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We lingered long in the cloisters, and climbed up the royal staircase, with its beautiful openwork vaulting to the north tower, from whose top we may see as far as Azay-le-Rideau on a clear day.
Breakfast not at Azay-le-Rideau therefore, too trustful traveller; or if you do so, be either very meek or very bold. Breakfast not, save under stress of circumstance; but let no circumstance whatever prevent your going to see the great house of the place, which is a fair rival to Chenonceaux. The village lies close to the gates, though after you pass these gates you leave it well behind.
There was no guide to tell us the history of this house and the books are equally reticent about its traditions. The Hôtel de Pincé looks like a charming miniature château, suggesting Azay-le-Rideau or some of the Renaissance houses in Tours, in its general style, and like them it makes one feel that the builders of those days understood elegance and beauty better than they did comfort and ease.
Although this genial reformed monk, as Walter is pleased to call Rabelais, was born at Chinon, he seems to have lived at Langeais at two different periods of his wandering and eventful life, Guillaume, Sieur de Langeais, having given him a cottage near the château. Having come to Langeais by train we engaged a hack to convey us to Azay-le-Rideau, a drive of about six miles.
Each day we drove in the brake to visit some ancient château, such as Azay-le-Rideau, Islette, Chinon, or the Abbey of Fontevreault, finding the roads and scenery in Touraine the most delightful one can imagine.
"That was at Colombiers, near Villandry," said M. La Tour, laughing over the Quaker lady's picture, gruesome as it was. "Henry was too ill to return to Chinon, and so passed the night at Azay-le-Rideau, or at the Commanderie of the Templars at Ballan. It was there or at Chinon that his clerk, at his request, read to him the list of the rebellious barons.
From this opinion, indeed, one of our trio differed; but this member of the party had already exposed herself to the charge of being too fastidious, by declining to de- scend from the carriage at Chaumont and take that back-stairs view of the castle. Without fastidiousness, it was fair to declare, on the other hand, that the little inn at Azay-le-Rideau was very bad.
Lydia and I objected, for after the complete and harmonious furnishing of Langeais the interior of Azay-le-Rideau seems a trifle bare, as only two or three of the rooms are thoroughly furnished.
I think he didn't want to admire anything French, but I wonder in what part of France he has travelled. Besides the well-known historic chateaux of Chaumont, Chenonceaux, Azay-le-Rideau, Maintenon, Dampierre, Josselin, Valencay, and scores of others, there are quantities of small Louis XV chateaux and manoirs, half hidden in a corner of a forest, which the stranger never sees.
It is not strange that the salamander of Francis I appears upon so many of the châteaux of France, for to this art-loving, luxurious, and débonnaire King she owes Chambord, Fontainebleau, St. Germain and the smaller châteaux of Azay-le-Rideau, Anet and Villers-Cotterets.
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