddles in order to enter it to-day. When the earth is tired of
supporting a monument, it swells up underneath it, creeps up to it like
a wave, and while the sky causes the top to crumble away, the ground
obliterates the foundations. The courtyard was deserted and the calm
water that filled the moats remained motionless and flat under the
pond-lilies.
The sky was white and cloudless, but without sunshine. Its bleak curve
extended far away, covering the country with a cold and cheerless
monotony. Not a sound could be heard, the birds did not sing, even the
horizon was mute, and from the empty furrows came neither the scream of
the crows as they soar heavenward, nor the soft creaking of plough-wheels.
We climbed down through brambles and underbrush into a deep and dark
trench, hidden at the foot of a large tower, which stands in the water
surrounded by reeds. A lone window opens on one side: a dark square
relieved by the grey line of its stone cross-bar. A capricious cluster
of wild honeysuckle covers the sill, and its maze of perfumed blossoms
creeps along the walls. When one looks up, the openings of the big
machicolations reveal only a part of the sky, or some little, unknown
flower which has nestled in the battlement, its seed having been wafted
there on a stormy day and left to sprout in the cracks of the stones.
Presently, a long, balmy breeze swept over us like a sigh, and the trees
in the moats, the moss on the stones, the reeds in the water, the plants
among the ruins, and the ivy, which covered the tower from top to bottom
with a layer of shining leaves, all trembled and shook their foliage;
the corn in the fields rippled in endless waves that again and again
bent the swaying tops of the ears; the pond wrinkled and welled up
against the foot of the tower; the leaves of the ivy all quivered at
once, and an apple-tree in bloom covered the ground with pink blossoms.
Nothing, nothing! The open sky, the growing grass, the passing wind. No
ragged child tending a browsing cow; not even, as elsewhere, some
solitary goat sticking its shaggy head through an aperture in the walls
to turn at our approach and flee in terror through the bushes; not a
song-bird, not a nest, not a sound! This castle is like a ghost: mute
and cold, it stands abandoned in this deserted place, and looks accursed
and replete with terrifying recollections. Still, this melancholy
dwelling, which the owls now seem to avoid, was once inhabited. In the
dungeon, between four walls as livid as the bottom of an old
drinking-trough, we were able to discover the traces of five floors. A
chimney, with its two round pillars and black top, has remained
suspended in the air at a height of thirty feet. Earth has accumulated
on it, and plants are growing there as if it were a jardinière.
Beyond the second enclosure, in a ploughed field, one can recognise the
ruins of a chapel by the broken shafts of an ogive portal. Grass has
grown around it, and trees have replaced the columns. Four hundred years
ago, this chapel was filled with ornaments of gold cloth and silk,
censers, chandeliers, chalices, crosses, precious stones, gold vessels
and vases, a choir of thirty singers, chaplains, musicians, and children
sang hymns to the accompaniment of an organ which they took along with
them when they travelled. They were clad in scarlet garments lined with
pearl grey and vair. There was one whom they called archdeacon, and
another whom they called bishop, and the Pope was asked to allow them to
wear mitres like canons, for this chapel was the chapel, and this castle
one of the castles of Gilles de Laval, lord of Rouci, of Montmorency, of
Retz and of Craon, lieutenant-general of the Duke of Brittany and
field-marshal of France, who was burned at Nantes on the 25th of October,
1440, in the Prée de la Madéleine for being a counterfeiter, a murderer,
a magician, an atheist and a Sodomite.
He possessed more than one hundred thousand crowns' worth of furniture;
an income of thirty thousand pounds a year, the profits of his fiefs and
his salary as field-marshal; fifty magnificently appointed horsemen
escorted him. He kept open house, served the rarest viands and the
oldest wines at his board, and gave representations of mysteries, as
cities used to do when a king was within their gates. When his money
gave out, he sold his estates; when those were gone, he looked around
for more gold, and when he had destroyed his furnaces, he called on the
devil. He wrote him that he would give him all that he possessed,
excepting his life and his soul. He made sacrifices, gave alms and
instituted ceremonies in his honour. At night, the bleak walls of the
castle lighted up by the glare of the torches that flared amid bumpers
of rare wines and gipsy jugglers, and blushed hotly under the unceasing
breath of magical bellows. The inhabitants invoked the devil, joked with
death, murdered children, enjoyed frightful and atrocious pleasures;
blood flowed, instruments played, everything echoed with voluptuousness,
horror, and madness.
When he expired, four or five damsels had his body removed from the
stake, laid out, and taken to the Carmelites, who, after performing the
customary services, buried him in state.
On one of the bridges of the Loire, relates Guépin, opposite the Hôtel
de la Boule-d'Or, an expiatory monument was erected to his memory. It
was a niche containing the statue of the _Bonne Vierge de crée lait_,
who had the power of creating milk in nurses; the good people offered
her butter and similar rustic products. The niche still exists, but the
statue is gone; the same as at the town-house, where the casket which
contained the heart of Queen Anne is also empty. But we did not care to
see the casket; we did not even give it a thought. I should have
preferred gazing upon the trousers of the marshal of Retz to looking at
the heart of Madame Anne de Bretagne.