Chapter XI: Part 11

We found the Hotel Byron very grand indeed, and a good one, too. There was a beautiful moonlight on the lake and hills, but we contented ourselves with looking out of our lofty window, whence, likewise, we had a sidelong glimpse at the white battlements of Chillon, not more than a mile off, on the water’s edge. The castle is wofully in need of a pedestal. If its site were elevated to a height equal to its own it would make a far better appearance. As it now is, it looks, so to speak profanely of what poetry has consecrated, when seen from the water, or along the shore of the lake, very like an old whitewashed factory or mill.

This morning I walked to the Castle of Chillon with J----, who sketches everything he sees, from a wild flower to a castle or a range of mountains. The morning had sunshine thinly scattered through it; but, nevertheless, there was a continual sprinkle, sometimes scarcely perceptible, and then again amounting to a decided drizzle. The road, which is built along on a little elevation above the lake shore, led us past the Castle of Chillon; and we took a side-path, which passes still nearer the castle-gate. The castle stands on an isthmus of gravel, permanently connecting it with the mainland. A wooden bridge covered with a roof, passes from the shore to the arched entrance; and beneath this shelter, which has wooden walls as well as roof and floor, we saw a soldier or _gendarme_, who seemed to act as warder. As it sprinkled rather more freely than at first, I thought of appealing to his hospitality for shelter from the rain, but concluded to pass on.

The castle makes a far better appearance on a nearer view, and from the land, than when seen at a distance and from the water. It is built of stone, and seems to have been anciently covered with plaster, which imparts the whiteness to which Byron does much more than justice, when he speaks of “Chillon’s snow-white battlements.” There is a lofty eternal wall, with a cluster of round towers about it, each crowned with its pyramidal roof of tiles, and from the central portion of the castle rises a square tower, also crowned with its own pyramid to a considerably greater height than the circumjacent ones. The whole are in a close cluster, and make a fine picture of ancient strength when seen at a proper proximity; for I do not think that distance adds anything to the effect. There are hardly any windows, or few, and very small ones, except the loopholes for arrows and for the garrison of the castle to peep from on the sides towards the water; indeed, there are larger windows at least in the upper apartments; but in that direction, no doubt, the castle was considered impregnable. Trees here and there on the land side grow up against the castle wall, on one part of which, moreover, there was a green curtain of ivy spreading from base to battlement. The walls retain their machicolations, and I should judge that nothing had been altered, nor any more work been done upon the old fortress than to keep it in singularly good repair. It was formerly a castle of the Duke of Savoy, and since his sway over the country ceased (three hundred years at least), it has been in the hands of the Swiss government, who still keep some arms and ammunition there.

We passed on, and found the view of it better, as we thought, from a farther point along the road. The raindrops began to spatter down faster, and we took shelter under an impending precipice, where the ledge of rock had been blasted and hewn away to form the road. Our refuge was not a very convenient and comfortable one, so we took advantage of the partial cessation of the shower to turn homeward, but we had not gone far when we met mamma and all her train. As we were close by the castle entrance, we thought it advisable to seek admission, though rather doubtful whether the Swiss _gendarmes_ might not deem it a sin to let us into the castle on Sunday. But he very readily admitted us under his covered drawbridge, and called an old man from within the fortress to show us whatever was to be seen. This latter personage was a staid, rather grim, and Calvinistic-looking old worthy; but he received us without scruple, and forthwith proceeded to usher us into a range of the most dismal dungeons, extending along the basement of the castle, on a level with the surface of the lake. First, if I remember aright, we came to what he said had been a chapel, and which, at all events, looked like an aisle of one, or rather such a crypt as I have seen beneath a cathedral, being a succession of massive pillars supporting groined arches,--a very admirable piece of Gothic architecture. Next, we came to a very dark compartment of the same dungeon range, where he pointed to a sort of bed, or what might serve for a bed, hewn in the solid rock, and this, our guide said, had been the last sleeping-place of condemned prisoners on the night before their execution. The next compartment was still duskier and dismaller than the last, and he bade us cast our eyes up into the obscurity and see a beam, where the condemned ones used to be hanged. I looked and looked, and closed my eyes so as to see the clearer in this horrible duskiness on opening them again. Finally, I thought I discerned the accursed beam, and the rest of the party were certain that they saw it. Next, beyond this, I think, was a stone staircase, steep, rudely cut and narrow, down which the condemned were brought to death; and beyond this, still on the same basement range of the castle, a low and narrow [corridor] through which we passed, and saw a row of seven massive pillars, supporting two parallel series of groined arches, like those in the chapel which we first entered. This was Bonnivard’s prison, and the scene of Byron’s poem.

