The Loire is essentially a river of other days. Truly, as Mr. James has said, “it is the very model of a generous, beneficent stream.... A wide river which you may follow by a wide road is excellent company.” The Frenchman himself is more flowery. “It is the noblest river of France. Its basin is immense, magnificent.” All of which is true, too. For a good bit of local colour of this region, one should read Chapter V. of “The Regent’s Daughter,” by Dumas, wherein the willing Gaston, in the midday sunshine of a winter’s day, made his way from Nantes to Paris, “travelling slowly as far as Oudon opposite Champtoceaux.” “At Oudon he halted and put up at the Char-Couronne, an inn with windows overlooking the highroad.” Some stirring events took place here, but the reader is referred to the pages of Dumas for the details.
Oudon, however, will not detain the cursory traveller of to-day, even if he deigns to visit it at all.
Champtoceaux, on the other hand, though only a small town of thirteen hundred inhabitants, does awaken interest. Formerly it belonged to the Counts of Anjou, and then to the Dukes of Brittany.
Its site is most picturesque; it stands on a mound some two hundred feet above the Loire. There are two fine mediæval churches, and an old château, which, with the ruins of the ancient fortified castle, now forms a part of the domain of a M. de la Touche, who will kindly permit the visitor to inspect the details of this ancient feudal stronghold.
The dismantled old walls are covered with moss and lichens, and their picturesqueness is of that quality that painters love to put on canvas. The wonder is that Champtoceaux has not become a new artists’ sketching-ground, such as are so often discovered—or rediscovered—throughout France. Perhaps it is because of its distance from Paris, for your artist-painter, be he French, English, or American, dearly loves the streets of the Latin Quarter, and, as a rule, prefers Fontainebleau and its circle of artist colonies to going farther afield.
At last one beholds what a Frenchman has called the “tumultuous vision of Nantes.” To-day the very ancient and historic city which grew up from the Portus Nannetum and the Condivientum of the Romans is indeed a veritable tumult of chimneys, masts and smokestacks, and locomotives. But all this will not detract one jot from its reputation of being one of the most delightful of provincial capitals, and the smoke and activity of its port only tend to accentuate the note of colour, which in the whole itinerary of the Loire has been but pale.
The former reputation of Nantes as a little capital where gaiety and wealth came in abundance is correct for to-day, but a comparison is interesting. Here is a reminiscence of old stage-coaching days, when the post took four days to make the journey from Paris:
“The neighbourhood of the theatre is magnificent, all the streets being at right angles and of white stone. One is in doubt as to whether the Hôtel Henri IV. is not the finest inn in Europe.” (It must have disappeared since those days, but really its reputation still lives in any one of the three leading hotels.) “Dessein’s” (also disappeared) “at Calais is larger, but is not built, fitted up, or furnished like this, which is new. It cost nearly five hundred thousand francs, and contains sixty bedrooms. It is without comparison the first inn of France, and very cheap withal.
“The theatre must have cost a like sum, and, when its seats are full, holds 120 louis d’or. The ground that the inn is built upon cost nine francs a foot, and elsewhere in the city one may pay as much as fifteen francs. This ground value induces them to build so high as to be destructive of beauty.” Unquestionably this last observation was quite true then, as it is now, but Nantes nevertheless fills very nearly every qualification of a well-laid-out and attractive city.
To some Nantes will be reminiscent of Venice, or at least some Dutch city, for its five river branches are continually crossing and recrossing one’s path in most bewildering fashion, and bridges confront one at every turn.