This Staircase Is A Truly Majestic Piece Of
Humor; It Gives You The Note, As It Were, Of Chambord.
It Opens On Each Landing To A Vast Guard-Room, In
Four Arms, Radiations Of The Winding Shaft.
My guide
made me climb to the great open-work lantern which,
springing from the roof at the termination of the
rotund staircase (surmounted here by a smaller one),
forms the pinnacle of the bristling crown of Cham-
bord.
This lantern is tipped with a huge _fleur-de-lis_
in stone, - the only one, I believe, that the Revolution
did not succeed in pulling down. Here, from narrow
windows, you look over the wide, flat country and the
tangled, melancholy park, with the rotation of its
straight avenues. Then you walk about the roof, in
a complication of galleries, terraces, balconies, through
the multitude of chimneys and gables. This roof,
which is in itself a sort of castle in the air, has an
extravagant, faboulus quality, and with its profuse
ornamentation, - the salamander of Francis I. is a con-
tant motive, - its lonely pavements, its sunny niches,
the balcony that looks down over the closed and
grass-grown main entrance, a strange, half-sad, half-
brilliant charm. The stone-work is covered with fine
mould. There are places that reminded me of some
of those quiet, mildewed corners of courts and ter-
races, into which the traveller who wanders through
the Vatican looks down from neglected windows. They
show you two or three furnished rooms, with Bourbon
portraits, hideous tapestries from the ladies of France,
a collection of the toys of the _enfant du miracle,_ all
military and of the finest make. "Tout cela fonc-
tionne," the guide said of these miniature weapons;
and I wondered, if he should take it into his head to
fire off his little canon, how much harm the Comte de
Chambord would do.
From below, the castle would look crushed by
the redundancy of its upper protuberances if it were
not for the enormous girth of its round towers, which
appear to give it a robust lateral development. These
towers, however, fine as they are in their way, struck
me as a little stupid; they are the exaggeration of
an exaggeration. In a building erected after the days
of defence, and proclaiming its peaceful character from
its hundred embroideries and cupolas, they seem
to indicate a want of invention. I shall risk the ac-
cusation of bad taste if I say that, impressive as it is,
the Chateau de Chambord seemed to me to have al-
together a little of that quality of stupidity. The
trouble is that it represents nothing very particular;
it has not happened, in spite of sundry vicissitudes,
to have a very interesting history. Compared with
that of Blois and Amboise, its past is rather vacant;
and one feels to a certain extent the contrast between
its pompous appearance and its spacious but some-
what colorless annals. It had indeed the good for-
tune to be erected by Francis I., whose name by itself
expresses a good deal of history.
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