To complete the medley of periods, there is a great aqueduct, the work of Louis XIV.; one would think it a labour of the Cæsars. One goes down from the drawing-room of the castle into the garden by a bridge, lately put up, which partakes of the architecture of the Rialto. Thus are Ancient Rome and the Italian Cinquecento associated with the French sixteenth century. Memories of Bianca Capello[461] and de' Medici, of the Duchesse d'Étampes[462] and Francis I. rise up through memories of Louis XIV. and Madame de Maintenon, while all this is swayed and completed by the recent catastrophe of Charles X.
The castle was rebuilt by Jean Cottereau[463] Treasurer to Louis XII. Marot, in his Cimetière, maintains that Cottereau was too honest a man for a financier. One of Cottereau's daughters brought the Maintenon domain into the d'Angennes family. In 1675, this domain was bought by Françoise d'Aubigné, who became Madame de Maintenon. Maintenon reverted to the Noailles family, in 1698, through the marriage of a niece[464] of the wife of Louis XIV. with Adrien Maurice Duc de Noailles[465].
The park has something of the calm and gravity of the Great King. Near the middle, the first tier of arcades of the aqueduct crosses the bed of the Eure and connects the two hills on opposite sides of the valley, so that at Maintenon a branch of the Eure would have flowed in the air above the Eure. "In the air" is the word: for the first arcades, as they exist, are eighty-four feet high and they were to have been surmounted by two other tiers of arcades.
The Roman aqueducts are nothing beside the aqueducts of Maintenon; they would all go under one of those arches. I know only the Aqueduct of Segovia, in Spain, which recalls the massiveness and solidity of this one; but it is shorter and lower[466]. If you picture to yourself some thirty triumphal arches linked laterally one with the other and more or less resembling the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile in height and width of opening, you will have an idea of the Maintenon Aqueduct; but even then you must remember that what you see is only a third of the perpendicular and of the perforation which would have been formed by the treble gallery destined for the passage of the waters.
The fallen fragments of this aqueduct are compact blocks of rocks; they are covered with trees around which hover crows fat as doves: they flit to and fro under the curves of the aqueduct like little black fairies performing fatidical dances under garlands.
At the sight of this monument, one is struck with the imposing character with which Louis XIV. imprinted all his works. It is for ever to be regretted that this gigantic conduit was not finished: the water carried to Versailles would have fed the fountains there and created a new marvel by making their waters play perpetually; from there it might have been brought to the suburbs. It is a pity, no doubt, that the camp formed for the works at Maintenon in 1686 caused the death of a large number of soldiers[467]; it is a pity that many millions should have been spent on an uncompleted undertaking. But, certainly, it is a still greater pity that Louis XIV., driven by necessity, astounded at the cries of economy which frustrate the loftiest schemes, should have lost patience: otherwise, the greatest monument on earth would to-day have belonged to France.
Say what we may, a nation's fame increases that nation's power, and that is no vain thing. As for the millions, their value would have been represented at high interest by an edifice as useful as it was wonderful; as for the soldiers, they would have fallen as the Roman legions fell in building their famous "roads," another kind of battle-field, no less glorious for the country.
It was in this alley of old willow-trees, where I was strolling a moment ago, that Racine, after the triumph of Pradon's[468] Phèdre, sighed his last songs[469].
Madame de Maintenon, having attained the summit of greatness, wrote to her brother[470]: