XV. THE CHÂTEAU OF WIDEVILLE.
IN a little valley, between Versailles and Maule, at the end of an immense green carpet where a few old garden statues still stand, the château of Wideville deploys its beautiful façade of red brick framed in white stone. The harmonious lines of the uneven roofs show up against the background of the wooded hillside. Around the building, wide moats filled with running water form a square, and at each angle of the platform projects a square bastion topped by a watch tower. This parade-armor harmonizes well with the robust elegance of the construction. On beholding the admirable mixture here produced by the reminiscences of the feudal manor, the graces of the Renaissance and the majesty of classic architecture, we immediately think of that magical line of Victor Hugo:
It was a grand château of the day of Louis Treize.
To tell the truth, we know no other architectural work in France which expresses with more delicacy and seduction the noble and chivalrous charm of the period when order and discipline had not effaced all traces of fancy. And as, by rare good fortune, Wideville still belongs to descendants of him who built it, and as its possessors have preserved it and repaired it with jealous care and perfect taste, it is a living image of French art of the time of Louis XIII which we have before our eyes.
At the commencement of the seventeenth century, the manor of Wideville was a square fortress, flanked with towers and rising upon a mound; it was doubtless restored at the time of the Renaissance, for magnificent mantels of this period were moved into the new château which Claude de Bullion built in 1632 at the bottom of the valley, after he had bought the estate of Wideville from René de Longueil, Marquis de Maisons.
This little Claude de Bullion was a very great personage, though the tininess of his stature provoked all kinds of jeers. He was the son of a Burgundian magistrate, and his mother was one of the twenty children of Charles de Lamoignon. Tallemant des Réaux has related that a certain Countess de Sault had contributed to the advancement of the little Claude, and had succeeded in getting him nominated as President of the Inquests. "Ah! Madame!" she said one day to Marie de Médicis, "if you only knew Monsieur de Bullion as well as I do!"
"Gawd preserve me from it, Madame la Comtesse!" replied the Italian. Henri IV had charged him with various embassies. Louis XIII made him guardian of the seals of his orders, and then superintendent of the finances. Whatever may have been the origin of the good luck of Bullion, he showed himself worthy of his position by his talent and probity. When he became superintendent of the finances, he had the prudence to make an inventory of his property, in order to be able to defend himself against any future accusation of peculation. It became necessary for him to provide for the financial demands of Richelieu, which were terrible. So he laid new taxes and became very unpopular, but it did not displease him to oppose the multitude. In 1636, when the Spanish army had invaded the kingdom, Richelieu did not dare to face the discontent of the people, exasperated by defeat. "And I," said Bullion to him, "whom they hate more than your Eminence, I will go through the whole city on horseback, followed by two lackeys only, and no one will say a word to me." He did it as he had promised, and the next day the Cardinal, emboldened, repaired in a carriage with doors open from his palace to the Porte Saint Antoine.
The King and his minister backed up Bullion.
He groaned incessantly about the state of the finances and forecast bankruptcy. His complaints did not trouble Richelieu: "As to the humors of M. de Bullion," wrote the Cardinal, "we must overlook them without worrying about them, when they are bad."
He was extremely rich, for he was a good manager and received each year from the King a present of one hundred thousand livres in addition to his salary. His manner of life never exceeded his income. Later, in the time of the great prodigality of the superintendent Nicolas Fouquet, people recalled the economy of M. de Bullion and the modest appearance of his hotel in the Rue Plâtrière. As for his morals, they were scandalous, also on the authority of Tallemant. The superintendent often repaired to the Faubourg Saint Victor, to the home of his friend Doctor de Brosse, who had there founded a botanical garden, and there he indulged in gross debauchery at his ease. But we possess a very curious letter from Richelieu to Madame de Bullion, where we read: "I would like to be able to witness more usefully than I have the affection with which I shall always be at your service. Aside from the fact that the consideration of your merit would cause this, the frequent solicitations which M. de Bullion makes to me in regard to what can concern your contentment, renders me not a little agreeable to this. I have seen the day when I believed that he was one of those husbands who love their wives only because of the money they have brought; but now I perceive that he loves his skin better than his shirt, the interest of his wife more than those of another, and that he is, as concerns marriage, like those who do not think that they have done a good work unless they do it in secret...." Harmonize the testimony of Tallemant with that of Richelieu.
