The Light Had Already Begun To Fade, And
My Drive Reminded Me Of A Passage In Some Rural
Novel Of Madame Sand.
I passed a couple of timber
and plaster churches, which looked very old, black,
and crooked, and had lumpish wooden porches and
galleries encircling the base.
By the time I reached
Cheverny, the clear twilight had approached. It was
late to ask to be allowed to visit an inhabited house;
but it was the hour at which I like best to visit almost
anything. My coachman drew up before a gateway,
in a high wall, which opened upon a short avenue,
along which I took my way on foot; the coachmen in
those parts being, for reasons best known to them-
selves, mortally averse to driving up to a house. I
answered the challenge of a very tidy little portress,
who sat, in company with a couple of children, en-
joying the evening air in, front of her lodge, and who
told me to walk a little further and turn to the right.
I obeyed her to the letter, and my turn brought me
into sight of a house as charming as an old manor in
a fairy tale. I had but a rapid and partial view of
Cheverny; but that view was a glimpse of perfection.
A light, sweet mansion stood looking over a wide green
lawn, over banks of flowers and groups of trees. It
had a striking character of elegance, produced partly
by a series of Renaissance busts let into circular niches
in the facade. The place looked so private, so reserved,
that it seemed an act of violence to ring, a stranger
and foreigner, at the graceful door. But if I had not
rung I should be unable to express - as it is such a
pleasure to do - my sense of the exceeding courtesy
with which this admirable house is shown. It was
near the dinner-hour, - the most sacred hour of the
day; but I was freely conducted into the inhabited
apartments. They are extremely beautiful. What I
chiefly remember is the charming staircase of white
embroidered stone, and the great _salle des gardes_ and
_chambre a coucher du roi_ on the second floor. Che-
verny, built in 1634, is of a much later date than the
other royal residences of this part of France; it be-
longs to the end of the Renaissance, and has a touch
of the rococo. The guard-room is a superb apartment;
and as it contains little save its magnificent ceiling
and fireplace and certain dim tapestries on its walls,
you the more easily take the measure of its noble
proportions. The servant opened the shutters of a
single window, and the last rays of the twilight slanted
into the rich brown gloom. It was in the same pic-
turesque fashion that I saw the bedroom (adjoining) of
Henry IV., where a legendary-looking bed, draped in
folds long unaltered, defined itself in the haunted
dusk. Cheverny remains to me a very charming, a
partly mysterious vision. I drove back to Blois in the
dark, some nine miles, through the forest of Russy,
which belongs to the State, and which, though con-
sisting apparently of small timber, looked under the
stars sufficiently vast and primeval. There was a damp
autumnal smell and the occasional sound of a stirring
thing; and as I moved through the evening air I
thought of Francis I. and Henry IV.
VI.
You may go to Amboise either from Blois or from
Tours; it is about half-way between these towns. The
great point is to go, especially if you have put it off
repeatedly; and to go, if possible, on a day when the
great view of the Loire, which you enjoy from the
battlements and terraces, presents itself under a friendly
sky. Three persons, of whom the author of these
lines was one, spent the greater part of a perfect
Sunday morning in looking at it. It was astonishing,
in the course of the rainiest season in the memory of
the oldest Tourangeau, how many perfect days we
found to our hand. The town of Amboise lies, like
Tours, on the left bank of the river, a little white-
faced town, staring across an admirable bridge, and
leaning, behind, as it were, against the pedestal of
rock on which the dark castle masses itself. The town
is so small, the pedestal so big, and the castle so high
and striking, that the clustered houses at the base of
the rock are like the crumbs that have fallen from a
well-laden table. You pass among them, however, to
ascend by a circuit to the chateau, which you attack,
obliquely, from behind. It is the property of the
Comte de Paris, another pretender to the French
throne; having come to him remotely, by inheritance,
from his ancestor, the Duc de Penthievre, who toward
the close of the last century bought it from the crown,
which had recovered it after a lapse. Like the castle
of Blois it has been injured and defaced by base uses,
but, unlike the castle of Blois, it has not been com-
pletely restored. "It is very, very dirty, but very
curious," - it is in these terms that I heard it described
by an English lady, who was generally to be found
engaged upon a tattered Tauchnitz in the little _salon
de lecture_ of the hotel at Tours. The description is
not inaccurate; but it should be said that if part of
the dirtiness of Amboise is the result of its having
served for years as a barrack and as a prison, part of
it comes from the presence of restoring stone-masons,
who have woven over a considerable portion of it a
mask of scaffolding. There is a good deal of neatness
as well, and the restoration of some of the parts seems
finished. This process, at Amboise, consists for the
most part of simply removing the vulgar excrescences
of the last two centuries.
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