第16章

On the whole,Chambord makes a great impression;and the hour I was,there,while the yellow afternoon light slanted upon the September woods,there was a dignity in its desolation.It spoke,with a muffled but audible voice,of the vanished monarchy,which had been so strong,so splendid,but today has become a sort of fantastic vision,like the cupolas and chimneys that rose before me.I thought,while Ilingered there,of all the fine things it takes to make up such a monarchy;and how one of them is a superfluity of mouldering,empty,palaces.Chambord is touching,that is the best word for it;and if the hopes of another restoration are in the follies of the Republic,a little reflection on that eloquence of ruin ought to put the Republic on its guard.A sentimental tourist may venture to remark that in the presence of several chateaux which appeal in this mystical manner to the retrospective imagination,it cannot afford to be foolish.I thought of all this as I drove back to Blois by the way of the Chateau de Cheverny.The road took us out of the park of Chambord,but through a region of flat woodland,where the trees were not mighty,and again into the prosy plain of the Sologne,a thankless soil,all of it,I believe,but lately much amended by the magic of cheerful French industry and thrift.The light had already begun to fade,and my drive reminded me of a passage in some rural novel of Madame Sand.I passed a couple of timber and plaster churches,which looked very old,black,and crooked,and had lumpish wooden porches and galleries encircling the base.By the time I reached Cheverny,the clear twilight had approached.It was late to ask to be allowed to visit an inhabited house;but it was the hour at which I like best to visit almost anything.My coachman drew up before a gateway,in a high wall,which opened upon a short avenue,along which I took my way on foot;the coachmen in those parts being,for reasons best known to themselves,mortally averse to driving up to a house.Ianswered the challenge of a very tidy little portress,who sat,in company with a couple of children,enjoying the evening air in,front of her lodge,and who told me to walk a little further and turn to the right.

I obeyed her to the letter,and my turn brought me into sight of a house as charming as an old manor in a fairy tale.I had but a rapid and partial view of Cheverny;but that view was a glimpse of perfection.

A light,sweet mansion stood looking over a wide green lawn,over banks of flowers and groups of trees.It had a striking character of elegance,produced partly by a series of Renaissance busts let into circular niches in the facade.The place looked so private,so reserved,that it seemed an act of violence to ring,a stranger and foreigner,at the graceful door.But if I had not rung I should be unable to express as it is such a pleasure to do my sense of the exceeding courtesy with which this admirable house is shown.It was near the dinnerhour,the most sacred hour of the day;but I was freely conducted into the inhabited apartments.They are extremely beautiful.What Ichiefly remember is the charming staircase of white embroidered stone,and the great salle des gardes and chambre a coucher du roi on the second floor.Cheverny,built in 1634,is of a much later date than the other royal residences of this part of France;it belongs to the end of the Renaissance,and has a touch of the rococo.The guardroom is a superb apartment;and as it contains little save its magnificent ceiling and fireplace and certain dim tapestries on its walls,you the more easily take the measure of its noble proportions.The servant opened the shutters of a single window,and the last rays of the twilight slanted into the rich brown gloom.It was in the same picturesque fashion that I saw the bedroom (adjoining)of Henry IV.,where a legendarylooking bed,draped in folds long unaltered,defined itself in the haunted dusk.Cheverny remains to me a very charming,a partly mysterious vision.I drove back to Blois in the dark,some nine miles,through the forest of Russy,which belongs to the State,and which,though consisting apparently of small timber,looked under the stars sufficiently vast and primeval.There was a damp autumnal smell and the occasional sound of a stirring thing;and as I moved through the evening air Ithought of Francis I.and Henry IV.