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Updated: June 12, 2025
The pomp and glitter of the new life appealed immensely to the youthful instincts of the Canadian. The Baron detailed to his fascinated listener the composition, privileges, and duties of the Gardes "We are thirteen hundred, Répentigny, in four companies the Scotch, the Villeroy, the Noailles, and the Luxembourg, each over three hundred persons; we relieve each other every three months.
After many delays and disappointments, Fleury at length procured an order, signed by the Representative, for our being transferred to Amiens, under the care of two Gardes Nationalaux, and, of course, at our expence. Every thing in this country wears the aspect of despotism.
On the whole Chambord makes a great impression; and the hour I was there, while the yellow afternoon light slanted upon the September woods, there was a dignity in its desolation. It spoke, with a muffled but audible voice, of the vanished monarchy, which had been so strong, so splendid, but to-day had become a vision almost as fantastic as the cupolas and chimneys that rose before me. I thought, while I lingered there, of all the fine things it takes to make up such a monarchy; and how one of them is a superfluity of mouldering, empty palaces. Chambord is touching that is the best word for it; and if the hopes of another restoration are in the follies of the Republic, a little reflection on that eloquence of ruin ought to put the Republic on its guard. A sentimental tourist may venture to remark that in presence of all the haunted houses that appeal in this mystical manner to the retrospective imagination it cannot afford to be foolish. I thought of all this as I drove back to Blois by the way of the Château de Cheverny. The road took us out of the park of Chambord, but through a region of flat woodland, where the trees were not mighty, and again into the prosy plain of the Sologne a thankless soil to sow, I believe, but lately much amended by the magic of cheerful French industry and thrift. The light had already begun to fade, and my drive reminded me of a passage in some rural novel of Madame Sand. I passed a couple of timber and plaster churches, which looked very old, black and crooked, and had lumpish wooden porches and galleries encircling the base. By the time I reached Cheverny the clear twilight had approached. It was late to ask to be allowed to visit an inhabited house; but it was the hour at which I like best to visit almost anything. My coachman drew up before a gateway, in a high wall, which opened upon a short avenue, along which I took my way on foot; the coachmen in those parts being, for reasons best known to themselves, mortally averse to driving up to a house. I answered the challenge of a very tidy little portress who sat, in company with a couple of children, enjoying the evening air in front of her lodge, and who told me to walk a little farther and turn to the right. I obeyed her to the letter, and my turn brought me into sight of a house as charming as an old manor in a fairy tale. I had but a rapid and partial view of Cheverny; but that view was a glimpse of perfection. A light, sweet mansion stood looking over a wide green lawn, over banks of flowers and groups of trees. It had a striking character of elegance, produced partly by a series of Renaissance busts let into circular niches in the façade. The place looked so private, so reserved, that it seemed an act of violence to ring, a stranger and foreigner, at the graceful door. But if I had not rung I should be unable to express as it is such a pleasure to do my sense of the exceeding courtesy with which this admirable house is shown. It was near the dinner-hour the most sacred hour of the day; but I was freely conducted into the inhabited apartments. They are extremely beautiful. What I chiefly remember is the charming staircase of white embroidered stone, and the great salle des gardes and chambre
The Mobiles, on the other hand, fought splendidly, and were holding the position when he left. I am writing this in a café. It is full of Gardes Nationaux. They are saying that if the troops of the line are not trustworthy, resistance is hopeless. A Garde National gives the following explanation of the demoralisation of the army.
Whether one enters through the dark magnificence of the great portals of the Châtelet; whether one mounts the fortified stairway, passing into the Salle des Gardes, passing onward from dungeon to fortified bridge to gain the abbatial residence; whether one leaves the vaulted splendor of oratories for aërial passageways, only to emerge beneath the majestic roof of the Cathedral that marvel of the Early Norman, ending in the Gothic choir of the fifteenth century; or, as one penetrates into the gloom of the mighty dungeons where heroes, and brothers of kings, and saints, and scientists have died their long death as one gropes through the black night of the crypt, where a faint, mysterious glint of light falls aslant the mystical face of the Black Virgin; as one climbs to the light beneath the ogive arches of the Aumônerie, through the wide-lit aisles of the Salle des Chevaliers, past the slender Gothic columns of the Refectory, up at last to the crowning glory of all the glories of La Merveille, to the exquisitely beautiful colonnades of the open Cloister the impressions and emotions excited by these ecclesiastical and military masterpieces are ever the same, however many times one may pass them in review.
The inference was plain, and the Citizen Quartermaster was quick to take it up. "We are all among frien's," said he. "Why I call you Gumbo de St. Gre? When I come first settle in Louisiane you was wild man yes. Drink tafia, fight duel, spend family money. Aristocrat then. No, I not hold my tongue. You go France and Monsieur le Marquis de St. Gre he get you in gardes du corps of the King.
Filled with these sage resolutions she tried to fix her eyes on the stage, but unconsciously they continually strayed to a tall blue figure which was seated in the front row of the stalls with a number of officers of the Chevaliers Gardes.
This is the cabinet of her son, Henri III., where he gave the daggers to the gentlemen who were to rid him of his enemy, the hero of the barricades. This is the Salle des Gardes, where Guise was leaning on the chimney-piece when summoned to the king. This is the little room at the entrance of which he was set upon in the act of lifting the drapery, and stabbed with forty wounds.
By noon every corner and vantage point of the landscape is seized upon, when, with a blare of trumpets and the rattle of cavalry, the President arrives in his turnout a la Daumont, two postilions in blue and gold, and a piqueur, preceded by a detachment of the showy Gardes Republicains on horseback, and takes his place in the little pavilion where for so many years Eugenie used to sit in state, and which has sheltered so many crowned heads under its simple roof.
"Come in here," said Pardaillan, making Lecamus a sign to follow him through a carved wooden door leading to the second floor, which the door-keeper opened on recognizing the young officer. It is easy to imagine Christophe's amazement as he entered the great salle des gardes, then so vast that military necessity has since divided it by a partition into two chambers.
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