[Original]
The story of Bullion's death is rather tragic. On December 21, 1640, in the new château of Saint Germain, as the King, who was already very ill, seemed to sleep before the fire, stretched out in his great Roman chair, some courtiers who were talking in a window embrasure asked one another in a low voice who would succeed Cardinal de Richelieu, whose life was known to be in danger. The King heard their words and turned around: "Gentlemen," he said, "you forget M. de Bullion." On the next day the words of Louis XIII were reported to the minister, who became furious at the thought that his place was being thus disposed of. He harshly criticized Bullion, who had come to see him as ordinarily, for having forgotten a detail of administration, and wished to make him sign an acknowledgment of it. As the superintendent refused, he seized the tongs from the fireplace "to give them to him on the head." Bullion signed, but was stricken with apoplexy as the result. He was bled twice in the arm. The Cardinal came to see him, and found him without speech or knowledge. "Having seen which,"—it is Guy Patin who relates it,—"dissolved in tears, the Cardinal Prince returned. The sick man died from congestion of the brain."
Such was the man who built the Château de Wideville. The neighborhood of Saint Germain, and the nearness of the forests where the King usually hunted, doubtless decided him to choose for his residence this melancholy and solitary valley surrounded by woods.
We do not know what architect drew the plan and superintended the construction of Wideville. We do not know to whom to attribute this building, so well seated upon the fortified platform, these façades so pleasingly designed, cut by a central projection and flanked by two pavilions, these roofs where dormers of charming style alternate with projecting bull's-eyes, these rounded platforms which unite the mansion to the court of honor and to the gardens, and that delightful coloring which is given to the whole construction by the happy union of stone and brick.
Two great artists collaborated in the decoration of Wideville, the sculptor Sarazin and the painter Vouet, for whom Bullion seems to have felt especial esteem, for he commissioned the pair of them with the ornamentation of his Parisian hotel also. Sarazin executed the four statues in niches which beautify the façade towards the gardens; he also carved the two hounds which guard the door of the house on the same side.
[Original]
Behind the château are gardens in the French style. The flower-beds have been restored in the antique taste. In Bullion's time a wide avenue started from the platform, bordered with mythological statues, works of Buyster, but nothing remains of it today. The grotto, situated at the end of this alley, still exists, and this grotto is the marvel of Wideville. Of all the edifices of this species with which fashion ornamented so many French gardens in imitation of Italy, this is, I believe, the best preserved. It is a pavilion whose façade presents four columns of the Tuscan order, cut by rustic drums and charged with carved mosses. The three bays between these columns are closed by hammered iron gratings, masterpieces of the locksmith's art. Male and female figures, representing rivers, lying on a bed of roses, enframe the arched pediment which surmounts the grotto. The interior is lined with shells. The nymphæum has lost its statues, but we still see the vase from which water flowed through three lions' heads. Stucco figures of satyrs frame the great cartouches of the ceiling, where Youet executed admirable mythological paintings. These are now very much damaged, but what time has spared of them shows a marvelous decorator, a worthy disciple of the great Venetians.
Near the chateau, a pleasant little house which is called the "Hermitage," and which was slightly modified in the eighteenth century, contains some delicate wood carvings. Farther away stands the chapel, a simple oratory with an arched ceiling. There, before the altar, a stone sarcophagus bears the words Respect and Obedience; this is the sepulcher of the Duchesse de La Vallière, niece of the Carmelite Louis de la Miséricorde. Of all the phantoms which people Wideville, there is none more charming than that of Julie de Crussol, Duchesse de La Vallière. The whole eighteenth century celebrated her grace, her charity, her sharp and brilliant wit, her beauty which defied years. Voltaire versified for her his finest compliments. During the whole Revolution she remained in her château, and her presence preserved Wideville from the fate which then overtook so many old seigniorial domains. The thought of being buried under the earth had always horrified her; so her remains were placed in this sarcophagus standing above ground.
Like the exterior and the gardens, the apartments of the château have preserved their aspect of earlier years. Some changes which dated from the eighteenth century have been removed in order that the house might be as it was in the time of Claude de Bullion.
Three Renaissance chimney pieces adorn the great rooms of Wideville. They are constructed of white stone and of different colored marbles, ornamented with marvelous carvings, which represent foliage, sirens and female heads, and they were found in the earlier manor which Bullion demolished. Perhaps it was by the advice of Sarazin that he had them moved to the new home.
Except the guardroom, whose ceiling is a masterpiece of architectural ingenuity, all the rooms of the château have ceilings with painted beams. The enameled brick pavements are intact. Everywhere are tapestries, one of which with deliciously faded tones represents the siege of La Rochelle, precious paintings, family portraits. In the "King's Chamber" almost nothing has been changed since January 23, 1634; it was on this day that Louis XIII paid M. de Bullion the compliment of sleeping at Wideville. And everywhere there occurs to our memory the line of Victor Hugo:
It was a grand chateau of the time of Louis Treize.