Once again I must draw the parallel between human qualities and the ways of our mother earth. We place at the top of our esteem those people who take chivalrously the heavy blows of life, who are not brave merely, but gallant. We draw scant inspiration from the sight of somebody who is all too obviously and dutifully bearing something; who goes, day after day, with a set and sombre expression that says as plainly as words: 'Just watch me carrying my Cross. Just wait till you have one.' We prefer those whose gayety so conceals the fact that they're behaving well, that we should never suspect it, did we not know what they have passed, and are passing, through. Thus also does Touraine conceal the tears and the blood she has known. Louis the Eleventh, Catherine de' Medici, the gibbet balcony of the Salle des Armes at Amboise, the iron cage and the black dungeons of Loches,—Touraine, with her smiling, high-bred elegance, keeps all this to herself, and gives you a bright welcome. Often as she has been the scene of Tragedy, often as the glaive and not the lute has been the instrument of her drama, she might well look in her glass and exclaim with Richard the Second,—
| Hath sorrow struck |
| So many blows upon this face of mine, |
| And made no deeper wounds? |
Wearing no crape, betraying no scars, hinting naught of its dark experience of life, this realm, this beau pays, more than any in Europe, to my thinking, lies in the true key of high comedy, of masque and pastoral. If, here and there above its trees or upon its hills, the brooding frown of some tower, the gaunt stare of some donjon in ruins, fierce with memories, brings one up short, so that in joy's mid-current some smack of the bitter wells up—this is not Nature's doing. Look away from these works of man to the feathered poplars, the vineyards, the gentle waters, and see the earth's countenance, smiling and serene. Decorous it is always; only the irregularities of the Loire and its channel seem to bear any reference to the conduct of those beautiful historic ladies who dispersed their reputations in the vicinity. Even man did not always build a Langeais or a Loches. Urbane and gracious amid their parks or on their bluffs rise those dwellings planned when France's architectural genius was in its happiest mood—though not its loftiest. They look like the good society which once assembled in them; their mere aspect suggests the wits, the brilliant talkers and listeners of a day when conversation was a living art still, the day which furnishes us even now with those letters and memoirs which are the dainty wainscotting and mantelpieces, the interior decorations of Literature. You may wander almost anywhere among the poplars and the chestnuts in the valleys of the Loire's quiet tributaries; you can hardly go wrong; if the turrets of Ussé against their rising woodland do not regale your eye, it will be Azay-le-Rideau, or something less famous, or, best of all, Chenonceaux, to which I now return.
II
I saw it first upon an afternoon when no air was stirring, even in the poplars, when the green of Touraine was changing to gold: golden fruit, pears, and apples, where summer's fruit had been; golden leaves flickering down from high branches, or raked into golden heaps; while the faint, sweet smoke of burning twigs hovered in the autumn day. It was the moment and scene of the year when, just because other things have ceased to grow, memories blossom in the mind; and on every golden heap of leaves retrospect seemed to be sitting. We visitors were three. I can recall the first sight of the château's yellow façade, framed by the distant end of the high, formal avenue into which we turned to approach it. All sorts of feet had stepped where we were walking: almost four centuries of distinguished feet had gone in and out of that beautiful front door; but over its appealing associations the still more appealing aspect of the wonderful house triumphed. If I knew about Le Devin du Village then, the scene of its first performance interested me much more because that long and many-windowed gallery was built right over the water, right across the Cher, upon arches that the glassy surface of the stream reflected symmetrically. I was captured then and for ever by the beauty and the originality of this residence. Our best country houses take earth and air into partnership, but this abode of grace possessed, embraced, a little river. To go in at your front door on one green margin and come out of your back door on the other; to dwell in a masterpiece that was house and bridge in one—I can still recover my first sensations of delight at this triumph of French art. Only—the concierge didn't let us go out of the back door; and my disappointment was cherished through long years, until its sequel, which I shall presently reach. This first afternoon became a chapter in the most delightful of guide-books, from which I quote the following:—
'We took our way back to the Grand Monarque, and waited in the little inn parlor for a late train to Tours. We were not impatient, for we had an excellent dinner to occupy us; and even after we had dined we were still content to sit a while and exchange remarks upon the superior civilization of France. Where else, at a village inn, should we have fared so well?... At the little inn at Chenonceaux the cuisine was not only excellent, but the service was graceful. We were waited on by mademoiselle and her mamma; it was so that mademoiselle alluded to the elder lady, as she uncorked for us a bottle of Vouvray mousseux.'
On another page of this same guide-book you may read how, at the Hôtel de l'Univers in Tours, the château of Amboise was described to us by an English lady of a type that I sadly miss to-day. One met her everywhere then. She was a more fragile sister of that robust, brick-complexioned spinster who used to climb all the Alps in practical but awful garments. She didn't often venture to speak to you for fear you weren't respectable, or might think she wasn't. When she did, it was apt to be with explosive shyness, running all her words together, as she did about Amboise. 'It's-very-very-dirty-and-very-keeawrious!' Curious and furious she always pronounced to rhyme with glorious and victorious; and it invariably made me think of 'God Save the Queen.'
In my interest as to whether we should again have the excellent fare and graceful service which I so well remembered at the little inn, and whether now at last my long-cherished wish to step out of that back door on the river's farther side were to be gratified, Chenonceaux itself had so dropped out of my thoughts that it fairly burst upon my sight. Bursting is, of course, a thing which that delicate and restrained edifice could never really do, only I wasn't thinking about it as our party (we were four on this second visit, and it was spring-time) came into the avenue. There at the other end stood the fair, gay vision of the château, and its beauty and wonder so suddenly waked my admiration, that I exclaimed, 'How young it looks!'
Yes; it didn't look new, but it looked young: youth is the particular and essential note of this enchanted building. None of its neighbors have it, not even Azay-le-Rideau or Blois, which are its rivals, though never its equals. Chenonceaux was four hundred years old in January, 1915. Age makes one type of person decrepit, and so it is with houses. But Chenonceaux, if ever it come to show its years, will belong to the other type: it will look venerable. Did it, do you think, catch its secret from the ring of Charlemagne, by whose sorceries its mistress, Diane de Poitiers, was accused of preserving her youth? This lady's success with François Premier so disconcerted the amiability of the Duchesse d'Etampes, that she constantly reminded Diane she was born on the day Diane was married.—But I resist the temptation to dwell upon Diane and everybody else linked to Chenonceaux by history; it's all accessible to you in books; and I proceed with the visit our party of four made, this spring day.
Touraine was now all delicate in green; as lovely, as gracious, as discreet in its budding leaves as when the leaves had flickered down, spangling the air and grass and garden-walks with their gold. We had met at the little inn the same welcome, the same excellent cuisine, the same agreeable Vouvray mousseux. Mademoiselle was not there, but mamma was. Her premises and herself showed no ill effect from the prosperity brought to her through the guide-book I have already quoted. No guide-book in its author's plan, it was now become established as one, and he, petitioned in a letter from mamma, had corrected a certain error. In the first edition, page 60, you may read that we took our way back to the Grand Monarque; in later editions it is the Hôtel du Bon-Laboureur. The confusion to travelers, the injury to her custom, ensuing from the wrong name, madame had represented to the author; and now all was well. The inn wasn't any larger, but more and more each season were pilgrims with expectant appetites led to her door.