In Château Land - Anne Hollingsworth Wharton (fiction novels to read TXT) 📗

great King was the devotion of his son Geoffrey, who sat through the hours of the long summer day fanning away the insects from his father's face, the dying man's head resting upon his shoulder while a knight supported his feet. The King opening his eyes, recognized his son, blessed him, and said that he of all his children was the only one that showed any affection for him, and that if his life was spared he would make him the most powerful prince of them all. This, like many another death-bed resolution, was not carried out, as Henry died the next day, before the high altar of the church of St. Melaine, which was within the chateau, at Chinon.

We did not feel at all sure that we had seen the spot where the King breathed his last; but it really does not much matter, as Miss Cassandra says, and it is not easy to locate the scene of remote events among these ruinous buildings.

The trial of the Grand Master of the Knights Templars was held here in one of the halls of Chinon in 1309, and swift retribution was meted out to the members of the order, more for the love of gold than for the love of justice, as the Templars had become the bankers of Christendom and were possessed of vast treasures, which were seized upon forthwith.

A carving in the donjon of Coudray of three kneeling knights, each one bearing a sword and a shield, is thought to have been carved by the Templars on their prison wall.

As we made our way down the hillside to the town, M. La Tour reminded us of a more cheerful association connected with Chinon than those upon which we had been dwelling, for here it was that the historian Philippe de Commines was betrothed. He had been created Prince of Talmont by Louis XI, who arranged a marriage for him with Helene de Chambes, daughter of the Lord and Lady of Montsoreau. This betrothal was attended by the whole court, and Louis heaped honors and rewards upon his favorite who was made Governor of Chinon. A few years later, after the death of the King, Commines entered into the involved politics of France, and incurred the displeasure of Anne de Beaujeu who imprisoned him at Loches; or, as he expressed it in Scripture phrase, "I ventured on the great ocean, and the waves devoured me." He, however, escaped from this sea of troubles and gave to the world his valuable history, composed, it is said, in the hours of his enforced retirement.

"Which is," as Walter says, "a delicate and extremely polite manner of referring to his imprisonment in one of those infernal iron cages at Loches." (Pray notice that the language is Walter's, not mine.)

On our way to the cafe we passed by the statue of Rabelais, and although this was not a market day, to M. La Tour's infinite regret, there were some booths in the busy little square and a number of traffickers. The face of the humorist who loved his kind, even if he often made game of them, looked down upon the gay, chattering, bargain-making crowd in the square beneath him, with an expression half satirical, half laughing and wholly benevolent.

There is some uncertainty as to the date of the birth of Maitre Francois at Chinon, and he may or may not have lived in either of the old houses pointed out as his, but he certainly belonged to this part of the country, and we are grateful to his fellow-townsmen for honoring him so fittingly.

In the centre of the little square a fountain, surrounded by acacia trees, was playing, and beyond was the welcome Hotel de France opening its doors to us. After we had ordered our luncheon, Walter suddenly remembered the chauffeur, and started to hunt him up and tell him where to meet us with the automobile, and I joined him for the pleasure of another stroll through the town. M. La Tour, who accompanied us, again regretted that this was not a market day, when the peasants come in from the surrounding country, and we could then see just such a noisy merry crowd as Rabelais described when Couillatris goes to Chinon, which he calls "that noble, antique city, the first in the world," to buy oxen, cows and sheep, pigs, geese and capons, dead and alive, and all manner of country produce. An antique city Chinon appeared to us, above all that we had seen; and to add to this impression we met a number of peasant women and black-eyed girls with the picturesque lace caps of this province, veiling but not concealing their fine dark hair.

After a luncheon that more than answered our expectations, we strolled about the old town, through its narrow winding streets and by the Place Jeanne d'Arc, with its remarkable statue which represents the Maid riding roughshod over the prostrate bodies of her foes; her horse has all four feet off the ground, his means of support, a bronze rod as a sort of fifth or middle leg, being more practical than artistic. "The rider's position in the saddle," as Archie says, "would turn any circus performer green with envy." An altogether atrocious piece of sculpture is this, with an element of grotesqueness in its conception quite unworthy of one of the most serious characters in all history, the Maid to whom, as Carlyle says, "all maidens upon earth should bend."

Finally, and I must say with some reluctance, we turned our backs upon Chinon and our faces toward Fontevrault, journeying by much the same route that Henry II was carried on his last journey, over the bridge that he had built and by the river and the village of Montsoreau.

