This was surely,in France at least,the age of good society,the period when it was well for appreciative people to have been born.Such people should of course have belonged to the fortunate few,and not to the miserable many;for the prime condition of a society being good is that it be not too large.The sixty years that preceded the French Revolution were the golden age of fireside talk and of those pleasures which proceed from the presence of women in whom the social art is both instinctive and acquired.The women of that period were,above all,good company;the fact is attested by a thousand documents.Chenonceaux offered a perfect setting to free conversation;and infinite joyous discourse must have mingled with the liquid murmur of the Cher.Claude Dupin was not only a great man of business,but a man of honor and a patron of knowledge;and his wife was gracious,clever,and wise.They had acquired this famous property by purchase (from one of the Bourbons;for Chenonceaux,for two centuries after the death of Catherine de'Medici,remained constantly in princely hands),and it was transmitted to their son,Dupin de Francueil,grandfather of Madame George Sand.This lady,in her Correspondence,lately published,describes a visit that she paid,more than thirty years ago,to those members of her family who were still in possession.The owner of Chenonceaux today is the daughter of an Englishman naturalized in France.But I have wandered far from my story,which is simply a sketch of the surface of the place.Seen obliquely,from either side,in combination with its bridge and gallery,the chateau is singular and fantastic,a striking example of a wilful and capricious conception.Unfortunately,all caprices are not so graceful and successful,and Igrudge the honor of this one to the false and bloodpolluted Catherine.(To be exact,I believe the arches of the bridge were laid by the elderly Diana.It was Catherine,however,who completed the monument.)Within,the house has been,as usual,restored.The staircases and ceilings,in all the old royal residences of this part of France,are the parts that have suffered least;many of them have still much of the life of the old time about them.Some of the chambers of Chenonceaux,however,encumbered as they are with modern detail,derive a sufficiently haunted and suggestive look from the deep setting of their beautiful windows,which thickens the shadows and makes dark,corners.
There is a charming little Gothic chapel,with its apse hanging over the water,fastened to the left flank of the house.Some of the upper balconies,which look along the outer face of the gallery,and either up or down the river,are delightful protected nooks.We walked through the lower gallery to the other bank of the Cher;this fine apartment appeared to be for the moment a purgatory of ancient furniture.It terminates rather abruptly;it simply stops,with a blank wall.
There ought,of course,to have been a pavilion here,though I prefer very much the old defect to any modern remedy.The wall is not so blank,however,but that it contains a door which opens on a rusty drawbridge.This drawbridge traverses the small gap which divides the end of the gallery from the bank of the stream.The house,therefore,does not literally rest on opposite edges of the Cher,but rests on one and just fails to rest on the other.The pavilion would have made that up;but after a moment we ceased to miss this imaginary feature.We passed the little drawbridge,and wandered awhile beside the river.
From this opposite bank the mass of the chateau looked more charming than ever;and the little peaceful,lazy Cher,where two or three men were fishing in the eventide,flowed under the clear arches and between the solid pedestals of the part that spanned it,with the softest,vaguest light on its bosom.This was the right perspective;we were looking across the river of time.The whole scene was deliciously mild.The moon came up;we passed back through the gallery and strolled about a little longer in the gardens.It was very still.I met my old gondolier in the twilight.
He showed me his gondola;but I hated,somehow,to see it there.I don't like,as the French say,to meler les genres.A gondola in a little flat French river?
The image was not less irritating,if less injurious,than the spectacle of a steamer in the Grand Canal,which had driven me away from Venice a year and a half before.We took our way back to the Grand Monarque,and waited in the little innparlor for a late train to Tours.We were not impatient,for we had an excellent dinner to occupy us;and even after we had dined we were still content to sit awhile and exchange remarks upon,the superior civilization of France.
Where else,at a village inn,should we have fared so well?Where else should we have sat down to our refreshment without condescension?There were two or three countries in which it would not have been happy for us to arrive hungry,on a Sunday evening,at so modest an hostelry.At the little inn at Chenonceaux the cuisine was not only excellent,but the service was graceful.We were waited on by mademoiselle and her mamma;it was so that mademoiselle alluded to the elder lady,as she uncorked for us a bottle of Vouvray mousseux.We were very comfortable,very genial;we even went so far as to say to each other that Vouvray mousseux was a delightful wine.From this opinion,indeed,one of our trio differed;but this member of the party had already exposed herself to the charge of being too fastidious,by declining to descend from the carriage at Chaumont and take that backstairs view of the castle.