The arches are dimly lighted by narrow loopholes, pierced through the immensely thick wall, but at such a height above the floor that we could catch no glimpse of land or water, or scarcely of the sky. The prisoner of Chillon could not possibly have seen the island to which Byron alludes, and which is a little way from the shore, exactly opposite the town of Villeneuve. There was light enough in this long, grey, vaulted room, to show us that all the pillars were inscribed with the names of visitors, among which I saw no interesting one, except that of Byron himself, which is cut, in letters an inch long or more, into one of the pillars next to that to which Bonnivard was chained. The letters are deep enough to remain in the pillar as long as the castle stands. Byron seems to have had a fancy for recording his name in this and similar ways; as witness the record which I saw on a tree of Newstead Abbey. In Bonnivard’s pillar there still remains an iron ring, at the height of perhaps three feet from the ground. His chain was fastened to this ring, and his only freedom was to walk round this pillar, about which he is said to have worn a path in the stone pavement of the dungeon; but as the floor is now covered with earth of gravel, I could not satisfy myself whether this be true. Certainly six years with nothing else to do in them save to walk round the pillar, might well suffice to wear away the rock, even with naked feet. This column and all the columns, were cut and hewn in a good style of architecture, and the dungeon arches are not without a certain gloomy beauty. On Bonnivard’s pillar, as well as on all the rest, were many names inscribed; but I thought better of Byron’s delicacy and sensitiveness for not cutting his name into that very pillar. Perhaps, knowing nothing of Bonnivard’s story, he did not know to which column he was chained.

Emerging from the dungeon-vaults, our guide led us through other parts of the castle, showing us the Duke of Savoy’s kitchen, with a fireplace at least twelve feet long; also the judgment-hall, or some such place, hung round with the coats-of-arms of some officers or other, and having at one end a wooden post, reaching from floor to ceiling, and having upon it the marks of fire. By means of this post contumacious prisoners were put to a dreadful torture, being drawn up by cords and pulleys, while their limbs were scorched by a fire underneath. We also saw a chapel or two, one of which is still in good and sanctified condition, and was to be used this very day, our guide told us, for religious purposes. We saw, moreover, the Duke’s private chamber, with a part of the bedstead on which he used to sleep, and be haunted with horrible dreams, no doubt, and the ghosts of wretches whom he had tortured and hanged; likewise the bedchamber of his duchess, that had in its window two stone seats, where, directly over the head of Bonnivard, the ducal pair might look out on the beautiful scene of lake and mountains, and feel the warmth of the blessed sun. Under this window, the guide said, the water of the lake is eight hundred feet in depth; an immense profundity, indeed, for an inland lake, but it is not very difficult to believe that the mountain at the foot of which Chillon stands may descend so far beneath the water. In other parts of the lake and not distant, more than nine hundred feet have been sounded. I looked out of the duchess’s window, and could certainly see no appearance of a bottom in the light blue water.

The last thing that the guide showed us was a trap-door, or opening, beneath a crazy old floor. Looking down into this aperture we saw three stone steps, which we should have taken to be the beginning of a flight of stairs that descended into a dungeon, or series of dungeons, such as we had already seen. But inspecting them more closely, we saw that the third step terminated the flight, and beyond was a dark vacancy. Three steps a person would grope down, planting his uncertain foot on a dimly seen stone; the fourth step would be in the empty air.

ROCCA MALATESTIANA

CHARLES YRIARTE

The name of Malatesta illuminates every step in Rimini. The fortification that serves to enclose the town, strengthened by towers of defence and by windows that resemble our modern casements, is certainly due to them. The celebrated fortress known under the name of Rocca Malatestiana still commands the city, although it is now dismantled and converted into a prison, and upon the square, San Francesco, there rises the Temple of the Malatestas (Tempio Malatestiano), the purest building, perhaps, of the most beautiful period of Italian art, upon the pediment of which you read the pompous inscription: “To Immortal God Sigismond Malatesta, son of Pandolphe.”

In 1294, Malatesta da Verucchio built the castle upon the same site, and he made of it at once a sumptuous residence and a solid fortress to which was given the name of Gattolo dei Malatesta. It is from there that Verucchio dates his will. The great Ghiberti, the sculptor of the “Gates of Paradise,” tells us, in his _Commentaries_ that in 1400 he made some enamels for the apartments and that he painted some frescoes. Alas! nothing of these remains for us. In 1446, comes Sigismond, son of Pandolphe, the great warrior and conqueror, he who has been nicknamed Poliorcète, skilful in making fortifications, pupil and soon the rival of Roberto Valturco, the celebrated author of the volume of _Re Militari_; he battered down the Gattolo, or, at least, he changed it from roof to basement at the moment when the discovery of artillery had changed all the conditions of the attack and defence of old castles. It was during this transformation that the frescoes and all the ornamentation, of which Ghiberti speaks, disappeared. Two superb inscriptions, one Gothic, the other of the first half of the Fifteenth Century, surmounted by the escutcheon of the Malatestas with the helmet crowned by elephants’ heads and the chess-board, are sure guarantees of these serious modifications. In order that they should be proved with more certainty, Matteo de’ Pasti, a pensioner of the lord of Rimini, struck, by order of his master, the superb commemorative medal representing the Rocca Malatestiana. Piero della Francesca, the great artist to whom we owe the greater number of the beautiful portraits of the Bentivoglios, the Montefeltros, and the Malatestas, brings us, in his turn, an unexceptionable proof,--the day when, in the temple of San Francesco of Rimini, the pantheon of the Malatesta family, he represents the lord of Rimini kneeling before Saint Sigismond, and gives the view of the Rocca as a background for his precious fresco.

So imposing a mass should certainly have triumphed over time, but it has been disfigured at the pleasure of succeeding generations. Upon the ground where we walk while regarding the present façade, is dug the first enclosure, a large moat a hundred feet wide and thirty-five feet deep, to-day filled up and forming a platform. We find no longer the six towers, eighty feet high, destroyed by Urbain VIII. (1625), who has also given his name to the building for more than a century,--Castello Urbano. Finally, in 1826, the first circuit was razed, and, the moat having already disappeared, they did away with the drawbridge. It is nothing more than a prison, through the gratings of which we see the red caps of the prisoners who come to gaze upon a bit of blue sky.

