IDLE HOURS
As the chatelaine moves on, ever above us, with her clanking keys, one can take one's self back to the Middle Ages, and imagine the warrior's castle as it was then, when the chatelaine, young, sweet, and pretty, wending her way about the dark and gloomy castle, was the only humane and gentle spirit there. Easier still is it to lose yourself in the dim romantic past when you are shown into a room which, though no fire burns on the hearth, is still quite warm, redolent of tapestry and antiquity. This room is now used as a kind of museum. It is filled with fine examples of old china, sufficient to drive a collector crazy, enamels, old armour, rubies, ornaments, sculpture, medals, firearms, and instruments of torture.
Sitting in a deep window-seat, surrounded by the riches of ancient days, with the old-world folk peering out from the tapestried walls, one can easily close one's eyes and lose one's self for a moment in the gray past, mystic and beautiful. It is delightful to summon to your mind the poetical and pathetic figure of (let us say) a knight imprisoned in the tower on account of his prominent and all-devouring love for some unapproachable fair one; or of that other who, pinning a knot of ribbon on his coat,—his lady's colour—set out to fight and conquer. But, alas! no chronicle has been left of the deeds of the castle prisoners. Any romantic stories that one may conjure to one's mind in the atmosphere of the château can be but the airiest fabrics of a dream.
At the top of the spiral staircase is a rounded gallery, with loopholes open to the day, through which one can gain a magnificent, though somewhat dizzy, view over town and country. It was from this that the archers shot their arrows upon the enemy; and very deadly their aim must have been, for nothing could be more commanding as regards position than the château of Vitré. Also, in the floor of the gallery, round the outer edge, are large holes, down which the besieged threw great blocks of stone, boiling tar, and projectiles of all kinds, which must have fallen with tremendous violence on the assailants.
Wherever one goes in Vitré one sees the fine old château, forming a magnificent background to every picture, with its grand ivy-mantled towers and its huge battlemented walls, belittling everything round it. Unlike most French châteaus, more or less showy and toy-like in design, the castle of Vitré is built on solid rock, and lifted high above the town in a noble, irresistible style, with walls of immense thickness, and lofty beyond compare. All that is grandest and most beautiful in Nature seems to group itself round about the fine old castle, as if Nature herself felt compelled to pay tribute of her best to what was noblest in the works of man. In the daytime grand and sweeping white clouds on a sky of eggshell blue group themselves about the great gray building. At twilight, when the hoary old castle appears a colossal purple mass, every tower and every turret strongly outlined against the sunset sky, Nature comes forward with her brilliant palette and paints in a background of glorious prismatic hues: great rolling orange and pink clouds on a sky of blue—combination sufficient to send a colourist wild with joy.
Every inch of the castle walls has been utilized in one way or another to economize material. Houses have been built hanging on to and clustering about the walls, sometimes perched on the top of them, like limpets on a rock. Often one sees a fine battlemented wall, fifty or sixty feet in height, made of great rough stone, brown and golden and purple with age—a wall which, one knows, must have withstood many a siege—with modern iron balconies jutting out from it, balconies of atrocious pattern, painted green or gray, with gaudy Venetian blinds. It is absolute desecration to see leaning from these balconies, against such a background, untidy, fat, dirty women, with black, lank hair, and peasants knitting worsted socks, where once fair damsels of ancient times waved their adieux to departing knights. Then, again, how terrible it is to see glaring advertisements of Le Petit Journal, Benedictine Liqueur, Singer's Sewing Machines, and Byrrh, plastered over a fine old sculptured doorway!
LA VIEILLE MÈRE PEROT