The Best Society
That Ever Assembled There Was Collected At Chenon-
Ceaux During The Middle Of The Eighteenth Century.
This Was Surely, In France At Least, The Age Of Good
Society, The Period When It Was Well For Appreciative
People To Have Been Born.
Such people should of
course have belonged to the fortunate few, and not to
the miserable many; for the prime condition of a
society being good is that it be not too large.
The
sixty years that preceded the French Revolution were
the golden age of fireside talk and of those pleasures
which proceed from the presence of women in whom
the social art is both instinctive and acquired. The
women of that period were, above all, good company;
the fact is attested by a thousand documents. Chenon-
ceaux offered a perfect setting to free conversation;
and infinite joyous discourse must have mingled with
the liquid murmur of the Cher. Claude Dupin was
not only a great man of business, but a man of honor
and a patron of knowledge; and his wife was gracious,
clever, and wise. They had acquired this famous pro-
perty by purchase (from one of the Bourbons; for
Chenonceaux, for two centuries after the death of
Catherine de' Medici, remained constantly in princely
hands), and it was transmitted to their son, Dupin de
Francueil, grandfather of Madame George Sand. This
lady, in her Correspondence, lately published, describes
a visit that she paid, more than thirty years ago, to
those members of her family who were still in posses-
sion. The owner of Chenonceaux to-day is the daughter
of an Englishman naturalized in France. But I have
wandered far from my story, which is simply a sketch
of the surface of the place. Seen obliquely, from either
side, in combination with its bridge and gallery, the
chateau is singular and fantastic, a striking example
of a wilful and capricious conception. Unfortunately,
all caprices are not so graceful and successful, and I
grudge the honor of this one to the false and blood-
polluted Catherine. (To be exact, I believe the arches
of the bridge were laid by the elderly Diana. It was
Catherine, however, who completed the monument.)
Within, the house has been, as usual, restored. The
staircases and ceilings, in all the old royal residences
of this part of France, are the parts that have suffered
least; many of them have still much of the life of the
old time about them. Some of the chambers of Che-
nonceaux, however, encumbered as they are with mo-
dern detail, derive a sufficiently haunted and suggestive
look from the deep setting of their beautiful windows,
which thickens the shadows and makes dark, corners.
There is a charming little Gothic chapel, with its apse
hanging over the water, fastened to the left flank of
the house. Some of the upper balconies, which look
along the outer face of the gallery, and either up or
down the river, are delightful protected nooks. We
walked through the lower gallery to the other bank of
the Cher; this fine apartment appeared to be for the
moment a purgatory of ancient furniture.
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