Part 7 (1/2)
”You are a cunning dog, neighbor,” said the goldsmith.
”No,” replied Lecamus. ”The citizen cla.s.s must take care of itself, the populace and the n.o.bility alike owe it a grudge. Everybody is afraid of the middle cla.s.s in Paris excepting the King, who knows us to be his friends.”
”You who know so much, and who have seen so much,” said Babette timidly, ”pray tell me what it is that the Reformers want.”
”Ay, tell us that, neighbor!” cried the goldsmith. ”I knew the late King's tailor, and I always took him to be a simple soul, with no great genius; he was much such another as you are, they would have given him the Host without requiring him to confess, and all the time he was up to his eyes in this new religion.--He! a man whose ears were worth many hundred thousand crowns. He must have known some secrets worth hearing for the King and Madame de Valentinois to be present when he was tortured.”
”Ay! and terrible secrets too,” said the furrier. ”The Reformation, my friends,” he went on, in a low voice, ”will give the Church lands back to the citizen cla.s.s. When ecclesiastical privileges are annulled, the Reformers mean to claim equality of taxation for the n.o.bles and the middle cla.s.s, and to have only the King above all alike--if indeed they have a king at all.”
”What, do away with the Throne?” cried Lallier.
”Well, neighbor,” said Lecamus, ”in the Low Countries the citizens govern themselves by provosts over them, who elect a temporary chief.”
”G.o.d bless me! Neighbor, we might do all these fine things, and still be Catholics,” said the goldsmith.
”We are too old to see the triumph of the middle cla.s.s in Paris, but it will triumph, neighbor, all in good time! Why, the King is bound to rely on us to hold his own, and we have always been well paid for our support. And the last time all the citizens were enn.o.bled, and they had leave to buy manors, and take the names of their estates without any special letters patent from the King. You and I, for instance, grandsons of the Goix in the female line, are we not as good as many a n.o.bleman?”
This speech was so alarming to the goldsmith and the two women, that it was followed by a long silence. The leaven of 1789 was already germinating in the blood of Lecamus, who was not yet so old but that he lived to see the daring of his cla.s.s under the Ligue.
”Is business pretty firm in spite of all this turmoil?” Lallier asked the furrier's wife.
”It always upsets trade a little,” said she.
”Yes, and so I have a great mind to make a lawyer of my son,” added Lecamus. ”People are always going to law.”
The conversation then dwelt on the commonplace, to the goldsmith's great satisfaction, for he did not like political disturbances or over-boldness of thought.
The banks of the Loire, from Blois as far as Angers, were always greatly favored by the two last branches of the Royal Family who occupied the throne before the advent of the Bourbons. This beautiful valley so well deserves the preference of kings, that one of our most elegant writers describes it as follows:--”There is a province in France which is never sufficiently admired. As fragrant as Italy, as flowery as the banks of the Guadalquivir, beautiful besides with its own peculiar beauty. Wholly French, it has always been French, unlike our Northern provinces, debased by Teutonic influence, or our Southern provinces, which have been the concubines of the Moors, of the Spaniards, of every nation that has coveted them--this pure, chaste, brave, and loyal tract is Touraine! There is the seat of historic France. Auvergne is Auvergne, Languedoc is Languedoc and nothing more; but Touraine is France, and the truly national river to us is the Loire which waters Touraine. We need not, therefore, be surprised to find such a quant.i.ty of monuments in the departments which have taken their names from that of the Loire and its derivations. At every step in that land of enchantment we come upon a picture of which the foreground is the river, or some calm reach, in whose liquid depths are mirrored a chateau, with its turrets, its woods, and its dancing springs. It was only natural that large fortunes should centre round spots where Royalty preferred to live, and where it so long held its Court, and that distinguished birth and merit should crowd thither and build palaces on a par with Royalty itself.”
Is it not strange, indeed, that our sovereigns should never have taken the advice indirectly given them by Louis XI., and have made Tours the capital of the kingdom? Without any very great expenditure, the Loire might have been navigable so far for trading vessels and light s.h.i.+ps of war. There the seat of Government would have been safe from surprise and high-handed invasion. There the strongholds of the north would not have needed such sums for their fortifications, which alone have cost as much money as all the splendors of Versailles. If Louis XIV. had listened to Vauban's advice, and had his palace built at Mont-Louis, between the Loire and the Cher, perhaps the Revolution of 1789 would never have taken place.
So these fair banks bear, at various spots, clear marks of royal favor. The chateaux of Chambord, Blois, Amboise, Chenonceaux, Chaumont, Plessis-les-Tours, all the residences built by kings' mistresses, by financiers, and n.o.blemen, at Veretz, Azay-le-Rideau, Usse, Villandri, Valencay, Chanteloup, and Duretal, some of which have disappeared, though most are still standing, are splendid buildings, full of the wonders of the period that has been so little appreciated by the literary sect of Mediaevalists.
Of all these chateaux, that of Blois, where the Court was then residing, is the one on which the magnificence of the Houses of Orleans and of Valois has most splendidly set its stamp; and it is the most curious to historians, archaeologists, and Catholics. At that time it stood quite alone. The town, enclosed in strong walls with towers, lay below the stronghold, for at that time the chateau served both as a citadel and as a country residence. Overlooking the town, of which the houses, then as now, climb the hill on the right bank of the river, their blue slate roofs in close array, there is a triangular plateau, divided by a stream, now unimportant since it runs underground, but in the fifteenth century, as historians tell us, flowing at the bottom of a rather steep ravine, part of which remains as a deep hollow way, almost a precipice, between the suburb and the chateau.
