In Château Land, Anne Hollingsworth Wharton [english reading book txt] 📗

and we are not even told that the King sent his royal prisoner a plum pudding for his Christmas dinner."

"It would probably have killed him if he had," said Archie; "plum pudding without exercise is a rather dangerous experiment. Don't you think so yourself, Miss Cassandra?"

"He might have liked the attention, anyhow," persisted the valiant lady, "but Louis seems to have had an inveterate dislike for the Duke of Milan, and Mr. La Tour says that one of his small revenges was to call the unfortunate Duke 'Monsieur Ludovico,' which was certainly not a handsome way to treat a royal prisoner."

"No, certainly not," Walter admitted, adding, "but from what we have seen of the prisons of France, handsome treatment does not seem to have been a marked feature of prison life at that time; and Anne herself was not particularly gentle in her dealings with her captives."

Probably with a view to putting an end to this discussion, which was unprofitable to her, as she could not understand a word of it, the guide led us back to the chateau and showed us the room in which Queen Anne died. Whatever may have been her faults and irregularities of temper, Anne seems to have had a strong sense of duty and was the first Queen of France who invited to her court a group of young girls of noble family, whom she educated and treated like her own daughters. She even arranged the marriages of these girls entirely to suit herself, of course, and without the slightest regard to their individual preferences, which was more than she was able to do in the case of the young princesses, her children. She lived and died adored by her husband, who gave her a funeral of unprecedented magnificence, and although Louis soon married again, for reasons of state, he never ceased to mourn his _Bretonne_ whom he had loved, honored, and in many instances obeyed.

Anne's insignia of the twisted rope and the ermine tails are to be found in nearly every room in the chateau, and here also is the emblem of her daughter, a cygnet pierced by an arrow, which seems symbolic of the life of the gentle Claude of France, whose heart must often have been wounded by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, as she was made to feel keenly, from her wedding day, that the King, her husband, had no love for her.

Matrimonial infelicities are so thickly dotted over the pages of French history that it is impossible to pause in our excursions through these palaces to weep over the sorrows of noble ladies. Indeed, for a French king to have had any affection for his lawful wife seems to have been so exceptional that it was much more commented upon than the unhappiness of royal marriages. These reflections are Miss Cassandra's, not mine; and she added, "I am sorry, though, that Anne's daughter was not happy in her marriage," in very much the same tone that she would have commented upon the marriage of a neighbor's daughter. "I hope the beautiful garden that we have been hearing about was a comfort to her, and there must be some satisfaction, after all, in being a queen and living in a palace as handsome as this." With this extremely worldly remark on the part of our Quaker lady, we passed into the picture gallery of the chateau, where we saw a number of interesting portraits, among them those of Louis XIII and of his son Louis XIV, in their childhood, quaint little figures with rich gowns reaching to their feet, and with sweet, baby faces of indescribable charm. Here also is a superb portrait of Gaston, the brother of Louis XIII, and a portrait bust of Madame de Sevigne, whose charming face seems to belong to Blois, although she has said little about this chateau in her letters. Here also are portraits of Madame de Pompadour, Vigee Lebrun, as beautiful as any of the court beauties whom she painted, and a charming head of Mademoiselle de Blois, the daughter of Louise de La Valliere, whom Madame de Sevigne called "the good little princess who is so tender and so pretty that one could eat her." This was at the time of her marriage, which Louis XIV arranged with the Prince de Conti, having always some conscience with regard to his numerous and somewhat heterogeneous progeny.

And in this far off gallery of France our patriotism was suddenly aroused to Fourth of July temperature by seeing a portrait of Washington. This portrait, by Peale or Trumbull, was doubtless presented to one of the French officers who were with Washington in many of his campaigns, and the strong calm face seemed, in a way, to dominate these gay and gorgeously appareled French people, as in life he dominated every circle that he entered.

We were especially interested in a bust of Ronsard with his emblem of three fishes, which delighted Walter and Archie, who now propose a fishing trip to his Chateau of La Poissonniere. We love Ronsard for many of his verses, above all for the lines in which he reveals his feeling for the beauties of nature, which was rare in those artificial days. Do you remember what he said about having a tree planted over his grave?

"Give me no marble cold
When I am dead,
But o'er my lowly bed
May a tree its green leaves unfold."


