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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
First Efforts of the National Defence Delegates La Motte-Rouge and his Dyed Hair The German Advance South of Paris Moltke and King William Bourges, the German Objective Characteristics of Beauce, Perche, and Sologne French Evacuation of Orleans Gambetta arrives at Tours His Coadjutor, Charles Louis de Saulces de Freycinet Total Forces of the National Defence on Gambetta's Arrival D'Aurelle de Paladines supersedes La Motte-Rouge The Affair of Chateaudun Cambriels Garibaldi Jessie White Mario Edward Vizetelly Catholic Hatred of Garibaldi The Germans at Dijon The projected Relief of Paris Trochu's Errors and Ducrot's Schemes The French Victory of Coulmiers Change of Plan in Paris My Newspaper Work My Brother Adrian Vizetelly The General Position.
And they bid me tell you that enough hath been done, and they are right well content. But we are few against so great a host, in a place so strong that men may not avail to master it by main force. The city is now well seen in all manner of victual; moreover, we can now come and go by Sologne and the left bank.
Oh, my Friend! in contemplating this assemblage of good, devoted, noble, and loving beings, so dear to each other, living retired in a little farm of our poor Sologne, my heart rose towards heaven with a feeling of ineffable gratitude.
Sigerson states that some of the worst of these regions in the west of Ireland are as well adapted to flax-culture as Ulster, and Napoleon III. showed what could be done for such wastes as La Sologne and the desert of the Landes by the intelligent study of a country and the judicious development of such values as are inherent in it. The loss of population in Ireland is not unprecedented.
But early in the siege the English had taken from them of Orleans the boulevard and Les Tourelles, and an arch of the bridge had been broken, so that in nowise might men-at-arms of the party of France enter into Orleans by way of that bridge from the left bank through the country called Sologne. Yet that keep, Les Tourelles, had not been a lucky prize to our enemies of England.
Four years had elapsed, since the events we have just related, when Gabriel de Rennepont wrote the following letter to Abbe Joseph Charpentier, curate of the Parish of Saint-Aubin, a hamlet of Sologne: "Springwater Farm, "June 2d, 1836. "Intending to write to you yesterday, my bear Joseph, I seated myself at the little old black table, that you will remember well.
This conversation, which took place just after Madame Bridau and Joseph changed coaches at Orleans and entered the Sologne, is sufficient proof of the incapacity of the painter and his mother to play the part the inexorable Desroches had assigned to them.
This conversation, which took place just after Madame Bridau and Joseph changed coaches at Orleans and entered the Sologne, is sufficient proof of the incapacity of the painter and his mother to play the part the inexorable Desroches had assigned to them.
His mania was for building when it was not for affairs of the heart and so daring was he that when he could not get an old fabric to remodel he would brave all, as did Louis XIV at Versailles, and erect a dream palace in the midst of a desert. This he did at Chambord in the Sologne. At Paris his difficulties were perhaps no less, but he had his materials and his workmen ready at hand.
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