Battioni Pagani Forklift Parts Manuals

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All but the two towers of this old religious foundation are gone. The
years of the Revolution saw the fall of the abbey; a street was cut
through the nave of its church, and the two dismembered parts
stand to-day as monuments to the sacrilege of modern times.
To-day a banal faubourg has sprung up around the site of the abbey,
with here and there old tumble-down houses either of wood and
stone, such as one reads of in the pages of Balzac, or sees in the
designs of Doré, or with their sides covered with overlapping slates.
Amid all these is an occasional treasure of architectural art, such as
the graceful Fountain of Beaune, the work of Michel Colombe, and
some remains of early Renaissance houses of somewhat more
splendid appointments than their fellows, particularly the Maison de
Tristan l'Hermite, the Hôtel Xaincoings, and many exquisite
fragments now made over into an auberge or a cabaret, which make
one dream of Rabelais and his Gargantua.
It is uncertain whether Michel Colombe, who designed this fountain
and also that masterwork, the tomb of the Duc François II. and
Marguerite de Foix, at Nantes, was a Tourangeau or a Breton, but
Tours claims him for her own, and settles once for all the spelling of
his name by producing a "papier des affaires" signed plainly
"Colombe." The proof lies in this document, signed in a notary's
office at Tours, concerning payments which were made to him on
behalf of the magnificent sepulchre which he executed for the
church of St. Sauveur at La Rochelle. In his time—fifteenth century—
Colombe had no rivals in the art of monumental sculpture in France,
and with reason he has been called the Michel Ange of France.
The cathedral quarter has for its chief attraction that gorgeously
florid St. Gatien, whose ornate façade was likened by a certain
monarch to a magnificently bejewelled casket. It is an interesting
and lovable Gothic-Renaissance church which, if not quite of the first
rank among the masterpieces of its kind, is a marvel of splendour,
and an example of the "caprices d'une guipure d'art," as the French
call it.
Bordering the Loire at Tours is a series of tree-lined quays and
promenades which are the scenes, throughout the spring and
summer months, of fêtes and fairs of many sorts. Here, too, at the
extremity of the Rue Nationale, are statues of Descartes and Balzac.
The Tour de Guise on the river-bank recalls the domination of the
Plantagenet kings of England, who were Counts of Anjou since it
formed a part of the twelfth-century château built here by Henry II.
of England.
At the opposite
extremity of
the city is
another other
tower, the Tour
de Foubert,
which
protected the
feudal domain
of the old
abbey of St.
Martin. The
history of days
gone by at Scene in the Quartier de la Cathédrale, Tours
Tours was more
churchly than
political.
Once only—during the reign of Louis XII.—did the States General
meet at Tours (in 1506). Then the deputies of the bourgeoisie met
alone for their deliberations, the chief outcome of which was to
bestow upon the king the eminently fitting title of "Père du Peuple."
One may question the righteousness of Louis XII. in throwing over
his wife, Jeanne de France, in order to serve political ends by
acquiring the estates of Anne of Brittany for the Crown of France for
ever, but there is no doubt but that he did it for the "good of his
people."
The principal literary shrine at Tours is the house, in the Rue
Nationale, where was born Honoré de Balzac.
One could not do better than to visit Tours during the "été de St.
Martin," since it was the soldier-priest of Tours who gave his name
to that warm, bright prolongation of summer which in France (and in
England) is known as "St. Martin's summer," and which finds its
counterpart in America's "Indian summer."
The legend tells us that somewhere in the dark ages lived a soldier
named Martin. He was always of a charitable disposition, and none
asked alms of him in vain. One November day, when the wind blew
briskly and the snow fell fast, a beggar asked for food and clothing.
Martin had but his own cloak, and this he forthwith tore in half and
gave one portion to the beggar. Later on the same night there came
a knocking at Martin's door; the snow had ceased falling and the
stars shone brightly, and one of goodly presence stood with the