Another tradition insists that the Malatestas, sons of Verucchio, lived, during the lifetime of their father, in a dwelling near the old gate of San Andrea; but the house designated, dating at most from the last centuries, belonged to the Graziani, and to-day it serves as the residence for the family of the Ugolini Micheli. One sees how difficult it is to establish anything even after long inquiry; however, the conclusion of the historian, Tonini, must also be our own: the cruel scene must have taken place in Rimini, and probably in the Gattolo de Santa Colomba, that is to say in the fortress known to-day under the name of Rocca Malatestiana, a residence greatly disfigured and modified, where it would be impossible to identify the exact spot of the murder, but which, according to a number of chronicles, was at the moment this murder was accomplished, a princely residence, “containing noble apartments,” with the exterior appearance of a castle.

Since Francesca was born in Ravenna, why has posterity unanimously designated her under the name of Francesca da Rimini? Logically she should be Francesca da Ravenna; but she lived in Rimini as the wife of Giovanni Malatesta, and it was there that she expiated her crime, or her weakness, by death; it was there that her tomb was made, and posterity will therefore forever call her by the name of Francesca da Rimini. Moreover, if we sum up the opinions of the chroniclers and historians, it is understood by the most of them that the deed was accomplished in this town, and they doubt it so little that the idea never occurs to them to support a contrary opinion. Marco Battaglia, Benvenuto da Imola, Fra Giovanni da Serravalle, and Baldo di Branchi furnish proofs that might be considered as negative; but if they do not cite the name of Rimini, it never occurs to them to mention any other town. As for Jacopo Della Lana, Gradinego and Boccaccio, all three name the city of the Malatestas, and later, when Silvio Pellico and many other dramatic poets of other nations will write their dramas, their poems, or their stories, they will not hesitate to place the scene in the same city. Count Odoardo Fabri will not do otherwise, and if Lord Byron had realized the plan he conceived and which he made known to Murray, his publisher, in the letters which are now in everybody’s hands, Rimini would still be the scene. Is it necessary to speak of our compatriot, M. Auguste Thomas, the composer of _Mignon_, who having written the score of _Francesca da Rimini_, dedicated it to M. Tonini, the librarian of the Gambalunghiana.

Francesca then is not Francesca da Ravenna, she is and she will ever remain “Francesca da Rimini.”

She belongs to the history of this town, or if you prefer, to its legend. It is in vain to turn over the leaves of the archives, you cannot deprive the city of the Malatestas of its touching picture.

Before formulating our conclusions we will note, merely for the curiosity of the fact, a singular document taken from a volume printed in Rimini in 1581, by Simbeni, entitled _Il Vermicello della seta_, signed under the name Giovanni Andrea Corsucci da Sascorbaro, and cited by Luigi Tonini:

“A few days ago in the church of Saint Augustin, in Rimini, they found in a marble sepulchre Paolo Malatesta and Francesca, daughter of Guido da Polenta, lord of Ravenna, who were put to death by Lancilotto, son of Malatesta, lord of Rimini, brother of the said Paolo found under the accomplishment of a dishonest deed, and both miserably killed with the blows of a poignard, as Petrarch describes in his _Triumph of Love_. Their clothes were of silk, and, although they had been shut up in this sepulchre for so many years, they were found in a perfect state of preservation.”

Upon what document Sascorbaro relies for this statement no one can say; there was no inscription, no medal and no sign whatever that could certify to the identity of the skeletons; but the legend was evidently established, since Boccaccio and the greater number of chroniclers had said that the two bodies were united in the same tomb. The assertion of Sascorbaro, deprived of all proofs as it is, has come to confirm the opinion of the Florentine story-teller. Rimini persists in its legend, if legend it is; and I also discovered a few days ago, at Gambalunghiana, the bit of silk tissued with gold, and placed in a frame upon which the erudite son of Tonini, successor to the historian of Rimini, does not willingly call to the attention of learned historians, because history desires authentic proofs; but the common people view with great pleasure a contemporary relic of Francesca and Paolo.

THE WARTBURG

L. PUTTICH

The Wartburg lies on the north-western slope of the Thuringer Forest at the top of a spur that commands an extensive view over the fruitful fields and woody Thuringian ridges. If the traveller has enjoyed the prospect during the ascent, he is engrossed by other feelings as soon as he has passed through the gateway into the old stronghold and mentally rehabilitates the entire castle as it was in days of yore. For the Wartburg is not only memorable as having been the abode for a century of the powerful landgraves of Thuringia who had their court here from the time this hold was built by Ludwig II. at the end of the Eleventh Century (1080 A. D. is usually considered the year of its completion) to the extinction of his line with Heinrich Raspe in the middle of the Thirteenth Century, but it has also acquired a classic repute in German history by three important occurrences: the famous Singer-war, the life of Saint Elizabeth, and Luther’s sojourn here.

