In The Interior There Is A Profusion Of Res-
Toration, And It Is All Restoration In Color.
This has
been, evidently, a work of great energy and cost, but
it will easily strike you as overdone.
The universal
freshness is a discord, a false note; it seems to light
up the dusky past with an unnatural glare. Begun in
the reign of Louis Philippe, this terrible process - the
more terrible always the more you admit that it has
been necessary - has been carried so far that there is
now scarcely a square inch of the interior that has the
color of the past upon it. It is true that the place
had been so coated over with modern abuse that
something was needed to keep it alive; it is only, per-
haps, a pity that the restorers, not content with saving
its life, should have undertaken to restore its youth.
The love of consistency, in such a business, is a
dangerous lure. All the old apartments have been
rechristened, as it were; the geography of the castle
has been re-established. The guardrooms, the bed-
rooms, the closets, the oratories, have recovered their
identity. Every spot connected with the murder of
the Duke of Guise is pointed out by a small, shrill
boy, who takes you from room to room, and who has
learned his lesson in perfection. The place is full of
Catherine de' Medici, of Henry III., of memories, of
ghosts, of echoes, of possible evocations and revivals.
It is covered with crimson and gold.
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