XI

THE ROMANCE OF BLOIS

HOTEL DE FRANCE, Saturday afternoon.

WALTER and Archie have elected to spend a part of this afternoon in the Daniel Dupuis Museum, over whose treasures, in the form of engraved medals, they are quite enthusiastic. We women folk, left to our own devices, wandered at will through the first floor rooms and halls of the Chateau of Blois. The great Salle des Etats, with its blue ceiling dotted over with fleur-de-lis, is said to be the most ancient of them all. Beautiful as many of the rooms are, despite their somewhat too pronounced and vividly colored decorations, and interesting as we found the remains of the Tour de Foix upon which tradition placed the observatory dedicated by Catherine and her pet demon, Ruggieri, to Uranus, the crowning glory of the Chateau of Blois is the great Court of Honor. We never pass through this impressive portal, surmounted by the gilded equestrian figure of Louis XII, without a feeling of joy in the spaciousness and beauty of this wide sunny court. At a first glance we were bewildered by its varied and somewhat incongruous architecture, the wing of Louis XII, with its fine, open gallery; that of Charles d'Orleans, with its richly decorative sculpture; the Chapel of St. Calais, and the modern and less beautiful wing of Gaston, the work of Francis Mansard, but after all, and above all, what one carries away from the court of Blois is that one perfect jewel of Renaissance skill and taste, the great staircase of Francis I. An open octagonal tower is this staircase, with great rampant bays, delicately carved galleries and exquisite sculptured decorations. Indeed, no words can fully describe the richness and dignity of this unique structure, for which Francis I has the credit, although much of its beauty is said to have been inspired by Queen Claude.

We all agreed that this staircase alone would be worth while coming to Blois to see, with its balustrades and lovely pilasters surmounted by Jean Goujon's adorable figures representing Faith, Hope, Abundance, and other blessings of heaven and earth. The charming faces of these statues are said to have been modeled after Diane de Poitiers and other famous beauties of the time. While wandering through the court, we came suddenly upon traces of Charles of Orleans, who was taken prisoner at the battle of Agincourt, and was a captive for twenty-five years in English prisons. A gallery running at right angles to the wing of Louis XII is named after the Duke of Orleans, probably by his son Louis. This gallery, much simpler than the buildings surrounding it, is also rich in sculpture and still richer in associations with the poet-prince, who is said to have solaced the weary hours of his imprisonment by writing verses, chansons, rondeaux, and ballades, some of which were doubtless composed in this gallery after his return from exile. The lines of that exquisite poem, "The fairest thing in mortal eyes," occurred to Lydia's mind and mine at the same moment. We were standing near the ruins of an old fountain, looking up at the gallery of Charles of Orleans and repeating the verses in concert like two school girls, when Miss Cassandra, who had been lingering by the staircase, joined us, evidently not without some anxiety lest we had suddenly taken leave of our senses. Finding that we were only reciting poetry, she expressed great satisfaction that we did not have it in the original, as she is so tired of trying to guess at what people are talking about.

Indeed, Henry Cary's translation is so beautiful that we scarcely miss the charm of the old French. We wondered, as we lingered over the lines, which one of the several wives of the Duke of Orleans was "the fairest thing in mortal eyes,"--his first wife, Isabelle of France, or Bonne d'Armagnac, his second spouse? His third wife, Marie de Cleves, probably survived him, and so it could not have been for her that there was spread a tomb

"Of gold and sapphires blue:
The gold doth show her blessedness,
The sapphires mark her true;
For blessedness and truth in her
Were livelily portrayed,
When gracious God with both his hands
Her goodly substance made.
He framed her in such wondrous wise,
She was, to speak without disguise,
The fairest thing in mortal eyes."

It was pleasant to think of the poet-prince spending the last days of his life in this beautiful chateau with his wife, Marie de Cleves, and to know that he had the pleasure of holding in his arms his little son and heir, Louis of Orleans, afterwards the good King Louis, our old friend, and the bone of Walter's contention with Miss Cassandra.

By the way, I do not at all agree with that usually wise and just lady in her estimate of Louis XII. As M. La Tour says, he was far in advance of his age in his breadth of mind and his sense of the duty owed by a king to his people. Perhaps something of his father's poet vision entered into the more practical nature of Louis, and in nothing did he