The Singer-war, also called the war of the Wartburg, was brought about, as is well known, by the Minnesong-enthusiast landgrave, Hermann I. and his art-loving wife, Sophia. In 1206, they assembled six of the most celebrated Minnesingers,--Walter von der Vogelweide, Heinrich von Ofterdingen, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Heinrich (the virtuous writer), Johann Bitterolff, and Reimer von Zwethin, partly native and partly foreign,--and arranged a singing-contest among them. Heinrich von Ofterdingen sang of the knightly qualities of the Archduke Leopold II. of Austria; Eschenbach celebrated the fame of the King of France; and Walter von der Vogelweide, the preëminence of the landgrave Hermann; whilst the other singers extolled other princes. But this gave rise to a serious strife, and the irritated contestants agreed (so it is said) that the defeated singer should die by the executioner’s hand. The landgrave strongly forbade such a bargain over his undertaking, but nevertheless when Ofterdingen was declared the loser, the protection of the landgravine, to whom he fled, was necessary to save him from his adversaries. The landgrave adjusted the quarrel by arranging a new contest, to which Ofterdingen had to fetch from Hungary the world-famous meistersinger, Klingsor, to act as umpire. About a year afterwards, therefore, the latter appeared with Ofterdingen and the contest began again. Klingsor, however, would not decide in favour of any one singer, but rather sought to reconcile the parties. In this he was successful, and so the “War of the Wartburg” ended in feasting and revels which the landgrave provided.

Although its original features have been destroyed, the Minnesinger Hall in which the contest took place still stands, and might easily be restored; but fragments of the poems of the Wartburg war are preserved in the _Maneseichen_, _Docenschen_, and other collections. It has been held, however, and not without good grounds, that the poems still extant of that contest were first collected a century after it was held. It seems certain, nevertheless, that the kernel of the matter is largely contained in these collections.

Saint Elizabeth, the daughter of King Andrew II. of Hungary, became the wife of the landgrave Ludwig VI., the Pious, in 1221; and resided at the Wartburg with him. She was a model of simplicity, piety and gentleness; and during a famine and accompanying pestilence that ravaged Thuringia, she displayed these great virtues to the highest degree, proving herself a true mother of her country by her self-sacrifice in nursing the sick and dying.

Luther had left the Diet at Worms; he had been outlawed, and the safe-conduct granted to him by the Emperor Charles V. was soon about to lapse, for it was limited to twenty-one days. His friends and protectors therefore feared for his life, and, in order to hide him, Luther was snatched up by masked servants while passing through the Thuringer Forest, and brought to the Wartburg. It is scarcely to be doubted that this happened by the contrivance of the Kurfurst Friedrich, although at first he may have avoided all knowledge of Luther’s retreat, in order to be able to meet all official inquiries. Luther arrived at the Wartburg in May, 1521, under the name of a knight Görg. Here, for nearly a year, he lived in a little chamber, in a wing to the right of the chief tower, very simply adorned and furnished only with the barest necessaries. It still exists in its original condition, and it is with awe that the visitor enters the little abode wherein the great man partly accomplished his undying work,--the translation of the Bible. The castle chapel in the landgrave’s quarters still contains the pulpit from which Luther often preached to the inmates.

When we approach the castle from the east, where the carriage road leading from the town of Eisenach first winds through a wooded valley up to the tree-clad ridge, the Wartburg sits enthroned high above on the top of the mountain. From this point we see the landgrave-abode, and to its immediate right the residence built in 1791, and fortified walls stretching to the gate-house, or knight-house (_Ritterhaus_).

The ridge on which the castle extends from north to south is long and narrow and of very irregular form. It was formerly entirely covered with buildings that surrounded the inner courtyard. The single main entrance originally consisted of three or four gateways constructed one behind another with intermediate spaces, on the north-east. The outermost of these, supplied with a high tower, stood close to the narrow and steep approach which is cut in the rock and leads to the top of the mount. This outermost tower, it is conjectured, overhung this steep path, so that in case of attack the foe might be more easily repelled. The innermost gateway, which led into the stronghold itself, is the only one now standing. Formerly it was furnished with a drawbridge which recently has been changed to a strong bridge of stone. Above the gateway, rises the so-called _Ritterhaus_ (knight-house) which retains evidences of having been much higher formerly than it now is. It probably formed the tower-gate which, in 1558, was partly demolished and brought into closer relations with the other buildings. The _Ritterhaus_ served as the dwelling of the knights whom the landgrave assembled about him for the defence of the castle: it is now the dwelling of the Castellan. The style of those buildings still standing shows that they belong to the Fifteenth Century, and only the lower part of the walls is of the date at which the castle was founded, at the end of the Eleventh or some time during the Twelfth Century. The relief carved on the wall over the gateway also belongs to the same date. Its meaning cannot be solved. Popularly, it is called the Jonah; but it represents a knight about to be devoured by a dragon. The coat-of-arms hanging at the knight’s neck appears to bear the imperial eagle. Another perhaps equally ancient relief, which is found on the west wall not far from the square tower, is also to be noted. It represents a man sitting on a lion and tearing its jaws apart: it refers to the fact that the landgrave Ludwig the Good once single-handed bound a lion that his father-in-law had sent to him, and that had escaped from its cage in the courtyard.

Through the door under the _Ritterhaus_, we enter the courtyard of the Wartburg, and see to the west one of the continuations of the _Ritterhaus_. Adjoining this to the south, are other buildings; among others, that containing Luther’s chamber. On the left, to the east, runs a long high wall from the _Ritterhaus_ to the chief building standing on that side. This wall is covered with a defence-way of very simple form resembling those still occasionally found in old city walls. The first chief building already mentioned on that side was formerly called the _Musshaus_ (house of ease and leisure). Between it and the above-mentioned wall at the end of the courtyard, was originally a high wall with a wide doorway, so that the whole rear part of the castle, the residence of the ruling family, was separated from the front part where the knights and attendants dwelt. According to ancient report, the _Musshaus_ was only a tall, plain block, though the interior was not devoid of luxury, and here the landgrave’s family dwelt.

