Castles and Chateaux of Old Touraine and the Loire Country

by M. F. Mansfield

Below, in her own apartments, lay the queen-mother, dying, but listening eagerly for the rush of footsteps overhead, hoping and praying that Henri—the hitherto effeminate Henri who played with his sword as he would with a battledore, and who painted himself like a woman, and put rings in his ears—would not prejudice himself at this time in the eyes of Rome by slaying the leader of the Church party.

Guise died as Henri said he would die, with the words on his lips: "A moi, mes amis!—trahison!—à moi, Guise,—je me meurs," but the revenge of the Church party came when, at St. Cloud, the monk, Jacques Clément, poignarded the last of the Valois, and put the then heretical Henri de Navarre on the throne of France.

Within the southernmost confines of the château is the Tour de Foix, so called for the old faubourg near by. The upper story and roof of this curious round tower was the work of Catherine de Medici, who installed there her astrologer and maker of philtres, Cosmo Ruggieri.

Ruggieri was a most versatile person; he was astrologer, alchemist, and philosopher alike, besides being many other kinds of a rogue, all of which was very useful to the Medici now that she had come to power.

Catherine built an outside stairway up to the platform of this tower, and a great, flat, stone table was placed there to form a foundation for Ruggieri's cabalistic instruments. Even this stone table itself was an uncanny affair, if we are to believe the old chronicles. It rang out in a clear sharp note whenever struck with some hard body, and on its surface was graven a line which led the eye directly toward the golden fleur-de-lys on the cupola of Chambord's château, some three leagues distant on the other side of the Loire. What all this symbolism actually meant nobody except Catherine and her astrologer knew; at least, the details do not appear to have come down to enlighten posterity. Over the doorway of the observatory were graven the words, "Vraniæ Sacrum," i. e., consecrated to Uranius.

Wherever Catherine chose to reside, whether in Touraine or at Paris, her astrologer and his "observatoire" formed a part of her train. She had brought Cosmo from Italy, and never for a moment did he leave her. He was a sort of a private demon on whom Catherine could shoulder her poisonings and her stabs, and, as before said, he was an exceedingly busy functionary of the court.

That part of the structure built by Mansart for Gaston d'Orleans appears strange, solemn, and superfluous in connection with the sumptuousness of the earlier portions. With what poverty the architectural art of the seventeenth century expressed itself! What an inferiority came with the passing of the sixteenth century and the advent of the following! One finds a certain grandeur in the outlines of this last wing, with its majestic cupola over the entrance pavilion, but the general effect of the decorations is one of a great paucity of invention when compared to the more brilliant Renaissance forerunners on the opposite side of the courtyard.

It was under the régime of Gaston d'Orleans that the gardens of the Château de Blois came to their greatest excellence and beauty. In 1653 Abel Brunyer, the first physician of Gaston's suite, published a catalogue of the fruits and flowers to be found here in these gardens, of which he was also director. More than five hundred varieties were included, three-quarters of which belonged to the flora of France.

Among the delicacies and novelties of the time to be found here was the Prunier de Reine Claude, from which those delicious green plums known to all the world to-day as "Reine Claudes" were propagated, also another variety which came from the Prunier de Monsieur, somewhat similar in taste but of a deep purple colour. The pomme de terre was tenderly cared for and grown as a great novelty and delicacy long before its introduction to general cultivation by Parmentier. The tomato was imported from Mexico, and even tobacco was grown; from which it may be judged that Gaston did not intend to lack the good things of life.

All these facts are recounted in Brunyer's "Hortus Regius Blesensis," and, in addition, one Morrison, an expatriate Scotch doctor, who had attached himself to Gaston, also wrote a competing work which was published in London in 1669 under the title of "Preludia Botanica," and which dealt at great length with the already celebrated gardens of the Château de Blois.