It was Francis's son, Henry II, that gave it to Diana of Poitiers. Henry had his own kind of a collection and he used his papa's châteaux to keep it in. As he picked about the best one for Diana, we may believe that he regarded her as his choicest specimen. Unfortunately for Diana, Henry's queen, the terrible Catherine, outlived him; and when, after the funeral, Catherine drove around by Chenonceaux and suggested to Diana that perhaps she would like to exchange the place for a very excellent château farther up the road, Chaumont, we may assume that Diana moved with no unseemly delay. Diana tactfully said she liked Chaumont ever so much, for a change, that perhaps living on a hilltop was healthier than over the water, anyway. Still, it must have made her sigh, I think, to know that her successor was carrying out the plan which Diana herself had conceived of extending Chenonceaux across the Cher.
We stopped a little to look at the beautiful façade of Chenonceaux, then crossed the drawbridge, or what is now the substitute for it, and were welcomed at the door by just the proper person—a fine, dignified woman of gentle voice and perfect knowledge. She showed us through the beautiful home, for it is still a home, the property to-day of M. Meunier of chocolate fame and fortune. I cannot say how glad I am that M. Meunier owns Chenonceaux. He has done nothing to the place to spoil it, and it is not a museum. The lower rooms which we saw have many of the original furnishings. The ornaments, the tapestries, the pictures are the same. I think Diana must have regretted leaving her fine private room, with its chimney piece, supported by caryatids, and its rare Flemish tapestry. We regretted leaving, too. We do not care for interiors that have been overhauled and refurbished and made into museums, but we were in no hurry to leave Chenonceaux. There is hardly any place, I think, where one may come so nearly stepping back through the centuries.
We went out into the long wing that is built on the arches above the river, and looked down at the water flowing below. Our conductor told us that the supporting arches had been built on the foundations of an ancient mill. The beautiful gallery which the bridge supports must have known much gayety; much dancing and promenading up and down; much lovemaking and some heartache.
Jean Jacques Rousseau seems to have been everywhere. We could not run amiss of him in eastern France and in Switzerland; now here again he turns up at Chenonceaux. Chenonceaux in the eighteenth century fell to M. Claude Dupin, farmer-general, who surrounded himself with the foremost artists and social leaders of his time. He engaged Rousseau to superintend the education of his son.
"We amused ourselves greatly at this fine place," writes Rousseau; "the living was of the best, and I became as fat as a monk. We made a great deal of music and acted comedies."
The period of M. Dupin's ownership, one of the most brilliant, and certainly the most moral in the earlier history of Chenonceaux, has left many memories. Of the brief, insipid honeymoon of the puny Francis II and Mary Stuart no breath remains.
Amboise is on the Loire, and there is a good inn on the quay. It was evening when we got there, and we did nothing after dinner but sit on the high masonry embankment that buttresses the river, and watch the men who fished, while the light faded from the water; though we occasionally turned to look at the imposing profile of the great château on the high cliff above the Loire.
We drove up there next morning—that is, we drove as high as one may drive, and climbed stairs the remaining distance. Amboise is a splendid structure from without, but, unlike Chenonceaux, it is interesting within only for what it has been. It is occupied by the superannuated servants of the present owner, one of the Orléans family, which is fine for them, and proper enough, but bad for the atmosphere. There are a bareness and a whitewashed feeling about the place that are death to romance. Even the circular inclined plane by which one may ride or drive to the top of the great tower suggested some sort of temporary structure at an amusement park rather than a convenience for kings. I was more interested in a low doorway against the lintel of which Charles VIII knocked his head and died. But I wish I could have picked Charles VII for that accident, to punish him for having abandoned Joan of Arc.
Though about a hundred years older, Amboise, like Chenonceaux, belongs mainly to the period of Francis I, and was inhabited by the same society. The Francises and the Henrys enjoyed its hospitality, and Catherine de' Medici, and Mary, Queen of Scots. Also some twelve or fifteen hundred Huguenots who were invited there, and, at Catherine's suggestion, butchered on the terrace just in front of the castle windows. There is a balcony overlooking the terrace, and it is said that Catherine and Mary, also Mary's husband and his two brothers, sat on the balcony better to observe the spectacle. Tradition does not say whether they had ices served or not. Some of the Huguenots did not wait, and the soldiers had to drown what they could catch of them in the Loire, likewise in view from the royal balcony. When the show was over there was suspended from the balcony a fringe of Huguenot heads. Those were frivolous times.