Adjoining the south side of the _Musshaus_ was the _Landgravenhaus_ (landgrave-house), also called the great or high house, which was devoted to ceremonials in the days of the landgraves. It is a stately structure that originated perhaps in the time of Ludwig III. in the middle of the Twelfth Century. In Germany it stands alone as a princely private building of such dimensions that still preserves its original form in the Byzantine or Roman style of architecture. In these respects, there is no ancestral secular building that can compare with it abroad also. On the west, it is connected with the Minnesinger Hall which formerly formed the chief entrance to the above hall through broad windows, divided up into round arches by little columns, for the other three sides had no entrance. The columns rest upon a low sill, so that people can look between them into the hall; so that it is to be presumed that the passage thus formed was intended for spectators. The little columns are ornamented with delicate capitals and volutes. They have Attic bases. In the time of Friedrich I. this hall was adorned with mural paintings of battles and other memorable occurrences of the life of the period. Traces of these paintings were still visible at the beginning of the present century.

CHÂTEAU D’AMBOISE

JULES LOISELEUR

The Castle of Amboise is placed at the entrance of Touraine like the jealous sentinel guarding the entrance to the Garden of the Hesperides. It is not a palace like the castle of Blois, nor a villa of a royal mistress like Chenonceaux, nor a sort of immense convent full of mysterious cells like Chambord: it is a military place, a veritable fortress of the Middle Ages upon which is grafted a castle of the Fifteenth Century.

This formidable military position has been at all times the key of this beautiful province. When Cæsar marched against the Armoricans, there lodged here a Roman garrison. From the height of these impregnable rocks, the counts of Anjou, and later the Plantagenets, their descendants, these worthy sons of the Black Falcon restrained within their talons the slightest movements of Touraine, while they kept a jealous watch over the counts of Blois and Champagne, who possessed but a few leagues away the sombre fortress of Chaumont. Amboise and Chaumont were the two advanced sentinels of these two impregnable neighbours. These solid walls served under Charles VII. as the rampart for the monarchy menaced by the English invasion; they protected the Catholic royalty of Francis II. against the stroke of Renaudie; they have enclosed turn by turn the illustrious victims of royal ingratitude like the Marshall de Gié, powerful rebels like the princes of Vendôme, accomplices of Chalais, state prisoners like Fouquet and Lauzun, and the vanquished like Abd-el-Kader. When you interrogate these enormous towers, these menacing battlements, and these inaccessible walls, you draw from them no memories of joy, peace, or love; nothing but bloody deeds spring from them; nothing but memories of mourning are evoked.

Buildings have, even more than mankind, their own physiognomy upon which their history is reflected. History and physiognomy are here in perfect union. No romancer, even were he possessed with Melusine’s enchanted ring, would dare to place an intrigue of love behind these walls impressed with deep wounds of gun-shots, or, if he did so, it would doubtless be on account of that law of contrasts, so loved of Nature, that places the nests of the warbler in the mouths of deserted cannon.

Stop upon this old bridge constructed by Hugues d’Amboise, one of the heroes of Tasso. From here you will take in the entire imposing and truly Roman view of the powerful citadel, from the Gate of the Lions, which opens upon the moat dug by Cæsar, as far as the two towers, now decapitated, of the ancient donjon above the trunks of which rises the slender spire of the Chapel of St. Hubert. Remove by imagination the narrow and common dwellings that encroach upon the old castle. Throw into the Loire the modern levee and quay that obstruct it here, and picture the noble river freely beating the base of the fortress. The great tower erected by Charles VIII. casts its shadow upon the Loire, on which opens a door that forms on this side the only entrance to the castle. Further back, and as if lost in the shadow of the immense tower, is the principal building of this habitation, the base of which dates from the counts of Amboise and whose five windows pierced at a considerable height on the side overlooking the Loire, although they are on the ground floor on the side of the court, seem like vigilant eyes upon the country. Then by mental effort throw down the terrace in front of these windows, the work of Louis-Philippe, who caused this façade to lose some of its crabbed countenance; close up the five rounded bay windows, also the work of the same King, which light the kitchens; in a word, leave nothing that juts out upon that straight and perpendicular façade except the balcony that overhangs the five casements of which we shall speak, and upon which open the large windows of the royal apartment. You will then have an approximate idea of what Amboise was in the time of Henri III., when Du Cerceau conceived the plan in 157–.

This balcony from which you look upon the Loire, is the work of Louis XII.: it is an historical monument. Nothing could be less complicated, nothing could be more formidable in its simplicity. It was upon this balcony that the chief ringleaders of the conspiracy against Amboise were hanged. The bodies, attached to these solid bars, hung in the open air; the stroke of a poignard cut the rope and they fell into the Loire: a means of burial as rapid as had been the judgment and the execution. Such is the Castle of Amboise seen from the Loire.

