Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

pal passion was, the art of war, and lilies and other insignia of monarchy; his life was, before all, military. Every but the architect of the château proved day he paraded on the large square behind the château, where the remains of a barrack are still visible, the two regiments of Uhlans, which the king had given him as a garrison. An almost regal court surrounded the marshal; for was he not a royal child? He had the whim of posting a sentry before his door, after the royal custom. He helped his vanity in a cunning way: he had "Military chest" painted on a door in front of the saloon, and under this pretext had the post guarded by a sentry. The wild life he led brought him to the grave in two years; he died on November 30, 1750. After his death, his nephew and heir, Count Friesen, inhabited the château for a while, and then it reverted to the crown.

And then all was quiet up to the Revolution. The people, who had destroyed the Bastille, soon laid hands on all the memorials of monarchy. At the request of the National Assembly, the municipality of Blois appointed on May 3, 1790, a commission to draw up a memorial of the use that could be made of Chambord, "in so far as the Assembly did not order the destruction of the château." In the following year a society of English Quakers offered to purchase the domain for manufacturing purposes, and this and similar proposals were carefully discussed at Blois; but a war and other cares turned people's thoughts to other questions. In the mean while, the district of Blois ordered the sale of all the furniture. All the hawkers of the province flocked in. All the marvels of art, collected during three centuries, were dispersed in a couple of days; as an account tells us, the panelling of the walls was pulled down, the inlaid floors torn up, and the very mantel-pieces and windows removed. The richly-carved doors and picture-frames were thrown into the fire of the auction-room, so that the mantel-pieces were cracked by the heat. The only piece of furniture that remains of all this luxury is the stone slab on which the Maréchal de Saxe was embalmed--a grave-stone of the monarchy.

A few months later, an official of the department arrived to destroy all the

to him that this job would cost more than one hundred thousand francs. Of course, the money could be better employed. But the fate of the château was still uncertain, and "horror dwelt in the desolate window niches." If it was lamentable that a really national work of art should be so barbarously destroyed, the Legitimists have no right to condemn the nation and the Revolution on that account. The nation only wished to destroy a seat of princely licentiousness-and all the palaces of the Valois and the Bourbons were nothing else without any value for the commonwealth: they only existed for pomp. And if an artistic feeling did not check this destruction, the blame lies with the old monarchy, which did not teach the nation better. Just as the Church, to which monarchy had sacrificed thousands of Protestants, set the chief value on external things and ceremonies, so the nation, groaning under taxes and burdens, saw nothing of monarchy but the external glitter. It is not surprising that they should take their revenge on the external ensigns of these two powers, and destroy churches and palaces whose artistic value they did not feel, or else overlooked in their anger.

In 1797, the National Assembly wished to make a present to General Bonaparte, who had concluded the peace of Campo-Formio, and proposed Chambord; but the jealous Directory contrived to put aside the proposition, and paid the dangerous hero in glory. The general contrived to reward himself: instead of a château, all France became his, and Bonaparte was called Napoleon.

The new emperor selected Chambord as head-quarters of the fifteenth cohort of the Legion of Honor, under General Augereau. At a later date he wished to remove there the school of the orphan daughters of the Legionaries, but gave up the idea on account of the great expense which it would have entailed. For the same reason he did not select it as the residence of the Spanish princes: furniture and restoration would have cost nine millions of francs. On February 28, 1809, Chambord was reunited with the crown lands, but in the

same year Napoleon gave it to Marshal Berthier, Prince of Wagram, and an annuity of five hundred thousand francs out of the produce of the navigation of the Rhine, on condition that he employed all the revenue in restoring the château. But this condition was never fulfilled; the marshal only passed two days at Chambord, and it was again deserted till

1814.

In this year the imperial government retreated to Blois, and the court thought of flying across the Loire, precisely as in the reign of Louis XIV. A portion of the equipages was sent off to Chambord, and the coronation carriage stood in the palace-yard. Napoleon abdicated in another château of Francis I., at Fontainebleau. After the restoration, Berthier's widow, a Bavarian princess, who naturally lost the annuity from the Rhine navigation, drew all she could out of the domain: she felled wood, cleared land, and, finally, let the château and shooting for two years to an Englishman for the paltry sum of four thousand francs. Instead of Molière's witty comedies and Favart's operas, the halls of Chambord re-echoed the songs of drunken revellers. The destruction by the hand of the Revolution would have been better than this degradation.

and serves State and Church better. I pray to Heaven that they may buy Chambord." At this moment a royalist idea saved the château from destruction.

