Château de Blois

“ The town of Blois was asleep in the dark small hours of February 23, when Queen Marie de Médicis got out of her window in the Château, climbed or slid down a hundred and twenty feet of ladders—a really wonderful feat in a woman of her size and indolence—hurried through the silent streets to the bridge over the Loire, got into a coach with two or three attendants and some boxes of money and jewels, and drove off, first to Loches, then to Angoulême. When Blois, castle and town, awoke in the morning, the captive royal bird had flown. ”

“ From the gloomy traditions attaching to the castle of Blois it is positively refreshing to turn to the gay, festive memories belonging to the magnificent castle of Chambord. The château, though somewhat fantastic, is still a splendid mass of building, containing specimens of nearly every kind of French architecture, from the days of Francis I., its first founder, down to the time of Louis XV. It was after his long captivity in Spain, that Francis indulged his magnificent tastes by erecting this castle or palace on the spot where stood formerly a mere hunting lodge of the counts of Blois. ”

“ All in succession seem to rise before one, like the scenes in dissolving views, and then fade away only to be succeeded by a fresh series.
A short distance from Blois the conspicuous Château de Chaumont attracts the attention. It is a mass of those queer-shaped towers so peculiar to French castles, and in its associations it is intimately connected with Blois, as it was for many years the residence of Catherine de’ Medicis. Her room is pointed out as the scene of many a treacherous scheme, and plot for wholesale murder, and many another enormity. ”

“ Beautiful as many of the rooms are, despite their somewhat too pronounced and vividly colored decorations, and interesting as we found the remains of the Tour de Foix upon which tradition placed the observatory dedicated by Catherine and her pet demon, Ruggieri, to Uranus, the crowning glory of the Château of Blois is the great Court of Honor. We never pass through this impressive portal, surmounted by the gilded equestrian figure of [227] Louis XII, without a feeling of joy in the spaciousness and beauty of this wide sunny court. ”

“ Our third château, Valençay—which, for comparison's sake, one may couple with the others though it lies far south of Blois—Valençay bears itself with greater aloofness, bidding the town "keep its distance" down the hill on which the great house lifts its heavy angle-towers and flattened domes. A huge cliff-like wall, enclosing the whole southern flank of the hill, supports the terraced gardens before the château, which to the north is divided from the road by a vast cour d'honneur with a monumental grille and gateway. The impression is grander yet less noble. ”

“ The place where the Bourgeois gentilhomme was first acted before Louis XIV. also exists, as well as the table on which the body of Marshal Saxe, who died at Chambord, was opened and embalmed. It is in fact the only piece of furniture left in the Château.
We got back to Blois rather late, and yesterday morning we visited the castle, which is now a barracks, and certainly one of the most interesting monuments of France. The four sides are in four separate styles of architecture. The oldest part dates from the time of Stephen of Blois, King of England of the Plantagenet stock. ”

“ But it is not upon Joan, nor upon Navarre, nor upon good King Louis that the traveller wastes a thought. The ghosts that dominate the château are those of Catherine de Medici, of her son, wanton in wickedness, and of the murdered Guise. Castle guides are notoriously short of speech, sparing of time, models of bored indifference. But the guardian of Blois waxes eloquent over the tale he has to tell, and, with the dramatic instinct of his race, strives to put its details vividly224 before our eyes. ”

“ In 1196 Count Louis granted privileges to the townsmen; the commune, which survived throughout the middle ages, probably dated from this time. The counts of the Châtillon line resided at Blois more often than their predecessors, and the oldest parts of the chateau (13th century) were built by them. In 1429 Joan of Arc made Blois her base of operations for the relief of Orleans. After his captivity in England, Charles of Orleans in 1440 took up his residence in the château, where in 1462 his son, afterwards Louis XII., was born. ”

“ What an ado there was next day in Blois, when the news came that the troopers had installed themselves at the Château de Canaples and that the Chevalier had been arrested for treason by order of the Lord Cardinal, and that he would be taken to Paris, and—probably—the scaffold.
Men gathered in little knots at street corners, and with sullen brows and threatening gestures they talked of the affair; and the more they talked, the more clouded grew their looks, and more than one anti-cardinalist pasquinade was heard in Blois that day. ”

“ I cannot save a man against his will. Paugh!" (she turned hastily from the window) , "there he is again on the other side of the way, pacing the street as if it were the poop of an amiral!"
The little walled garden at Madame Granier's, with its trellised vines, the wind-swept wintry shore of the Loire, and the bleached shell-pink of the shingle, all went back to their ancient quiet. The whole world was in, at, and about the Château. Men, women, and both sorts of angels were busy around the Castle of Blois in these short grey days of mid-most winter. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A bridge of the 18th century from which it presents the appearance of an amphitheatre, unites Blois with the suburb of Vienne on the left bank of the river. The streets of the higher and older part of the town are narrow and tortuous, and in places so steep that means of ascent is provided by flights of steps. The famous château of the family of Orleans (see Architecture: Renaissance Architecture in France) , a fine example of Renaissance architecture, stands on the more westerly of the two hills. ”

“ The walls of Chambord, the next vast château of the early French Renaissance, are adorned with pilasters as at Blois, though the design below the cornice is much simpler. Above the cornice, however, it is the richest of all the great French châteaux, and with its steep roofs and manifold dormers, chimneys, and central lantern, it presents an aspect which for multiplicity of soaring features resembles a late Gothic building. ”