The tunnel, the stairway, and even the vault are modern works, which in moulding this old castle to our ideas of comfort deprive it of its feudal character. It is by the southern tower that we must ascend if we wish to be deeply impressed by this character. In the time of Charles VIII., this tower was the only entrance for knights and litters, for the one on the north corresponding to it bathes its foot in the Loire, as we have said. It was through the southern tower that Charles V. entered when he crossed France in 1539. This solid and immovable work is certainly the largest construction of the kind in France. The thick masonry that forms the nucleus of it is in itself a respectable size. The stairway turns four times from the base to the summit around this hollowed-out centre, and reaches a height of more than 600 feet.

This stairway, or rather these steps in helix, rest upon an ogival vault. Carvings sustain the points from which the large arches spring and terminate the nerves of the little arches. These carvings present all kinds of little figures, some of which are fantastic, others grotesque, and others again indecent, for the artists of the late Gothic period were willing enough to execute the latter to please their patrons who enjoyed these grotesques and the laughter they caused far more than fine arabesques. Monks abound in these sculptures. This one holds his stomach in both hands, like a gastronome punished by his exploits; this one, suffering from a terrible toothache, makes a grimace like one possessed. Most of these figures have been mutilated with blows of the bayonet by the prisoners who for about fifteen years were shut up in this tower in 1815. Louis-Philippe began its restoration.

About one-third of the way up, a little stone step, pierced in the outer wall, leads to a kind of hollowed-out rostrum, where, if we may believe tradition, Louis XII. harangued the multitude, when an attack on the municipal franchise aroused the inhabitants of the town of Amboise, or Petit-Fort. Happy time! when revolutionary uprisings could be calmed by orations!

At the top of this tower you see the gigantic horns of a stag that formerly ornamented the base of the Chapel of Saint Hubert. This is more than ten feet high, and was made at the order of Charles VIII. with such art and truthfulness of imitation that allows the guide to show it to unsophisticated tourists for the natural horns of a full-grown and gigantic stag killed in some forest in the Brobdinagian country.

The donjon, the first dwelling of the lords of Amboise, occupied the west, the space comprised between the two little headless towers which still exist.

On the side of the Loire, opposite the building of the Sept-Vertues, there rise other buildings belonging to Amboise, but they were restored by Charles VIII. and completely changed by Louis XII. and Francis I. There are to be found the apartment of the King and Queen, due to the last prince, and close beside it, that curious chamber which was supported by four massive pillars of masonry, and to which no entrance was possible except by a single opening pierced through the floor. This was the work of Catharine de’Medici, after one of her astrologers had forewarned her of the fall of a great edifice. She thought that, by means of these material precautions, she could escape the menace of Fortune which allowed her to see the fall of quite a different edifice to Amboise: that of the Valois dynasty, so laboriously restored by her efforts.

The chapel is the perfect antithesis of the castle.

Just as the one is sombre, severe, dominating and sinistrously beautiful, on account of its mass and size, the other is bright, efflorescent, and smiling, delicately embroidered and pierced like lace.

This charming chapel, proudly encamped upon a rocky peak, is one of the best products of the third ogival style of that period of Flamboyant Gothic that immediately preceded the Renaissance. But it is not, as has been believed until now, the work of Italian artists brought from Naples by Charles VIII. That is an error in which even M. Jules Quicherat shared, but which was obliterated at the recent discovery of an itemized account of all the expenses of furnishing and decorating the Chapel of Amboise and for the contiguous apartments in the towers. This precious document states that the expenses commenced in 1490 and continued until 1494. Now the year 1494, in which Charles VIII. finished ornamenting and furnishing the Chapel of Amboise, is precisely the one in which he started on his expedition to Italy. The honour of this charming conception then reverts wholly to native artists.

The façade is entirely occupied by a large ogival entrance, the top of which presents one of those great, circular rose-windows,--the characteristic sign of the Flamboyant Gothic. An authority no less exact for the construction of this façade is shown in the form of the two doors cut in the entrance, these showing that surbased arch so common in the English buildings of the reigns of Henry VII. and Henry VIII., and which derives from them the name of the Tudor arch. These two doors, separated by a pilaster and niche, support a stone bas-relief, the principal motive of which is the conversion of Saint Hubert.

A gigantic stag stands in the centre of the composition. Between his horns there rises a flamboyant cross. The ardent huntsman stops in terror at this sight, he bends one knee, and with one hand restrains his horse, while with the other he salutes the miraculous sign destined to convert him to Christianity: instead of the Aquitaine Nimrod, the persecutor of the forests of Ardennes, he is only an apostle, the successor of Saint Lambert. A host of wild animals form the accessories of this picture, as if the entire population of the forests is taking part in the conversion of the patron of huntsmen. Saint Anthony, in a corner to the left, contemplates Saint Christopher bearing his divine burden.

This bas-relief, somewhat clumsy in workmanship, does not give the slightest idea of the charming delicacy of the interior. The banal and rather strained comparison of lace woven by the fays, is more than a truthful one here. Imagine two rows of _point d’ Alençon_, half a metre high, festooned the entire length of the walls to form a series of canopies and niches in corbelling, diversified by graceful little columns with prismatic arches. Carvings and figures, inexhaustible in variety, terminate the pendentives of these niches. Not one of these motives is repeated a second time: vine leaves, acanthus leaves, holly leaves, oak leaves, cabbage leaves, and thistle leaves,--the entire architectural flora of the Fifteenth Century is here under our eyes mingled with a host of real and fantastic animals. There are also some human figures: a little monk in a corner by the side of the altar blows the trumpet in a whimsical manner, exactly like the one that serves for a reading-desk in the _Temptation_ by Callot.

