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Over Strand and Field By: Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) |
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A Record of Travel through Brittany by GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Simon P. Magee
Publisher
Chicago, Ill. 1904 OVER STRAND AND FIELD[1] A Trip through Brittany
CHAPTER I. CHÂTEAU DE CHAMBORD.
We walked through the empty galleries and deserted rooms where spiders
spin their cobwebs over the salamanders of Francis the First. One is
overcome by a feeling of distress at the sight of this poverty which has
no grandeur. It is not absolute ruin, with the luxury of blackened and
mouldy débris, the delicate embroidery of flowers, and the drapery of
waving vines undulating in the breeze, like pieces of damask. It is a
conscious poverty, for it brushes its threadbare coat and endeavours to
appear respectable. The floor has been repaired in one room, while in
the next it has been allowed to rot. It shows the futile effort to
preserve that which is dying and to bring back that which has fled.
Strange to say, it is all very melancholy, but not at all imposing. And then it seems as if everything had contributed to injure poor
Chambord, designed by Le Primatice and chiselled and sculptured by
Germain Pilon and Jean Cousin. Upreared by Francis the First, on his
return from Spain, after the humiliating treaty of Madrid (1526), it is
the monument of a pride that sought to dazzle itself in order to forget
defeat. It first harbours Gaston d'Orléans, a crushed pretender, who is
exiled within its walls; then it is Louis XIV, who, out of one floor,
builds three, thus ruining the beautiful double staircase which extended
without interruption from the top to the bottom. Then one day, on the
second floor, facing the front, under the magnificent ceiling covered
with salamanders and painted ornaments which are now crumbling away,
Molière produced for the first time Le Bourgeois gentilhomme . Then it
was given to the Maréchal de Saxe; then to the Polignacs, and finally to
a plain soldier, Berthier. It was afterwards bought back by subscription
and presented to the Duc de Bordeaux. It has been given to everybody, as
if nobody cared to have it or desired to keep it. It looks as if it had
hardly ever been used, and as if it had always been too spacious. It is
like a deserted hostelry where transient guests have not left even their
names on the walls. When we walked through an outside gallery to the Orléans staircase, in
order to examine the caryatids which are supposed to represent Francis
the First, M. de Chateaubriand, and Madame d'Étampes, and turned around
the celebrated lantern that terminates the big staircase, we stuck our
heads several times through the railing to look down. In the courtyard
was a little donkey nursing its mother, rubbing up against her, shaking
its long ears and playfully jumping around. This is what we found in the
court of honour of the Château de Chambord; these are its present hosts:
a dog rolling in the grass, and a nursing, braying donkey frolicking on
the threshold of kings!
CHÂTEAU D'AMBOISE. The Château d'Amboise, which dominates the whole city that appears to be
thrown at its feet like a mass of pebbles at the foot of a rock, looks
like an imposing fortress, with its large towers pierced by long, narrow
windows; its arched gallery that extends from the one to the other, and
the brownish tint of its walls, darkened by the contrast of the flowers,
which droop over them like a nodding plume on the bronzed forehead of an
old soldier. We spent fully a quarter of an hour admiring the tower on
the left; it is superb, imbrowned and yellowish in some places and
coated with soot in others; it has charming charlocks hanging from its
battlements, and is, in a word, one of those speaking monuments that
seem to breathe and hold one spellbound and pensive under their gaze,
like those paintings, the originals of which are unknown to us, but whom
we love without knowing why. The Château is reached by a slight incline which leads to a garden
elevated like a terrace, from which the view extends on the whole
surrounding country... Continue reading book >>
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