“ Although Louis and Anne established their residence at the King's birthplace, the Château of Blois, the Queen was at Amboise during the spring after her marriage, where her return was celebrated with rejoicings and festivities which were as original as they were picturesque, and well calculated to please a wine-drinking populace. ”

“ Walter and Archie have elected to spend a part of this afternoon in the Daniel Dupuis Museum, over whose treasures, in the form of engraved medals, they are quite enthusiastic. We women folk, left to our own devices, wandered at will through the first floor rooms and halls of the Château of Blois. ”

“ The Sologne, lying between Blois, Vierzon, and Châteauneuf-sur-Loire, is a great region of lakelets, sandy soil, and replanted Corsican pines, which to-day has taken on a new lease of life and a prosperity which was unknown in the days when the Comtes de Blois first erected that maison de plaisance, on its western border which was afterward to aggrandize itself into the later Château de Chambord. The soil has been drained and the vine planted to a hitherto undreamed of extent, until to-day, if the land does not exactly blossom like the rose, it at least somewhat approaches it. ”

“ I recommend to you especially the Château of Blois, which has been well restored in the last few years. See, for my sake, the new church of Tours, restored. It is on the Rue Royale, on the right side coming from the station; I have forgotten the name of it. See also, in Tours, a house which is called, improperly, the House of the Executioner, and which is attributed to Tristan the Hermit, because of a sculptured girdle, the emblem of a widow, and which the ignorant take for a hangman’s rope. ”

“ The threatening skies and Miss Cassandra's indisposition would be quite enough to keep us at home, or to tempt us to make some short excursion in the neighborhood of Tours, were we not lured on by that ignis [203] fatuus of the traveler, the unexplored worlds which lie beyond. There will be so much to be seen in and near Blois, and in order to have time for the château, and to make the excursions to Chambord and the other castles, we must be at Blois to-morrow evening. So this is the only day for Chinon, which Walter wishes so much to see while M. La Tour is with us. ”

“ The style of building is strictly Gothic, and the architecture, considering the order, is very good. It was built by Francis the First, who, on his return from Spain, commanded the ancient chateau of the Counts of Blois to be destroyed, and built this in its place. He is said to have employed eighteen hundred workmen for twelve years, and even then it was left unfinished. It is moated and walled round, and has every appendage of the Gothic castle, innumerable towers and turrets, drawbridges and portals. If seated upon an hill, it would be impossible to conceive a finer object. ”

“ He acquired considerable wealth, and was often called “the great baron,” after the barony of Alluye, which he possessed in Le Perche. One of the curiosities of Blois is the Hôtel d’Alluye, a house of semi-Moorish style, erected by Robertet at the close of the fifteenth century. Another of his residences was the château of Bury, near Blois, where he set up Michael Angelo’s famous bronze statue of David, presented to him by the city of Florence, and the fate of which has furnished material for so much speculation. ”

“ This completes the panorama to Blois which, with the Blaisois, forms the borderland between the Orléannais and Touraine.
Before reaching Blois, Menars, at any rate, commands attention. It fronts upon the Loire, but is practically upon the northern border of the Forêt de Blois, hence properly belongs to the Blaisois. Menars was made a rendezvous for the chase by the wily and pleasure-loving La Pompadour, who quartered herself at the château, which afterward passed to her brother, De Marigny. ”

“ Miss Cassandra asked the guide if she would not be afraid to sleep in this dismal chamber. "No," she answered, "there are no revenants here, the great people who lived here do not walk, they had such an active life with their hunting and fêtes that they are content to rest quietly in their beds."
We passed through the council chamber of the château, where there are more tapestries, these presented by the loyal inhabitants of Blois and the Limousin districts, and here also is a quite useless throne donated by some devoted legitimists. ”

“ BLOIS, LOUIS DE (1506–1566) , Flemish mystical writer, generally known under the name of Blosius, was born in October 1506 at the château of Donstienne, near Liége, of an illustrious family to which several crowned heads were allied. ”

“ In that soft, clear, merry light of Touraine, everything shows, everything speaks. Charming are the taste, the happy proportions, the color of this beautiful front, to which the new feeling for a purely domestic architecture - an architecture of security and tranquillity, in which art could indulge itself - gave an air of youth and gladness. It is true that for a long time to come the castle of Blois was neither very safe nor very quiet ”

“ The deep niches of the windows are all aglow with color. They have been repainted with red and blue, relieved with gold figures; and each of them looks more like the royal box at a theatre than like the aperture of a palace dark with memories. For all this, however, and in spite of the fact that, as in some others of the chateaux of Touraine, (always excepting the colossal Chambord, which is not in Touraine!) there is less vastness than one had expected, the least hospitable aspect of Blois is abundantly impressive. ”

“ In its constructive features the château is more or less of rectangular outlines. The pavilions at each corner have their openings à la impériale, with the domes, or lanterns, so customary during the height of the style under Louis XIV. An architect, Boyer by name, who came from Blois, where surely he had the op112portunity of having been well acquainted with a more beautiful style, was responsible for the design of the edifice at Cheverny. ”

“ One comes away with the impression of it68 all stamped only upon the mind, not graven upon the heart. Political intrigue to-day, if quite as vulgar, is less sordid. Bigotry and ambition in those days allowed few of the finer feelings to come to the surface, except with regard to the luxuriance of surroundings. Of this last there can be no question, and Blois is as characteristically luxurious as any of the magnificent edifices which lodged the royalty and nobility of other days, throughout the valley of the Loire. ”