Catherine came in the early summer to take possession of her long-coveted domain. Being a skilful horsewoman, she came on horseback, accompanied by a "petite bande" of feminine charmers destined to wheedle political secrets from friends and enemies alike,—a real "escadron volant de la reine," as it was called by a contemporary.
It was a gallant company that assembled here at this time,—the young King Charles IX., the Duc de Guise, and "two cardinals mounted on mules,"—Lorraine, a true Guise, and D'Este, newly arrived from Italy, and accompanied by the poet Tasso, wearing a "gabardine and a hood of satin." Catherine showed the Italian great favour, as was due a countryman, but there was another poet among them as well, Ronsard, the poet laureate of the time. The Duc de Guise had followed in the wake of Marguerite, unbeknownst to Catherine, who frowned down any possibility of an alliance between the houses of Valois and Lorraine.
A great fête and water-masque had been arranged by Catherine to take place on the Cher, with a banquet to follow in the Long Gallery in honour of her arrival at Chenonceaux.
When twilight had fallen, torches were ignited and myriads of lights blazed forth from the boats on the river and from the windows of the château. Music and song went forth into the night, and all was as gay and lovely as a Venetian night's entertainment. The hunting-horns echoed through the wooded banks, and through the arches above which the château was built passed great highly coloured barges, including a fleet of gondolas to remind the queen-mother of her Italian days,—the ancestors perhaps of the solitary gondola which to-day floats idly by the river-bank just before the grand entrance to the château. From parterre and balustrade, and from the clipped yews of the ornamental garden, fairy lamps burned forth and dwindled away into dim infinity, as the long lines of soft light gradually lost themselves in the forest. It was a grand affair and idyllic in its unworldliness. One may not see its like to-day, for electric lights and "rag-time" music, which mostly comprise the attractions of such al fresco pleasures, will hardly produce the same effect.
Among the great fêtes at Chenonceaux will always be recalled that given by the court upon the coming of the youthful François II. and Mary Stuart, after the horrible massacres at Amboise.
All the Renaissance skill of the time was employed in the erection of pompous accessories, triumphal arches, columns, obelisks, and altars. There were innumerable tablets also, bearing inscriptions in Latin and Greek,—which nobody read,—and a fountain which bore the following:
"Au saint bal des dryades,
A Phœbus, ce grand dieu,
Aux humides nyades,
J'ai consacré ce lieu."
Of Chenonceaux and its glories what more can be said than to quote the following lines of the middle ages, which in their quaint old French apply to-day as much as ever they did:
"Basti si magnifiquement
II est debout, comme un géant,
Dedans le lit de la rivière,
C'est-à-dire dessus un pont
Qui porte cent toises de long."