cloak on his arm, saying, "I was naked and ye clothed me." Martin
straightway became a priest of the church, and died an honoured
bishop of Tours, and for ever after the anniversary of his conversion
is celebrated by sunny skies.
We owe a double debt to St. Martin. We have to thank him for the
saying, "All my eye" and the words "chapel" and "chaplain." The full
form of the phrase, "All my eye and Betty Martin," which we all of us
have often heard, is an obvious corruption of "O mihi beate
Martine," the beginning of an invocation to the saint. The cloak he
divided with a naked beggar, which, by the way, took place at
Amiens, not at Tours, was treasured as a relic by the Frankish kings,
borne before them in battle, and brought forth when solemn oaths
were to be taken. The guardians of this cloak or cape were known
as "cappellani," whence "chaplain," while its sanctuary or "cappella"
has become "chapel."
For their descriptions of Plessis-les-Tours modern English travellers
have invariably turned to the pages of Sir Walter Scott. This is all
very well in its way, but it is also well to remember that Scott drew
his picture from definite information, and it is not merely the product
of his imaginary architectural skill. In this respect Scott was certainly
far ahead of Carlyle in his estimates of French matters.
"Even in those days" (writing of "Quentin Durward"), said Scott,
"when the great found themselves obliged to reside in places of
fortified strength, it" (Plessis-les-Tours) "was distinguished for the
extreme and jealous care with which it was watched and defended."
All this is substantiated and corroborated by authorities, and, while it
may have been chosen by Scott merely as a suitable accessory for
the details of his story, Plessis-les-Tours unquestionably was a royal
stronghold of such proportions as to be but meanly suggested by the
scanty remains of the present day.
Louis XI. dreamed fondly of Plessis-les-Tours (Plessis being from the
Latin Plexitium, a name borne by many suburban villages of France),
and he sought to make it a royal residence where he should be safe
from every outward harm. It had four great towers, crenelated and
machicolated, after the best Gothic fortresses of the time. At the
four angles of the protecting walls were the principal logis, and
between the lines of its ramparts or fosses was an advance-guard of
buildings presumably intended for the vassals in time of danger.
This was the castle as Louis first knew it, when it was the property
of the chamberlain of the Duchy of Luynes, from whom the king
bought it for five thousand and five hundred écus d'or,—the value of
fifty thousand francs of to-day.
Its former appellation, Montilz-les-Tours, was changed (1463) to
Plessis. All the chief features have disappeared, and to-day it is but a
scrappy collection of tumble-down buildings devoted to all manner of
purposes. A few fragmentary low-roofed vaults are left, and a brick
and stone building, flanked by an octagonal tower, containing a
stairway; but this is about all of the former edifice, which, if not as
splendid as some other royal residences, was quite as effectively
defended and as suitable to its purposes as any.
It had, too, within
its walls a tiny
chapel dedicated to
Our Lady of Cléry,
before whose altar
the superstitious
Louis made his
inconstant
devotions.
Plessis-Les-Tours In the time of Louis XI
Once a great forest
surrounded the
château, and was, as Scott says, "rendered dangerous and well-nigh
impracticable by snares and traps armed with scythe-blades, which
shred off the unwary traveller's limbs ... and calthrops that would
pierce your foot through, and pitfalls deep enough to bury you in
them for ever." To-day the forest has disappeared, "lost in the night
of time," as a French historian has it.
The detailed description in "Quentin Durward" is, however, as good
as any, and, if one has no reference works in French by him, he may
well read the dozen or more pages which Sir Walter devotes to the
further description of the castle.
Perhaps, after all, it is fitting that a Scot should have written so
enthusiastically of it, for the castle itself was guarded by the Scottish
archers, "to the number of three hundred gentlemen of the best
blood of Scotland."
An anonymous poet has written of the ancient glory of this retreat of
Louis's as follows:

