Fig. 314.—Ancient Castle of Marcoussis, near Rambouillet. (Thirteenth Century.)
In most of the buildings destined for the privileged classes, it seems as if it were deemed unnecessary that care should be taken to secure harmony of form. The decorative style of the period showed itself chiefly in the interior of some of the principal apartments, the habitable quarters of the lord of the castle and of his family. There were vast fireplaces with enormous chimney-corners surmounted by projecting mantelpieces; the vaulted roof was ornamented with pendents of various devices, and with painted or carved escutcheons. Narrow closets, contrived in the walls, served as sleeping places. The embrasures of the windows pierced in the excessively thick walls formed so many little chambers, raised a few steps above the floor of the room to which they admitted light. Stone seats ran along each side of these embrasures. Here the inmates of the tower generally sat when the cold did not oblige them to draw near to the fireplaces. ([Figs. 315] and [316].)
Fig. 315.—Staircase of a Tower.
Fig. 316.—Pointed Window with Stone Seats.
(Thirteenth Century.)
With the exception of these slight sacrifices made to the comforts of life, everything in the castle was arranged, contrived, and disposed with a view to strength and resistance; and yet it cannot be denied that, unintentionally, the builders of these silent (taciturnes) edifices have many a time—aided often, it is true, by the picturesque sites which encircle their works—attained to a majesty of height and a grandeur of form truly extraordinary.
If the Norman church expresses with gentle severity, and the Gothic church with sumptuous fancy, the important and sublime doctrines of the Gospel, we must equally allow that the castle, in some sort, loudly proclaims the stern and uncivilised notions of the feudal authority of which it was at once the instrument and the symbol.
Fig. 317.—The Castle of Coucy in its ancient state.