My bedroom that night had much the character of an outhouse or fowlhouse. It was on the ground-floor, and the rafters overhead sloped rapidly towards the exterior wall. A small low window opened upon the garden. The walls were white-washed, but the floors were very black, as all these southern floors are. Upon the single table a heap of raw wool waiting to be spun had been pushed back a little to make room for the doll's washing-basin and towel that had been placed there for me. Besides the bed that had been prepared for me, there was another, which happily was to remain unoccupied that night. The traveller should always be thankful when he has a room, however poor and plain, that for the few hours which he needs for rest he can call his own. If he snores himself, he will sleep through the noise, and have, perhaps, pleasant dreams; but if anybody else snores in the same room, he may lie awake with clenched fists, and be tortured by the foolish desire to throw something.
The next morning I believe I was the earliest visitor who in modern times has troubled the serenity of the Château de la Brède. A mist—one of the first of the falling year—lay white and dense upon the land. It was a fine-weather mist, such as in the opinion of the wine-grower helps to ripen the grapes.
I had entered the park about half a mile beyond the town, and then between two rolling banks of vapour I saw the high walls and higher towers of the castle looming through the grayness. A little later I distinguished the dull water of the very wide moat, and the three connected bridges, which were formerly blank spaces between low towers, unless the drawbridges happened to be let down.
[Illustration: CHÂTEAU DE MONTESQUIEU.]
Over these the visitor must now pass in order to reach the castle. As I was so early, I killed time to my own good by trying to fix some impressions of the vast pile of masonry that stood here in the middle of a little lake. It is an extraordinary block of architectural patchwork, quite without symmetry, and yet the mass is imposing. The ground-plan approaches the circle more than any other geometrical figure, but it is a circle with slices cut off, and composed of angles so irregular as almost to imply a fantastic motive. But the motive was purely utilitarian. The feudal fortress which was built here in the thirteenth century underwent in subsequent ages so many modifications and additions with a view more to the comfort of the dwellers therein than to their protection from enemies, that in course of time little of the mediaeval buildings remained besides the great hall, the basement, and the keep. These became jumbled up with late Gothic and Renaissance work.
Jean de Secondat, who purchased the old fortified manor-house out of his savings as maítre d'hôtel to Antoine de Bourbon and Jeanne d'Albret, was probably responsible for most of the sixteenth-century work that one now sees. When his descendant, Charles de Secondat de Montesquieu, took possession, the building was almost identical with that which exists to-day. It has been exceptionally favoured, for it has remained in the family, and for at least two hundred years it has undergone none of those alterations which in previous times had so changed its appearance. The eye may not be delighted with its symmetry, but the mind has the satisfaction of knowing that this was verily the birthplace and home of him who more than any other man made political science popular.
The present owner of the castle, recognising the duty that the descendant of a great man owes to society, receives with the most liberal courtesy all those who make a pilgrimage to this spot.
The relics of Montesquieu are numerous, and they have been preserved with admirable solicitude. The room where he slept and wrote is almost the same as when he finally left it; with this difference, that time has made everything look dingier. Even the white linen curtains which hung at the window hang there still, and they are by no means so yellow as one might expect them to be. On the plain little table at which he washed himself stand his basin and ewer. The basin would be called to-day a dish, for it is not more than two inches deep. It held quite enough water, however, to serve for the ablutions of a baron a century and a half ago. Much the same notion of what is fit and proper in a washingbasin remains to this day among the French peasantry, and even among the middle class in the provinces the growth of the toilet crockery has been far from rapid since the time of Montesquieu.
The bed in which the political philosopher slept is a broad four-poster, not with slender and finely carved posts, like Fénelon's, but severely simple. Indeed, in none of the furniture of this room is there any indication of the love of the ornamental. On the contrary, everything tells of a mind that set no value upon aught but the strictly needful. Montesquieu's small writing-case, divided into compartments, the borders of the leather covering embellished with dingy, half-obliterated gold ornament, was perhaps the finest bit of property he had before his eyes as he sat and worked there. He always carried it about with him when he travelled. No doubt it went with him to England, and he probably wrote letters to his friend Lord Chesterfield upon it. And here is his travelling trunk. It still looks fit to bear many years' rough usage; and yet, if railway porters had to pull it about, they would not know whether to laugh at its strange appearance or to swear at its weight. It was built for wear, like Noah's ark, and it is entirely covered with leather, elaborately decorated with patterns, composed of the round heads of small nails. The high stone chimney-piece, plain and solid like the character of the man who did so much lasting work in this room, remains, together with the fire-dogs, as it was in his time.
Montesquieu formed the habit when thinking alone of leaning back in his chair before the hearth and resting his feet against one of the jambs of the chimney-piece. The stone was much worn away by his feet; but the marks would pass unobserved if the knowledge of their cause had not been preserved in the family. A bust of Montesquieu made in his life-time shows him with closely-cropped hair, and without a wig. It is a remarkably Caesar-like head, every feature indicating the decision and positivism of the Roman character—such a one, indeed, as ideally became the author of the 'Considerations.' But how the face is altered when we look at it in another portrait—a painted one, representing the writer in a great wig as President of the Parliament of Guyenne! A head becomes another head if the coiffure be but changed.