Upon this profusion of lace, of foliage, of crockets, and stags’ horns, upon this mass of curled leaves, pinked leaves, and leaves turned and twisted in a hundred fashions, there falls a glowing light, sifted through the windows, where vermilion, orpiment and ultramarine are the dominating colours. These windows, upon which saints are represented in life-size, were made in Sèvres, some of them after the designs of the Princess Marie d’Orléans. Perhaps there is a slight false note in the selection of these strong colours. Light tones and yellowish and whitish tints were generally preferred at the end of the Fifteenth Century. It was this gradual abandoning of colour that fifty years later engendered the _grisailles_.

Before it was restored by Louis-Philippe, this church had been used for twenty years as the hall for the castle’s police. One may judge by that alone of the seriousness of the mutilations.

BLARNEY CASTLE

MR. AND MRS. S. C. HALL

Few places in Ireland are more familiar to English ears than Blarney; the notoriety is attributable, first, to the marvellous qualities of its famous “stone,” and next, to the extensive popularity of the song,--

“The groves of Blarney, they are so charming.”

When or how the stone obtained its singular reputation, it is difficult to determine; the exact position among the ruins of the castle is also a matter of doubt; the peasant-guides humour the visitor according to his capacity for climbing, and direct, either to the summit or the base, the attention of him who desires to “greet it with a holy kiss.” He who has been dipped in the Shannon is presumed to have obtained, in abundance, the gift of that “civil courage” which makes an Irishman at ease and unconstrained in all places and under all circumstances; and he who has kissed the Blarney stone is assumed to be endowed with a fluent and persuasive tongue, although it may be associated with insincerity; the term “Blarney” being generally used to characterize words that are meant neither to be “honest nor true.” It is conjectured that the comparatively modern application of the term “Blarney” first had existence when the possessor, Lord Clancarty, was a prisoner to Sir George Carew, by whom he was subjected to several examinations touching his loyalty, which he was required to prove by surrendering his strong castle to the soldiers of the Queen; this bet he always endeavoured to evade by some plausible excuse, but as invariably professing his willingness to do so. The particulars are fully detailed in the “Pacata Hibernia.”

It is certain that to no particular stone of the ancient structure is the marvellous quality exclusively attributed; but in order to make it as difficult as possible to attain the enviable gift, it had long been the custom to point out a stone, a few feet below the battlements, which the very daring only would run the hazard of touching with their lips. The attempt to do so was, indeed, so dangerous, that a few years ago Mr. Jeffreys had it removed from the wall and placed on the highest point of the building, where the visitor may now greet it with little risk. It is about two feet square, and contains the date 1703, with a portion of the arms of the Jeffreys family, but the date, at once, negatives its claim to be considered the true marvel of Blarney.[7] A few days before our visit a madman made his way to the top of the castle, and after dancing around it for some hours, his escape from death being almost miraculous, he flung this stone from the tower; it was broken in the fall, and now as the guide stated to us, the “three halves” must receive three distinct kisses to be in any degree effective.

The age of the song has been satisfactorily ascertained; it was written in the year 1798 or 1799, by Richard Alfred Millikin, an attorney of Cork. The author little anticipated the celebrity his lines were destined to acquire; they were composed to ridicule the nonsense verses of the village poets, who, with a limited knowledge of the English language, and a smattering of classical names, were in the habit of indulging their still more ignorant auditors, by stringing together sounds that had no sense, but conveyed a notion of the prodigious learning of the singer.

Millikin’s song has been injurious to Ireland; it has raised many a laugh at Ireland’s expense, and contributed largely to aid the artist and the actor, of gone-by times, in exhibiting the Irishman as little better than a buffoon--very amusing, no doubt, but exciting any feeling rather than that of respect.

It is impossible to contemplate the romantic ruins of Blarney Castle without a feeling more akin to melancholy than to pleasure; they bear, so perfectly, the aspect of strength utterly subdued, and remind one so forcibly that the “glory” of Ireland belongs to days departed. The castle stands--

“as stands a lofty mind,
Worn, but unstooping to the baser crowd,
All tenantless, save to the crannying wind.”

The stronghold of Blarney was erected about the middle of the Fifteenth Century by Cormac MacCarthy, surnamed “Laider,” or the Strong; whose ancestors had been chieftains in Munster from a period long antecedent to the English invasion, and whose descendants, as Lords of Muskerry and Clancarty, retained no inconsiderable portion of their power and estates until the year 1689, when their immense possessions were confiscated, and the last earl became an exile, like the monarch whose cause he had supported. The castle, village, mills, fairs, and customs of Blarney, with the land and park thereunto belonging, containing 1400 acres, were “set up by cant” in the year 1702, purchased by Sir Richard Pyne, Lord Chief Justice, for £3,000, and by him disposed of, the following year, to General Sir James Jeffreys, in whose family the property continues. Although the walls of this castle are still strong, many of the outworks have long since been levelled with the earth; the plough has passed over their foundations, and “the stones of which they were built have been used in repairing the turnpike-roads.”

