United States or Luxembourg ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
There were sweet villages where they made cheese, and where I could have been happy making it with Helen Blantock; there were châteaux with turret rooms where my book shelves would have fitted excellently; but always we fled on, on, until at last, after two bewildering, cinematographic days, we drove into the streets of that dignified and delightful city, Bern.
The ornamental woodwork on this house is especially noticeable. There may be nothing architecturally new in these modern 'chateaux' and 'chalets; but it is as well to see what the French are doing, with a climate, in Normandy, much like our own, and with the same interest as ourselves, in building commodious and durable houses.
Only here and there on the skirts of Sauveterre, near Mende, and of the Causse Noir, near Millau, as we have seen, are relics of feudal times. Close around, under the very shadow of these vast promontories, cresting the borders of the Tarn and the green heights between Millau and Mende, ruined strongholds and chateaux abound.
Below Coblentz we passed some of the Châteaux of the German Princes, which are generally large, uncomfortable-looking houses, fitted up, as far as external examination allowed us to judge, without taste. The river became rather dull, but at Andernach, where we slept, it began to improve and to promise better for the next morning, and for some miles we were not disappointed.
Did the King, followed by his whole Court, arrive in fearful weather by the side of some vast and swollen river, M. de Louvois, alighting from his carriage, would sweep the horizon with a single glance. He would designate on the spot the farms, granaries, mills, and chateaux necessary to the passage of a fastidious king on his travels.
"See those little girls," said the wife of Maréchal de Villeroi to Gaston d'Orléans, pointing to the Mancini children, the centre of an admiring crowd of courtiers. "They are not rich now; but some day they will have fine châteaux, large incomes, splendid jewels, beautiful silver, and perhaps great dignities."
Castles and keeps were of one sort in England and Scotland, of still another along the Rhine, and if the Renaissance palaces and chateaux first came into being in Italy it is certain they never grew to the flowering luxuriance there that they did in France. Thus does France establish itself as leader in new movements once again.
"You know him, Monsieur?" "I heard of him in St. Louis," I answered. "You will meet him, no doubt," she continued. "He is a very fine gentleman. His grandfather was Commissary-general of the colony, and he himself is a cousin of the Marquis de Saint-Gre, who has two chateaux, a house in Paris, and is a favorite of the King."
On the brow of the hill, overlooking the roofs of the city, and commanding a fine view of the Loire and its noble bridge, and the surrounding country, sprinkled with cottages and châteaux, runs an ample terrace, planted with trees, and laid out as a public walk. The view from this terrace is one of the most beautiful in France.
Thus gossiping, we reached Montclar, on the plateau, a little to the south of the deep gorge of the Tarn. Here we entered an auberge, where the postman was glad to moisten his dry throat with the green-eyed enemy. This inn was formerly one of those small châteaux more correctly termed maisons fortes, or manors which sprang up all over France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Word Of The Day