Diana Enjoyed It Till
The Death Of Her Protector; But When This Event Oc-
Curred, The Widow Of The Monarch,
Who had been
obliged to submit in silence, for years, to the ascend-
ency of a rival, took the most
Pardonable of all the
revenges with which the name of Catherine de' Medici
is associated, and turned her out-of-doors. Diana was
not in want of refuges, and Catherine went through
the form of giving her Chaumont in exchange; but
there was only one Chenonceaux. Catherine devoted
herself to making the place more completely unique.
The feature that renders it sole of its kind is not ap-
preciated till you wander round to either side of the
house. If a certain springing lightness is the charac-
teristic of Chenonceaux, if it bears in every line the
aspect of a place of recreation, - a place intended for
delicate, chosen pleasures, - nothing can confirm this
expression better than the strange, unexpected move-
ment with which, from behind, it carries itself across
the river. The earlier building stands in the water;
it had inherited the foundations of the mill destroyed
by Thomas Bohier. The first step, therefore, had been
taken upon solid piles of masonry; and the ingenious
Catherine - she was a _raffinee_ - simply proceeded to
take the others. She continued the piles to the op-
posite bank of the Cher, and over them she threw a
long, straight gallery of two stories. This part of the
chateau, which looks simply like a house built upon a
bridge and occupying its entire length, is of course
the great curiosity of Chenonceaux. It forms on each
floor a charming corridor, which, within, is illuminated
from either side by the flickering river-light. The
architecture of these galleries, seen from without, is
less elegant than that of the main building, but the
aspect of the whole thing is delightful. I have spoken
of Chenonceaux as a "villa," using the word ad-
visedly, for the place is neither a castle nor a palace.
It is a very exceptional villa, but it has the villa-
quality, - the look of being intended for life in com-
mon. This look is not at all contradicted by the wing
across the Cher, which only suggests intimate pleasures,
as the French say, - walks in pairs, on rainy days;
games and dances on autumn nights; together with as
much as may be of moonlighted dialogue (or silence)
in the course, of evenings more genial still, in the well-
marked recesses of windows.
It is safe to say that such things took place there
in the last century, during the kindly reign of Mon-
sieur and Madame Dupin. This period presents itself
as the happiest in the annals of Chenonceaux. I know
not what festive train the great Diana may have led,
and my imagination, I am afraid, is only feebly kindled
by the records of the luxurious pastimes organized on
the banks of the Cher by the terrible daughter of the
Medici, whose appreciation of the good things of life
was perfectly consistent with a failure to perceive why
others should live to enjoy, them.
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