Part 16 (2/2)
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 G.o.ds.
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 circ.u.mference 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 Pet.i.t 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 pa.s.sing in a looking-gla.s.s 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, un.o.btrusive 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 n.o.ble 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, b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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!
Chapter XXIII
WE REACH TOURS
Through that golden land which lies between the Loir and the Loire we drifted through a long summer afternoon and came at evening to a n.o.ble bridge that crossed a wide, tranquil river, beyond which rose the towers of ancient Tours, capital of Touraine. One can hardly cross the river Loire for the first time without long reflections. Henry James calls the Touraine ”a gallery of architectural specimens ... the heart of the old French monarchy,” and adds, ”as that monarchy was splendid and picturesque, a reflection of the splendor still glitters in the Loire.
Some of the most striking events of French history have occurred on the banks of that river, and the soil it waters bloomed for a while with the flower of the Renaissance.”
Touraine was a favorite place for kings, and the early Henrys and Francises, especially, built their magnificent country palaces in all directions. There are more than fifty chateaux within easy driving distance of Tours, and most of the great ones have been owned or occupied by Francis I, or by Henry II, or by one of their particular favorites.
We did not intend to visit all of the chateaux by any means, for chateau visiting, from a diversion may easily degenerate into labor. We intended especially to visit Chinon, where Joan of Arc went to meet the king to ask for soldiers, and a few others, but we had no wish to put in long summer days mousing about old dungeons and dim corridors, or being led through stiffly set royal suites, garishly furnished and restored.
It was better to glide restfully along the poppied way and see the landscape presentment of those stately piles crowning the hilltops or reflected in the bright waters of the Loire. The outward semblance of the land of romance remains oftenest undisturbed; cross the threshold and the illusion is in danger.
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