第18章

The great feature of theplace is the obligatory round tower which occupies the northern end of it,and which has now been,completely restored.It is of astounding size,a fortress in itself,and contains,instead of a staircase,a wonderful inclined plane,so wide and gradual that a coach and four may be driven to the top.This colossal cylinder has today no visible use;but it corresponds,happily enough,with the great circle of the prospect.The gardens of Amboise,perched in the air,covering the irregular remnants of the platform on which the castle stands,and making up in picturesqueness what they lack in extent,constitute of come but a scanty domain.But bathed,as we found them,in the autumn sunshine,and doubly private from their aerial site,they offered irresistible opportunities for a stroll,interrupted,as one leaned against their low parapets,by long,contemplative pauses.I remember,in particular,a certain terrace,planted with clipped limes,upon which we looked down from the summit of the big tower.It seemed from that point to be absolutely necessary to one's happiness to go down and spend the rest of the morning there;it was an ideal place to walk to and fro and talk.Our venerable conductress,to whom our relation had gradually become more filial,permitted us to gratify this innocent wish,to the extent,that is,of taking a turn or two under the mossy tilleuls.At the end of this terrace is the low door,in a wall,against the top of which,in 1498,Charles VIII.,according to an accepted tradition,knocked his head to such good purpose that he died.It was within the walls of Amboise that his widow,Anne of Brittany,already in mourning for three children,two of whom we have seen commemorated in sepulchral marble at Tours,spent the first violence of that grief which was presently dispelled by a union with her husband's cousin and successor,Louis XII.Amboise was a frequent resort of the French Court during the sixteenth century;it was here that the young Mary Stuart spent sundry hours of her first marriage.The wars of religion have left here the ineffaceable stain which they left wherever they passed.An imaginative visitor at Amboise today may fancy that the traces of blood are mixed with the red rust on the crossed iron bars of the grimlooking balcony,to which the heads of the Huguenots executed on the discovery of the conspiracy of La Renaudie are rumored to have been suspended.There was room on the stout balustrade an admirable piece of work for a ghastly array.The same rumor represents Catherine de'Medici and the young queen as watching from this balcony the noyadesof the captured Huguenots in the Loire.The facts of history are bad enough;the fictions are,if possible,worse;but there is little doubt that the future Queen of Scots learnt the first lessons of life at a horrible school.If in subsequent years she was a prodigy of innocence and virtue,it was not the fault of her whilom ???

motherinlaw,of her uncles of the house of Guise,or of the examples presented to her either at the windows of the castle of Amboise or in its more private recesses.

It was difficult to believe in these dark deeds,however,as we looked through the golden morning at the placidity of the farshining Loire.The ultimate consequence of this spectacle was a desire to follow the river as far as the castle of Chaumont.It is true that the cruelties practised of old at Amboise might have seemed less phantasmal to persons destined to suffer from a modern form of inhumanity.The mistress of the little inn at the base of the castlerock it stands very pleasantly beside the river,and we had breakfasted there declared to us that the Chateau de Chaumont,which is often during the autumn closed to visitors,was at that particular moment standing so wide open to receive us that it was our duty to hire one of her carriages and drive thither with speed.

This assurance was so satisfactory that we presently found ourselves seated in this wily woman's most commodious vehicle,and rolling,neither too fast nor too slow,along the margin of the Loire.The drive of about an hour,beneath constant clumps of chestnuts,was charming enough to have been taken for itself;and indeed,when we reached Chaumont,we saw that our reward was to be simply the usual reward of virtue,the consciousness of having attempted the right.The Chateau de Chaumont was inexorably closed;so we learned from a talkative lodgekeeper,who gave what grace she could to her refusal.This good woman's dilemma was almost touching;she wished to reconcile two impossibles.The castle was not to be visited,for the family of its master was staying there;and yet she was loath to turn away a party of which she was good enough to say that it had a grand genre;for,as she also remarked,she had her living to earn.She tried to arrange a compromise,one of the elements of which was that we should descend from our carriage and trudge up a hill which would bring us to a designated point,where,over the paling of the garden,we might obtain an oblique and surreptitious view of a small portion of the castle walls.

This suggestion led us to inquire (of each other)to what degree of baseness it is allowed to an enlightened lover of the picturesque to resort,in order to catch a glimpse of a feudal chateau.One of our trio decided,characteristically,against any form of derogation;so she sat in the carriage and sketched some object that was public property,while her two companions,who were not so proud,trudged up a muddy ascent which formed a kind of backstairs.It is perhaps no more than they deserved that they were disappointed.Chaumont is feudal,if you please;but the modern spirit is in possession.It forms a vast cleanscraped mass,with big round towers,ungarnished with a leaf of ivy or a patch of moss,surrounded by gardens of moderate extent (save where the muddy lane of which I speak passes near it),and looking rather like an enormously magnified villa.The great merit of Chaumont is its position,which almost exactly resembles that of Amboise;it sweeps the river up and down,and seems to look over half the province.This,however,was better appreciated as,after coming down the hill and reentering the carriage,we drove across the long suspensionbridge which crosses the Loire just beyond the village,and over which we made our way to the small station of Onzain,at the farther end,to take the train back to Tours.Look back from the middle of this bridge;the whole picture composes,as the painters say.The towers,the pinnacles,the fair front of the chateau,perched above its fringe of garden and the rusty roofs of the village,and facing the afternoon sky,which is reflected also in the great stream that sweeps below,all this makes a contribution to your happiest memories of Touraine.