Louvel believed that he had extirpated the race of Bourbons with the Duke de Berry, but "God gave" him unexpect edly an heir. Henri Dieudonné was, consequently, his name, and in an outburst of enthusiasm Count Adrien de Calonne proposed to open subscription lists in every parish of France, and purchase the domain of Chambord as a present for the Duke de Bordeaux. A committee was formed, and on March 5, 1821, the estate was knocked down to the count, as representative of the committee, for 15,420,000 francs. Whether the government officials were forced to subscribe is an open question; the moral pressure was strong enough, persons rendered themselves popular by subscribing, and the words of the Minister of the Interior, Count Siméon, on December 20, 1820, according to which the government wished to be entirely uncommitted, were dictated by the feeling of public decency. The king still hesitated to accept: it was said that Charles X. unwillingly allowed the Duchess de Berry, when traveling in the Vendée in 1828, to remain at Chambord. She was received here on June I have called the history of this château 18 by upwards of seven thousand inhabipiquant: the most piquant thing of all is tants of the department, and carved her the conclusion of its history. Fallen, af- name on a stone under the cupola of the ter so many adventures, into the dirty great stairs. The inscription has been hands of a drunkard, this pearl of French covered with mortar, in order to protect art was picked up by the hand of France, it from curious hands or political hatred. and given as a present from the nation As we see, Courier was not so much to to the last scion of the Bourbons. The be blamed. Chambord was merely a estate had long been a burden to the station on the pilgrimage to the Vendée. Princess of Wagram: she was not rich On February 7, 1830, the estate was enough to keep up a royal palace, and solemnly handed over by the committee. though she had not fulfilled the condition to the king, who received it in his grandof restoring the old splendor of the châ- son's name. A few months later the teau, she obtained permission from Louis family of the Bourbons went into exile, XVIII., in 1819, to sell it. It would and the Duke de Bordeaux became Count now have been hopelessly lost, the well- de Chambord. The château, too, was known bande noire, which undertook to menaced by the Revolution. After the settle the testamentary affairs of the Rev- February disturbances and the destrucolution, were already stretching out tion of the archiepiscopal palace in Paris their greedy hands towards it, and even in 1831, the administration of the dethe witty Paul Louis Courier wrote in partment were obliged to remove the cothe heat of partisan war: "I wish from lossal lily over the cupola of the grand the bottom of my soul that the black band winding staircase (it has since been remay succeed, for, in my opinion, it is stored); indeed, the property was reworth quite as much as the white band, claimed, and the estate was seized by the

July government on December 5, 1832, in the name of the state. The government supported itself on the title of "appanage," which was employed in some of the deeds, and probably felt incensed by the rising in the Vendée in the same year. Still, public opinion never allowed the justice of this step, and though an enormous majority of the nation does not desire the return of the Bourbons, still a feeling of self-respect forbids them grudging the last banished scion of the old kings this domain, which was expressly presented to him, the more so as his claims had such little prospect of success. The trial for the property of the last of the Bourbons lasted nearly twenty years, and then the house of Orleans itself was obliged to go into exile. All the possessions of the latter have since been confiscated by the imperial government and sold, but the domain of the Count de Chambord has been unassailed, and no one disturbs his tranquil possession, though, of course, he never sees or visits it. He spends his idle existence, which is only stirred up by vain dreams, in a foreign land, while in the Château of Chambord the silence of solitude reigns, and the romance of its story ends with an elegy.

All these reminiscences rose vividly before my mind as I crossed the Cosson, and approached the château. In the neighboring village there is an excellent hotel, and it deserves notice, that the landlord does not abuse his monopoly, and overcharge the numerous strangers. Of course the picture of the count, who is honored here as a sovereign, is to be found everywhere. "The domain," I said, almost looks like a small state." "It is one," was the reply. The inhabitants are usually very cautious and chary of speech with tourists, as can be easily understood. If even they may regard themselves as the subjects of Henry V., they are also the subjects of the reigning sovereign. The attachment to the count is explained by the active sympathy he displays towards all the inhabitants.

66

The interior of the château is, as I said, quite empty; there is no furniture in the rooms and halls. Only four apartments are partially hung with pictures, and form a small museum; they are in the western tower of the roof, on the north side.

In the waiting-room of Louis XIV. hang antlers dating from the hunts of Francis I., Henri IV., and Louis XIV.; in the adjoining dining-room of the grand monarch stands a perfect small park of artillery, which was used in instructing the Duke de Bordeaux in his childhood, as well as busts of Louis XIII., Charles X., &c.; and the before-mentioned stoneslab, on which the body of Maurice de Saxe reposed. In the third, or reception-room, hang portraits of the Bourbons, as well as that of Madame de Maintenon; near a statue of Louis the Saint stand two vases, sent by the Countess de Chambord. In the last room, the bedchamber of Louis XIV., hang the portraits of the Valois, and a painting of the battle of Fontenoy; another represents the count's palace at Venice, swarming with Austrian uniforms. A bust of the Duke de Berry may also be noticed here. Among the curiosities is a handsomely worked set of fire-irons, which a blacksmith of Blois presented to the count. Another man, who made a table service out of deer-horn from the forest of Chambord, had his traveling expenses paid by a noble Legitimist, that he might present himself to the count at Frohsdorf. The Legitimists at times perform such farces, in order to keep up the pretender's illusions about his popularity. As we see, the whole history of the château is represented in the museum.

On the roof terrace, however, we forget it, and only revel in the art-enjoyment. The pyramid would have an imposing effect on level ground, much more so here, where it has the whole château for a pedestal; and all around the cupolas, turrets, sculptured chimneypots, decorated windows, not one like the other, a constant change in the arrangements and yet no disturbing confusion, but everywhere taste and harmony! On the south clock-tower there is a weathercock, representing an H and a crown. So far as the horizon extends we see nothing but forest, and the count might easily fancy himself here in his kingdom, thanks to these pleasant pine-trees, which hide his prison walls.” Up to the very foot of the chateau, however, everything is quite rural: on the great grass-plat running down to the stream, where the count formerly strolled

[graphic][subsumed]
« AnteriorContinuar »