It was on this plateau, with a slope to the north and south, that the Comtes de Blois built themselves a ”castel” in the architecture of the twelfth century, where the notorious Thibault le Tricheur, Thibault le Vieux, and many more held a court that became famous. In those days of pure feudal rule, when the King was no more than _inter pares primus_ (the first among equals), as a King of Poland finely expressed it, the Counts of Champagne, of Blois, and of Anjou, the mere Barons of Normandy, and the Dukes of Brittany lived in the style of sovereigns and gave kings to the proudest kingdoms. The Plantagenets of Anjou, the Lusignans of Poitou, the Roberts and Williams of Normandy, by their audacious courage mingled their blood with royal races, and sometimes a simple knight, like du Glaicquin (or du Guesclin), refused royal purple and preferred the Constable's sword.
When the Crown had secured Blois as a royal demesne, Louis XII., who took a fancy to the place, perhaps to get away from Plessis and its sinister a.s.sociations, built on to the chateau, at an angle, so as to face east and west, a wing connecting the residence of the Counts of Blois with the older structure, of which nothing now remains but the immense hall where the States-General sat under Henri III. Francis I., before he fell in love with Chambord, intended to finish the chateau by building on the other two sides of a square; but he abandoned Blois for Chambord, and erected only one wing, which in his time and in that of his grandsons practically const.i.tuted the chateau.
This third building of Francis I.'s is much more extensive and more highly decorated than the Louvre _de Henri II._, as it is called. It is one of the most fantastic efforts of the architecture of the Renaissance. Indeed, at a time when a more reserved style of building prevailed, and no one cared for the Middle Ages, a time when literature was not so intimately allied with art as it now is, la Fontaine wrote of the Chateau of Blois in his characteristically artless language: ”Looking at it from outside, the part done by order of Francis I. pleased me more than all the rest; there are a number of little windows, little balconies, little colonnades, little ornaments, not regularly ordered, which make up something great which I found very pleasing.”
Thus the Chateau of Blois had the attraction of representing three different kinds of architecture--three periods, three systems, three dynasties. And there is not, perhaps, any other royal residence which in this respect can compare with it. The vast building shows, in one enclosure, in one courtyard, a complete picture of that great product of national life and manners which Architecture always is.
At the time when Christophe was bound for the Court, that portion of the precincts on which a fourth palace now stands--the wing added seventy years later, during his exile, by Gaston, Louis XIII.'s rebellious brother--was laid out in pastures and terraced gardens, picturesquely scattered among the foundation stones and unfinished towers begun by Francis I. These gardens were joined by a bold flying bridge--which some old inhabitants still alive saw destroyed--to a garden on the other side of the chateau, which by the slope of the ground lay on the same level. The gentlemen attached to Queen Anne de Bretagne, or those who approached her with pet.i.tions from her native province, to discuss, or to inform her of the state of affairs there, were wont to await her pleasure here, her _lever_, or the hour of her walking out. Hence history has handed down to us as the name of this pleasaunce _Le Perchoir aux Bretons_ (the Breton's Perch); it now is an orchard belonging to some private citizen, projecting beyond the Place des Jesuites. That square also was then included in the domain of this n.o.ble residence which had its upper and its lower gardens. At some distance from the Place des Jesuites, a summer-house may still be seen built by Catherine de' Medici, as local historians tell us, to accommodate her hot baths. This statement enables us to trace the very irregular arrangement of the gardens which went up and down hill, following the undulations of the soil; the land about the chateau is indeed very uneven, a fact which added to its strength, and, as we shall see, caused the difficulties of the Duc de Guise.
The gardens were reached by corridors and terraces; the chief corridor was known as the Galerie des Cerfs (or stags), on account of its decorations.
This pa.s.sage led to a magnificent staircase, which undoubtedly suggested the famous double staircase at Chambord, and which led to the apartments on each floor.
Though la Fontaine preferred the chateau of Francis I. to that of Louis XII., the simplicity of the _Pere du Peuple_ may perhaps charm the genuine artist, much as he may admire the splendor of the more chivalrous king. The elegance of the two staircases which lie at the two extremities of Louis XII.'s building, the quant.i.ty of fine and original carving, of which, though time has damaged them, the remains are still the delight of antiquaries; everything, to the almost cloister-like arrangement of the rooms, points to very simple habits. As yet the Court was evidently nonexistent, or had not attained such development as Francis I. and Catherine de' Medici subsequently gave it, to the great detriment of feudal manners. As we admire the brackets, the capitals of some of the columns, and some little figures of exquisite delicacy, it is impossible not to fancy that Michel Colomb, the great sculptor, the Michael Angelo of Brittany, must have pa.s.sed that way to do his Queen Anne a pleasure, before immortalizing her on her father's tomb--the last Duke of Brittany.
Whatever la Fontaine may say, nothing can be more stately than the residence of Francis, the magnificent King. Thanks to I know not what coa.r.s.e indifference, perhaps to utter forgetfulness, the rooms occupied by Catherine de' Medici and her son Francis II. still remain almost in their original state. The historian may reanimate them with the tragical scenes of the Reformation, of which the struggle of the Guises and the Bourbons against the House of Valois formed a complicated drama played out on this spot.