[IV]
The château of La Motte-Seuilly,—that name finally carried the day,—which is still standing and almost intact to-day, is a small manor-house consisting of a hexagonal entrance tower, purely feudal in style, of a main building, very plain, with windows far apart, and of two wings at right angles thereto, one of which is a donjon. In the left wing are the stables, with arched ceilings and heavy timbers, the kitchens and the servants' quarters; in the other, the chapel with its ogival windows, of the time of Louis XII., spans a short open gallery, supported by two heavy pillars surrounded by mouldings in relief, like huge tree-trunks in the embrace of creeping plants.
This gallery leads to the large tower or donjon, which, like the entrance tower, dates from the twelfth century. The rooms within are circular, decorated very simply but very prettily with columns set in claw-shaped pedestals. The winding staircase, which is in a small tower built against the larger one, leads to one of those old-fashioned charpentes, cunningly and boldly fashioned, which are to this day considered objects of art.
This one bore, at the centre of its radiating spokes, a chevalet or wooden horse, an instrument of torture, the use of which was regulated in cold blood by ordinance as late as 1670. This horrible machine dates from the construction of the building, for it is built into the charpente.
It was in this poor, cramped, dismal manor that the beautiful Charlotte d'Albret, wife of the ill-omened Cæsar Borgia, passed fifteen years and died, still quite young, after a life of sorrow and sanctity.
Everyone knows that the infamous cardinal, the pope's bastard, the incestuous, blood-stained debauchee, the lover of his sister Lucretia, and the murderer of his own brother and rival, divested himself of the dignities of the church one fine day, to seek fortune and a wife in France.
Louis XII. desired to break off his own marriage with Jeanne, daughter of Louis XI., in order to marry Anne de Bretagne. The pope's assent was required. He obtained it on condition that he should give the duchy of Valentinois and the hand of a princess to the bastard—the brigand cardinal.
Charlotte d'Albret, a lovely, pure and learned maiden, was sacrificed; a few months later she was abandoned and looked upon as a widow.
She purchased this dismal castle and took up her abode there to educate her daughter.[5] Her only external pleasure was an occasional journey to Bourges, to see her mysterious companion in misfortune, Jeanne de France, the cast-off queen, who had become the Duchesse de Berry and the foundress of the Annonciade.
But Jeanne died, and Charlotte, then twenty-four years old, put on mourning, which she never laid aside, and did not leave La Motte-Seuilly again until her own death, which occurred nine years later—in 1514.