It Forms A Kind Of Chiselled
Cylinder, With Wide Interstices, So That The Stairs Are
Open To The Air.
Every inch of this structure, of its
balconies, its pillars, its great central columns, is
wrought over with lovely
Images, strange and ingenious
devices, prime among which is the great heraldic sala-
mander of Francis I. The salamander is everywhere
at Blois, - over the chimneys, over the doors, on the
walls. This whole quarter , of the castle bears the
stamp of that eminently pictorial prince. The run-
ning cornice along the top of the front is like all un-
folded, an elongated, bracelet. The windows of the
attic are like shrines for saints. The gargoyles, the
medallions, the statuettes, the festoons, are like the
elaboration of some precious cabinet rather than the
details of a building exposed to the weather and to
the ages. 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. The fireplaces
and the ceilings are magnificent; they look like ex-
pensive "sets" at the grand opera.
I should have mentioned that below, in the court,
the front of the wing of Gaston d'Orleans faces you
as you enter, so that the place is a course of French
history. Inferior in beauty and grace to the other
portions of the castle, the wing is yet a nobler monu-
ment than the memory of Gaston deserves. The second
of the sons of Henry IV., - who was no more fortunate as
a father than as a husband, - younger brother of Louis
XIII., and father of the great Mademoiselle, the most
celebrated, most ambitious, most self-complacent, and
most unsuccessful _fille a marier_ in French history,
passed in enforced retirement at the castle of Blois
the close of a life of clumsy intrigues against Cardinal
Richelieu, in which his rashness was only equalled by
his pusillanimity and his ill-luck by his inaccessibility
to correction, and which, after so many follies and
shames, was properly summed up in the project - be-
gun, but not completed - of demolishing the beautiful
habitation of his exile in order to erect a better one.
With Gaston d'Orleans, however, who lived there with-
out dignity, the history of the Chateau de Blois de-
clines. Its interesting period is that of the wars of
religion. It was the chief residence of Henry III., and
the scene of the principal events of his depraved and
dramatic reign. It has been restored more than enough,
as I have said, by architects and decorators; the visitor,
as he moves through its empty rooms, which are at
once brilliant and ill-lighted (they have not been re-
furnished), undertakes a little restoration of his own.
His imagination helps itself from the things that re-
main; he tries to see the life of the sixteenth century
in its form and dress, - its turbulence, its passions, its
loves and hates, its treacheries, falsities, touches of
faith, its latitude of personal development, its presen-
tation of the whole nature, its nobleness of costume,
charm of speech, splendor of taste, unequalled pic-
turesqueness. The picture is full of movement, of
contrasted light and darkness, full altogether of abomi-
nations. Mixed up with them all is the great name of
religion, so that the drama wants nothing to make it
complete. What episode was ever more perfect - looked
at as a dramatic occurrence - than the murder of the
Duke of Guise? The insolent prosperity of the victim;
the weakness, the vices, the terrors, of the author of
the deed; the perfect execution of the plot; the accu-
mulation of horror in what followed it, - give it, as a
crime, a kind of immortal solidity.
But we must not take the Chateau de Blois too
hard: I went there, after all, by way of entertainment.
If among these sinister memories your visit should
threaten to prove a tragedy, there is an excellent way
of removing the impression. You may treat yourself
at Blois to a very cheerful afterpiece. There is a
charming industry practised there, and practised in
charming conditions. Follow the bright little quay
down the river till you get quite out of the town, and
reach the point where the road beside the Loire be-
comes sinuous and attractive, turns the corner of dimi-
nutive headlands, and makes you wonder what is be-
yond. Let not your curiosity induce you, however, to
pass by a modest white villa which overlooks the
stream, enclosed in a fresh little court; for here dwells
an artist, - an artist in faience.
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