E-text prepared by Thierry Alberto, Clare Boothby,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
CHAPTER I. CHÂTEAU DECHAMBORD; CHÂTEAU D'AMBOISE; CHÂTEAU DE CHENONCEAUX
We walked through the empty galleries and deserted rooms wherespiders spin their cobwebs over the salamanders of Francis theFirst. One is overcome by a feeling of distress at the sight ofthis poverty which has no grandeur. It is not absolute ruin, withthe luxury of blackened and mouldy débris, the delicateembroidery of flowers, and the drapery of waving vines undulatingin the breeze, like pieces of damask. It is a conscious poverty,for it brushes its threadbare coat and endeavours to appearrespectable. The floor has been repaired in one room, while in thenext it has been allowed to rot. It shows the futile effort topreserve that which is dying and to bring back that which has fled.Strange to say, it is all very melancholy, but not at allimposing.
And then it seems as if everything had contributed to injurepoor Chambord, designed by Le Primatice and chiselled andsculptured by Germain Pilon and Jean Cousin. Upreared by Francisthe First, on his return from Spain, after the humiliating treatyof Madrid (1526), it is the monument of a pride that sought todazzle itself in order to forget defeat. It first harbours Gastond'Orléans, a crushed pretender, who is exiled within itswalls; then it is Louis XIV, who, out of one floor, builds three,thus ruining the beautiful double staircase which extended withoutinterruption from the top to the bottom. Then one day, on thesecond floor, facing the front, under the magnificent ceilingcovered with salamanders and painted ornaments which are nowcrumbling away, Molière produced for the first time LeBourgeois gentilhomme. Then it was given to the Maréchalde Saxe; then to the Polignacs, and finally to a plain soldier,Berthier. It was afterwards bought back by subscription andpresented to the Duc de Bordeaux. It has been given to everybody,as if nobody cared to have it or desired to keep it. It looks as ifit had hardly ever been used, and as if it had always been toospacious. It is like a deserted hostelry where tran