The small village of Blarney is about four miles north-west of Cork; a few years ago it was remarkably clean, neat, and thriving; its prosperity having resulted from the establishment of several linen and cotton factories, the whole of which have been swept away, and the hamlet is now, like the castle, an assemblage of ruins. In the vicinity, however, there is yet a woollen-manufactory and a paper-mill, both in full work. The scenery in the neighbourhood is agreeable, but the grounds that immediately surround the castle are of exceeding beauty. Nature has done much more for them than art; although there is evidence that the hand of taste had busied itself in the duty of improvement. “The sweet Rock-close” is a small dell, in which evergreens grow luxuriantly, completely shaded with magnificent trees. At its termination, are the “Witches’ Stairs”; a series of rugged stone steps which lead down through a passage in the rock to a delicious spot of greensward forming the bank of a clear rivulet--and where some singular masses appear to have been “the work of Druid hands of old.”

CHÂTEAU DE LOCHES

J. J. BOURRASSÉE

The traveller who visits Loches for the first time is greatly struck by the picturesque position of the town on an elevation--gently sloping down to the meadows watered by the Indre. Above the houses rise the turrets of the castle, which in turn are dominated by the pyramids of the old collegiate church of Our Lady, above which again appears the ancient mediæval fortress in its somewhat austere majesty. The combination forms an enchanting view seen under the first beams of the rising sun from the edge of the forest on the Montrésor road.

About the beginning of the Sixth Century, St. Ours came to Touraine to settle at Loches. There several monks placed themselves under his discipline. The monastery of St. Ours made a town of Loches. As has often been remarked, the people of the country like to group around these religious houses where they find at the same time a church with its spiritual aid, a refuge always open against the persecution of the mighty, a school, a hospital, and a model farm with its agricultural and industrial instruction. In a few years the collection became sufficiently important for the establishment of a _castrum_. This strong castle, which was already in existence at the time of Gregory of Tours, was placed in a position that was very easy to defend: it was protected on one side by that elbow of the mountain to which St. Ours had retired and by the escarpment towards the Indre, a flank that was rendered almost inaccessible by the river and the valley marshes; on another, by the natural depression of the vale of Mazerolles; and, on the third, by a deep and wide cutting in the chalky tufa. The castle which crowned the hill and commanded the surrounding country was so strong for that age that all conquerors contended for its possession.

After the Romans, we find the Visigoths here, and then the Mérovingian princes, the feudal lords, the counts of Anjou and Touraine who became kings of England and the kings of France after Philip Augustus. At the foot of the ancient castle of Loches, a hundred fights of chivalry were settled. Under the feudal rule, the surrounding fields were thronged with bands of men marching under various banners.

The counts of Anjou, whose ambition was the scourge of our province, had become masters of Loches, thanks to skilfully calculated matrimonial alliances. The citadel of Loches became the boulevard of their warlike enterprises in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries.

The Eleventh Century fortress, whose square donjon commands the surrounding country, is not so well preserved as the collegiate church. Nevertheless, the learned who study our national antiquities consider it one of the most precious remains of the military architecture of that remote age. Picture to yourself an imposing mass, formed of two bodies of buildings shoulder to shoulder rising to a height of forty _mètres_. The principal building is 25 m. 33 cm. long while the other attains only half this length. The interior disposition of the small tower is visible at the first glance on account of the disappearance of the floors that formerly divided it into four stories. In the lower portion is a low hall from which rose a stairway of from thirty-five to forty steps, with two landings, by which to reach the principal rooms. At the top of this stairway is the door that gave access to every part of the donjon. On the first story, it opens into a hall of the great tower, the dimensions of which are so vast that it could contain five hundred men; then, at the same level, into the corresponding hall of the little tower; and lastly by a secret passage, twenty-four _mètres_ in length, hidden in the thickness of the wall, one could descend to the vaulted hall that occupied the base of the donjon, and that served as an arsenal, a treasury and a prison. Three flights of steps, at present interrupted and set in the interior of the walls, led to the upper stories. The donjon probably terminated in an exterior wooden gallery resting on a movable scaffolding intended for repulsing assaults; the numerous holes to be seen at the top of the wall authorize this supposition.

Thus established, the Roman donjon of Loches is one of the most remarkable monuments of its kind. The beauty of its size, the masterly skill of its construction, the imposing amplitude of its mass, half disguised by round buttresses that rise to the summit, the artifice of its military dispositions, the ingenious multiplicity of its defences, the boldness of its outline, and the proud aspect of the whole, all recommend it to the attention of the antiquary and the artist. To-day it is of no military importance; but for the town of Loches it will ever constitute a picturesque element of the first order.

In 1194, Richard Cœur-de-Lion, being delivered from the prison in which he was unjustly kept by the Emperor of Germany, made haste to Touraine, his possession of which was being disputed by Philip Augustus. Nothing could moderate his boiling heat. After having captured and ransomed Châteauneuf de Tours, the King of England hastened to Loches. The castle was defended by twenty knights and eighty archers under the command of Guy de Laval. The governor at first defended himself resolutely enough; but Richard attacked the place with such fury, and himself directed the assault with such energy, that it was necessary to yield. Guy de Laval was made prisoner with some of his most intrepid knights. But the struggle was far from being ended: it only slumbered for a few years. Richard, wounded at the siege of Chaluz, in Limousin, died at Chinon at the age of forty-two, April 6, 1199. He was buried at Fontevrault, leaving behind a troubled and more especially a greatly disputed heritage. Queen Berengaria, his wife, received Loches and Montbazon with their domains and dependencies as her dowry.