Fanny Boothby

“ All the terrible drama seems again to live before one. As if this was not enough to give a fearful renown for crime to this gloomy edifice, the king, not satisfied with one life, caused the Cardinal de Lorraine, brother to the murdered man, to be butchered in cold blood, in another part of the same castle, only the day following. ”

“ The delicately sculptured foliage, everywhere adorning the edifice, is of matchless beauty; the leaves with their fibres; the crisp curling of their edges; are all more like carving in ivory than in stone. And now we pass away from the blood-stained walls of Amboise, and the scene is occupied by the Château of Chenonceau; but though the souvenirs connected with this castle are numerous, they are widely different in character from those we have just alluded to. Here, again, Francis I. (as at Chambord) was the founder ”

“ The ruins are of vast extent; the situation of the castle must have been magnificent, as the lofty rock on which it stands is full 300 feet above the river; the royal apartments are beneath, the only habitable part of the edifice. The scene of the memorable interview between the Dauphin Charles, and the shepherd girl of Donrèmy, is now a broken ruin, open to the sky; there, where the careless and luxurious Charles enjoyed the splendours of his magnificent court, nothing now is to be seen but a mass of luxuriant vegetation instead of the gorgeous flooring ”

“ The great, the distinguished, the learned, the brave, the criminal; the fairest, the noblest, and again the frailest among women; stirring events, deep tragedies, pathetic love stories, conspiracies, massacres even, all have had their place here, till we are brought down to the memorable time when a whole nation was convulsed throughout the length and breadth of the land, and when such characters as Henri de la Rochejaquelin are seen to rise to the distinction they merit. ”

“ What a fate for this strong-minded, ambitious, and yet fine-natured woman! All her plans defeated, the survivor of all she loved, not a single thing, as far as this world was concerned, to soften the dread reality. ”

“ Near the little village of Champtoie there are some very magnificent ruins of a feudal castle, which we stopped to explore, having heard previously of the celebrity they had acquired from the frightful crimes of their owner, by name Gilles de Retz Sieur de Laval, who lived in the reign of Charles VII. He was a perfect monster in human shape, and a complete bugbear to all the surrounding country, who gave him the name of Barbe Bleu, the original of our well-known story of Blue Beard. The story-tellers have thought proper to clothe the hero in a turban and Eastern dress ”

“ To the present day his name is worshipped in all the country, where the account of his exploits are still handed down from father to son, as their boast and glory. On such a memory it is pleasant to dwell, and pleasant to drop the curtain on a character so deserving of all praise, though a degree of mournful pathos is mixed up with it when we reflect on his tragic fate. ”

“ The monument of Henry is as fine as that of his son. His queen, Eleanor of Guienne, beautiful even in this stone effigy, rests near her husband. That of Isabella d’Angoulême is even more beautiful. She was the widow of King John; her features are of rare and most queenlike loveliness. The body of Henry II. was brought from Chinon, and laid in the sanctuary for some time before interment, and Richard saw it just before the closing of the royal coffin. ”

“ Contemplate those two lives, side by side, both women eminently gifted, mentally and corporeally—both intimately connected with the same royal personage, only in a totally different manner; neither of them born in high life; the one renouncing all her feminine attributes to serve her country’s cause and her king’s; the other, through the depth of her affection for the man, sacrificing all a woman holds most dear ”

“ All the curious old furniture, the matchless china, enamel and glass, are there in all their pristine freshness and beauty. Magnificent old armour hangs all round the hall, and the walls of the apartments are covered with that curious old stamped leather well known to antiquaries ”

“ To spend the summer months in becoming thoroughly acquainted with the most celebrated French châteaux situated in Touraine and the neighbouring country, is to procure oneself as much interesting and enjoyable occupation as can possibly fall to the lot of a traveller in any country: whether we value them for their historical associations, for their picturesque and beautiful situation, or for the romantic stories connected with so many of them, they form quite a chronicle in themselves. ”

“ This whole story is accurately recorded in the ancient chronicles of the time.
The locality of this sad story of crime and misery suits well with the events that then occurred. The country hereabouts is wholly devoid of attraction, though there is a gloomy grandeur about these really fine ruins, that renders them no unfitting stage for the awful tragedy that was here enacted; but we will leave this mixed chapter of fact and fiction and close our chronicle with one more scene of stirring and brilliant events ”

“ The walls of the castle are of immense thickness. In the cachots or oubliettes (to give these dungeons their more appalling name) , beneath the dwelling rooms, were slaughtered 1200 miserable Huguenot prisoners, concerned in the famous “Conjuration d’Amboise,” the object of which was to extricate Francis II., the husband of the young Queen of Scots, from the Guises, in 1560. ”

“ Touraine, especially, was the chosen residence of the French kings of the Valois line, down to Louis XIV. The vast and castellated Chambord, with its turrets and pinnacles, all surmounted with the crescent—emblem of Diane de Poitiers; the gloomy Blois—terrible scene of the assassination of the Guises; Amboise, the favourite residence of Charles VIII.; Chenonceau, the abode of Diane de Poitiers herself ”

“ For this purpose children and young persons were spirited away, and then murdered in the deep dungeons of his castle, or in the dense darkness of his forests, to the number, as stated in ancient chronicles, of one hundred, the monster in many cases plunging the dagger into the breasts of his victims. At length the fury and indignation of the whole country reached such a height that a regular insurrection was organised, and the people rose against their lord with a determination to put him to death, but the then Duke of Brittany interfered in the business: he heard the charges against De Retz ”

“ In ancient times it was one of the most opulent institutions of the kind in France, and entirely at variance with all similar places of retreat; it had the peculiarity that monks and nuns were all subject to the control of a lady abbess, and yet it did not owe its foundation to a lady, but to a Breton monk, named Robert d’Arbriseil, so early as in the year 1098. ”

“ His father, Henry II., the wisest, and one of the best kings that England ever saw, the greatest trouble of whose life was the undutiful conduct of this very son. The only one of his sons who accompanied their father’s remains to this last home, was his natural son, Geoffrey; and tradition says that, when Richard afterwards came and stood by his father’s tomb, remorse for his conduct to him quite overcame the iron-hearted prince. How true it is that if “We sow the wind we shall reap the whirlwind.” Nearly the sorest trial of Richard’s life was the treacherous conduct of his brother John. ”

“ The peasants actually still regard with horror the ill-omened walls and vaults in which these awful atrocities were committed, and the popular belief is still unaltered, that this wretched being had made a compact with the Evil One. ”