Part 17 (2/2)

We drove down into Chinon, past the house where it is said that Rabelais was born, and saw his statue, and one of Joan which was not very pleasing. Then we threaded some of the older streets and saw houses which I think cannot have changed much since Joan was there. It was getting well toward evening now, and we set out for Tours, by way of Azay.

The chateau of Azay-le-Rideau is all that Chinon is not. Perfect in condition, of rare beauty in design and ornamentation, fresh, almost new in appearance, Azay presents about the choicest flowering of the Renaissance. Joan of Arc had been dead a hundred years when Azay was built; France was no longer in dread of blighting invasion; a residence no longer needed to be a fortress. The royal chateaux of the Loire are the best remaining evidence of what Joan had done for the security of her kings. Whether they deserved it or not is another matter.

Possibly Azay-le-Rideau might not have looked so fresh under the glare of noonday, but in the mellow light of evening it could have been the home of one of our modern millionaires (a millionaire of perfect taste, I hasten to add), and located, let us say, in the vicinity of Newport.

It was difficult to believe that it had been standing for four centuries.

Francis I did not build Azay-le-Rideau. But he liked it so much when he saw it (he was probably on a visit to its owner, the French treasurer, at the time) that he promptly confiscated it and added it to the collection of other chateaux he had built, or confiscated, or had in mind. Nothing very remarkable seems to have happened there--just the usual things--plots, and liaisons, and intrigues of a general sort, with now and then a chapter of real lovemaking, and certain marriages and deaths--the latter hurried a little sometimes to accommodate the impatient mourners.

But how beautiful it is! Its towers, its stately facades, its rich ornamentation reflected in the water of the wide stream that sweeps about its base, a natural moat, its background of rich foliage--these, in the gathering twilight, completed a picture such as Hawthorne could have conceived, or Edgar Poe.

I suppose it was too late to go inside, but we did not even apply. Like Langeais, it belongs to France now, and I believe is something of a museum, and rather modern. One could not risk carrying away anything less than a perfect memory of Azay.

Chapter XXV

TOURS

In the quest for outlying chateaux one is likely to forget that Tours itself is very much worth while. Tours has been a city ever since France had a history, and it fought against Caesar as far back as 52 B.C. It took its name from the Gallic tribe of that section, the Turoni, dwellers in those cliffs, I dare say, along the Loire.

Following the invasion of the Franks there came a line of counts who ruled Touraine until the eleventh century. What the human aspect of this delectable land was under their dominion is not very clear. The oldest castle we have seen, Coudray, was not begun until the end of that period. There are a thousand years behind it which seem filled mainly with s.h.i.+elds and battle axes, roving knights and fair ladies, industrious dragons and the other properties of poetry. Yet there may have been more prosaic things. Seedtime and harvest probably did not fail.

Tours was beloved by French royalty. It was the capital of a province as rich as it was beautiful. Among French provinces Touraine was always the aristocrat. Its language has been kept pure. To this day the purest French in the world is spoken at Tours. The mechanic who made some repairs for me at the garage leaned on the mud guard, during a brief intermission of that hottest of days, and told me about the purity of the French at Tours; and if there was anything wrong with his own locution my ear was not fine enough to detect it. To me it seemed as limpid as something distilled. Imagine such a thing happening in--say New Haven. Tours is still proud, still the aristocrat, still royal.

The Germans held Tours during the early months of 1871, but there is no trace of their occupation now. It was a bad dream which Tours does not care even to remember.[16]

Tours contains a fine cathedral, also the remains of what must have been a still finer one--two n.o.ble towers, so widely separated by streets and buildings that it is hard to imagine them ever having belonged to one structure. They are a part of the business of Tours, now. Shops are under them, lodgings in them. If they should tumble down they would create havoc. I was so sure they would crumble that we did not go into them; besides, it was very warm. The great church which connected these towers was dedicated to St. Martin, the same who divided his cloak with a beggar at Amiens and became Bishop of Tours in the fourth century. It was destroyed once and magnificently rebuilt, but it will never be rebuilt now. One of these old relics is called the Clock tower, the other the tower of Charlemagne, because Luitgard, his third queen, was buried beneath it.

The cathedral at the other end of town appears not to have suffered much from the ravages of time and battle, though one of the towers was undergoing some kind of repairs that required intricate and lofty scaffolding. Most of the cathedrals are undergoing repairs, which is not surprising when one remembers the dates of their beginnings. This one at Tours was commenced in 1170 and the building continued during about four hundred years. Joan of Arc wors.h.i.+ped in it when she was on her way to Chinon and again when she had set out to relieve Orleans.

The face of the cathedral is indeed beautiful--”a jewel,” said Henry IV, ”of which only the casket is wanting.” It does not seem to us as beautiful as Rouen, or Amiens, or Chartres, but its fluted truncated towers are peculiarly its own and hardly less impressive.

The cathedral itself forms a casket for the real jewel--the tomb of the two children of Charles VIII and Anne of Brittany, a little boy and girl, exquisitely cut, resting side by side on a slab of black marble, guarded at their head and feet by kneeling angels. Except the slab, the tomb is in white marble carved with symbolic decorations. It is all so delicate and conveys such a feeling of purity and tenderness that even after four hundred years one cannot fail to feel something of the love and sorrow that placed it there.

Tours is full of landmarks and localities, but the intense heat of the end of June is not a good time for city sight-seeing. We went about a little and glanced at this old street--such as Place Plumeran--and that old chateau, like the Tour de Guise, now a barrack, and pa.s.sed the Theatre Munic.i.p.al, and the house where Balzac was born, and stood impressed and blinking before the great Palace of Justice, blazing in the sun and made more brilliant, more dazzling by the intensely red-legged soldiers that in couples and groups are always loitering before it. I am convinced that to touch those red-hot trousers would take the skin off one's fingers.

We might have examined Tours more carefully if we had been driving instead of walking. I have spoken of the car being in the garage. We cracked the leaf of a spring that day at Chinon, and then our tires, old and worn after five thousand miles of loyal service, required reenforcement. They really required new ones, but our plan was to get home with these if we could. Besides, one cannot buy new tires in American sizes without sending a special order to the factory--a matter of delay. The little man at the hotel, who had more energy than anyone should display in such hot weather, pumped one of our back tires until the shoe burst at the rim. This was serious. I got a heavy canvas lining, and the garageman patched and vulcanized and sold me a variety of appliances. But I could foresee trouble if the heat continued.

FOOTNOTES:

[16] Tours during the World War became a great training camp, familiar to thousands of American soldiers.

Chapter XXVI

CHENONCEAUX AND AMBOISE

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