CHINON, WHERE JOAN MET THE KING, AND AZAY
Chinon is not on the Loire, but on a tributary a little south of it, the Vienne, its ruined castle crowning the long hill or ridge above the town. Sometime during the afternoon we came to the outskirts of the ancient place and looked up to the wreck of battlements and towers where occurred that meeting which meant the liberation of France.
We left the car below and started to climb, then found there was a road, a great blessing, for the heat was intense. There is a village just above the castle, and we stopped there.
The château of Chinon to-day is the remains of what originally was three châteaux, built at different times, but so closely strung together that in ruin they are scarcely divided. The oldest, Coudray, was built in the tenth century and still shows three towers standing, in one of which Joan of Arc lived during her stay at Chinon. The middle château is not as old by a hundred years. It was built on the site of a Roman fort, and it was in one of its rooms, a fragment of which still remains, that Charles VII received the shepherd girl from Domremy. The château of St. George was built in the twelfth century by Henry II of England, who died there in 1189. Though built two hundred years after Coudray, nothing of it survives but some foundations.
Chinon is a much more extensive ruin than we had expected. Even what remains to-day must be nearly a quarter of a mile in length, and its vast crumbling walls and towers make it strikingly picturesque. But its ruin is complete, none the less. Once through the entrance tower and you are under nothing but the sky, with your feet on the grass; there is no longer a shelter there, even for a fugitive king. You wander about, viewing it scarcely more than as a ruin, at first, a place for painting, for seclusion, for dreaming in the sun. Then all at once you are facing a wall in which, halfway up where once was the second story, there is a restored fireplace and a tablet which tells you that in this room Charles VII received Joan of Arc. It is not a room now; it is just a wall, a fragment, with vines matting its ruined edges.
You cross a stone footbridge to the tower where Joan lived, and that, too, is open to the sky, and bare and desolate. Once, beyond it, there was a little chapel where she prayed. There are other fragments and other towers, but they merely serve as a setting for those which the intimate presence of Joan made sacred.
The Maid did not go immediately to the castle on her arrival in Chinon. She put up at an inn down in the town and waited the king's pleasure. His paltering advisers kept him dallying, postponing his consent to see her, but through the favor of his mother-in-law, Yolande, Queen of Sicily, Joan and her suite were presently housed in the tower of Coudray. One wonders if the walls were as bare as now. It was old even then; it had been built five hundred years. But Queen Yolande would have seen to it that there were comforts, no doubt; some tapestries, perhaps, on the walls; a table, chairs, some covering for the stone floor. Perhaps it was even luxurious.
The king was still unready to see Joan. She was only a stone's throw away, but the whisperings of his advisers kept her there, while a commission of priests went to Domremy to inquire as to her character. When there were no further excuses for delay they contrived a trick—a deception. They persuaded the king to put another on the throne, one like him and in his royal dress, so that Joan might pay homage to this make-believe king, thus proving that she had no divine power or protection which would assist her in identifying the real one.
In the space where now is only green grass and sky and a broken wall Charles VII and his court gathered to receive the shepherd girl who had come to restore his kingdom. It was evening and the great hall was lighted, and at one end of it was the throne with its imitation king, and I suppose at the other the fireplace with a blazing fire. Down the center of the room were the courtiers, formed in two ranks, facing so that Joan might pass between them to the throne. The occasion was one of great ceremony—Joan and her suite were welcomed with fine honors. Banners waved, torches flared; trumpets blown at intervals marked the stages of her progress down the great hall; every show was made of paying her great honor—everything that would distract her and blind her to their trick.
Charles VII, dressed as a simple courtier, stood a little distance from the throne. Joan, advancing to within a few steps of the pretended king, raised her eyes. Then for a moment she stood silent, puzzled. They expected her to kneel and make obeisance, but a moment later she turned and, hurrying to the rightful Charles, dropped on her knees and gave him heartfelt salutation. She had never seen him and was without knowledge of his features. Her protectors, or her gifts, had not failed. It was perhaps the greatest moment in French history.
We drove down into Chinon, past the house where it is said that Rabelais was born, and saw his statue, and one of Joan which was not very pleasing. Then we threaded some of the older streets and saw houses which I think cannot have changed much since Joan was there. It was getting well toward evening now, and we set out for Tours, by way of Azay.
The château of Azay-le-Rideau is all that Chinon is not. Perfect in condition, of rare beauty in design and ornamentation, fresh, almost new in appearance, Azay presents about the choicest flowering of the Renaissance. Joan of Arc had been dead a hundred years when Azay was built; France was no longer in dread of blighting invasion; a residence no longer needed to be a fortress. The royal châteaux of the Loire are the best remaining evidence of what Joan had done for the security of her kings. Whether they deserved it or not is another matter.
Possibly Azay-le-Rideau might not have looked so fresh under the glare of noonday, but in the mellow light of evening it could have been the home of one of our modern millionaires (a millionaire of perfect taste, I hasten to add), and located, let us say, in the vicinity of Newport. It was difficult to believe that it had been standing for four centuries.
Francis I did not build Azay-le-Rideau. But he liked it so much when he saw it (he was probably on a visit to its owner, the French treasurer, at the time) that he promptly confiscated it and added it to the collection of other châteaux he had built, or confiscated, or had in mind. Nothing very remarkable seems to have happened there—just the usual things—plots, and liaisons, and intrigues of a general sort, with now and then a chapter of real lovemaking, and certain marriages and deaths—the latter hurried a little sometimes to accommodate the impatient mourners.
But how beautiful it is! Its towers, its stately façades, its rich ornamentation reflected in the water of the wide stream that sweeps about its base, a natural moat, its background of rich foliage—these, in the gathering twilight, completed a picture such as Hawthorne could have conceived, or Edgar Poe.
I suppose it was too late to go inside, but we did not even apply. Like Langeais, it belongs to France now, and I believe is something of a museum, and rather modern. One could not risk carrying away anything less than a perfect memory of Azay.