By the way, M. La Tour showed an amiable desire to accompany us to Angers, and as our touring car is of hospitable proportions we were glad to have his good company. At Fontevrault, which has been turned from an abbey into a reformatory for criminals, we were fortunate to have some one with us to speak to the sentinel, as this seemed to be a day when visitors were not welcomed here. After some parleying with the officials, M. La Tour gained permission to have us enter and see all that is left of the fine old church, whose buttresses and roofs we had admired from a distance. In the little chapel we saw the four Plantagenet statues that still remain, after the vandals of the French Revolution had broken open the tombs and destroyed all that they could lay their hands upon. These four statues have been restored and the faces repainted. Here lies Henry II, robed and sceptred as he was when borne forth from Chinon for burial at Fontevrault, and Richard Coeur de Lion, both in the middle of the group. To the left is Eleanor of Guienne, the wife of Henry II. Three of these recumbent figures are of colossal size, hewn out of the tufa rock and painted. The other statue of smaller size, carved in wood and colored, represents the English queen, Isabel of Angouleme, one of the most beautiful as well as the most depraved queens of history; only excelled in wickedness by her French sister of a later time, Isabel of Bavaria. This earlier Isabel, daughter of Aymar, Count of Angouleme, upon the day of her betrothal to Hugues de Lusignan, was carried off by John of England, who put away his wife, Avice, to marry this beautiful, wicked enchantress. After the death of John, Isabel came back to France to marry her old lover.

As we left Fontevrault and motored down the hill towards the Loire, M. La Tour recalled to us the ancient glory of this abbey, whose walls now echo to the clank of arms instead of to the _Ave Marias_ of the gentle sisters. Fontevrault was founded in the eleventh century by Robert d'Abrissel, a monk, as a place of refuge for a vast and ill-assorted company of men and women who gathered around him when he was preaching a crusade to Palestine. From this strange beginning the abbey became one of the most famous in Christendom, as it was richly endowed by kings and princes, especially by the early English kings who loved this beautiful valley of the Loire. Many noble and royal ladies presided over Fontevrault, among them, Renee de Bourbon, sister of Francis I who, while she was Abbess, rebuilt the beautiful cloister which we saw to-day. Another and later Lady Abbess was Marie Madelaine Gabrielle de Rochechouart, who found time in the midst of her religious duties to make translations of some of Plato's works. New ideas, you see, were finding their way into the convent, it being the fashion about that time for women to be learned, Mary Stuart having led the way by delivering a Latin oration at the Louvre to the edification of all who heard her. And here came Mary Stuart herself, while Louise de Bourbon was Lady Abbess, brought hither by her aunt, the Duchess of Guise, to charm and delight the nuns by her beauty and ready wit. As a religious establishment for men and women, ruled over solely by a woman, the Abbey of Fontevrault was unique in Christendom.

As we motored along the river bank beyond its low-lying sand marshes and line of small hills, we noticed tiny black wind-mills spreading out their arms to the breeze, and wreaths of smoke curling up from the cliffs. Here and there the lowering sun would light up a window pane in the cliff, as if to remind us that these hillsides are burrowed out by the workers in the vineyards who make their homes here as in Touraine and in the valley of Vendomois.

"It seems that we are again in the land of the troglodytes," said Walter. "Alfred de Vigny says these peasants 'in their love for so fair a home have not been willing to lose the least scrap of its soil, or the least grain of its sand.' I think myself that it is for more practical and economic reasons that they live underground."

These cliff dwellings continue for nearly eight miles around Saumur, and M. La Tour tells us that many of them go back to the days of the Roman occupation when they served the conquered tribes as a last retreat from the invader. Some one has said that every step to the southward takes us further back in the history of France. Chinon and Fontevrault are not far south of Tours and Blois, and yet we are far back in history to-day, living with the Angevin kings and with the cave-dwellers of Gaul.

Even the _coiffes_ of the women are different here from those worn in other places on the Loire, and in a very distinct way we realize that we have left Touraine and are in Anjou.

In the fields the peasants were gathering in their stores for the winter; the women pass along the road constantly with their odd panniers upon their backs, full of treasures. Sometimes they are filled with fruit and vegetables and again it is only grass for the cattle or faggots for the fire. As we drew near Saumur, grapes filled the _hottes_ to overflowing, for this is the land of the vine, one of the great grape-growing regions of France.

We are spinning along all too rapidly over these perfect roads, as we long to stop at so many places, especially at that tiny Venice on the Loire, a republic of fishermen and laborers established by King Rene when he was still in power. From its sole palace, the Chateau de l'Ile d'Or, Rene's daughter went forth to be the unhappy Margaret