"Un imposant château se présente à la vue,

Par des portes de fer l'entrée est défendue;
Les murs en sont épais et les fossés profonds;
On y voit des créneaux, des tours, des bastions,
Et des soldats armés veillent sur ses murailles."
Frame this with such details as the surrounding country supplies, the
Cher on one side, the Loire on the other, and the fertile hills of St.
Cyr, of Ballon, and of Joué, and one has a picture worthy of the
greatest painter of any time.
Louis XI. died at Plessis, after having lived there many years. Louis
XII. made of it a rendezvous de chasse, but François II. confided its
care to a governor and would never live in it. Louis XIV. gave the
governorship as a hereditary perquisite to the widow of the Seigneur
de Sausac.
In 1778 it was used as a sort of retreat for the indigent, though
happily enough Touraine was never overburdened with this class of
humanity. Under Louis XV. a Mademoiselle Deneux, a momentary
rival of La Pompadour and Du Barry, found a retreat here. Later it
became a maison de correction, and finally a dépôt militaire. At the
time of the Revolution it was declared to be national property, and
on the nineteenth Nivoise, Year IV., Citizen Cormeri, justice of the
peace at Tours, fixed its value at one hundred and thirty-one
thousand francs.
To-day it is as bare and uncouth as a mere barracks or as a disused
flour-mill, and its ruins are visited partly because of their former
historical glories, as recalled by students of French history, and
partly because of the glamour which was shed over it, for English
readers, by Scott.
Sixty years ago a French writer deplored the fact that, on leaving
these scanty remains of a so long gone past, he observed a notice
nailed to a pillar of the porte-cochère reading:

LA FERME DU PLESSIS

O LOUER OU A VENDRE

To-day some sort of a division and rearrangement of the property

has been made, but the result is no less mournful and sad, and thus
a glorious page of the annals of France has become blurred.
It is interesting to recall what manner of persons composed the
household of Louis XI. when he resided at Plessis-les-Tours.
Commines, his historian, has said that habitually it consisted of a
chancellor, a juge de l'hôtel, a private secretary, and a treasurer,
each having under him various employees. In addition there was a
master of the pantry, a cupbearer, a chef de bouche and a chef de
cuisine, a fruitier, a master of the horse, a quartermaster or master-
at-arms, and, in immediate control of these domestic servants, a
seneschal or grand maître. In many respects the household was not
luxuriously conducted, for the parsimonious Louis lived fully up to
the false maxim: "Qui peu donne, beaucoup recueille."
Louis himself was fond of doing what the modern housewife would
call "messing about in the kitchen." He did not dabble at cookery as
a pastime, or that sort of thing; but rather he kept an eagle eye on
the whole conduct of the affairs of the household.
One day, coming to the kitchen en négligé, he saw a small boy
turning a spit before the fire.
"And what might you be called?" said he, patting the lad on the
shoulder.
"Etienne," replied the marmiton.
"Thy pays, my lad?"
"Le Berry."
"Thy age?"
"Fifteen, come St. Martin's."
"Thy wish?"
"To be as great as the king" (he had not recognized his royal
master).
"And what wishes the king?"
"His expenses to become less."
The reply brought good fortune for the lad, for Louis made him his
valet de chambre, and took him afterward into his most intimate
confidence.
Louis was fond of la chasse, and Scott does not overlook this fact in
"Quentin Durward." When affairs of state did not press, it was the
king's greatest pleasure. For the royal hunt no pains or expense
were spared. The carriages were without an equal elsewhere in the
courts of Europe, and the hunting establishment was equipped with
chiens courants from Spain, levriers from Bretagne, bassets from
Valence, mules from Sicily, and horses from Naples.
The attractions of the environs of Tours are many and interesting:
St. Symphorien, Varennes, the Grottoes of Ste. Radegonde, and the
site of that most famous abbey of Marmoutier, also a foundation of
St. Martin. Here, under the name Martinus Monasterium, grew up an
immense and superb establishment. From an old seventeenth-
century print one quotes the following couplet:

"De quel côté que le vent vente

Marmoutier a cens et rente."

From this one infers that the abbey's

original functions are performed no
more.
In the middle ages (thirteenth
century) it was one of the most
powerful institutions of its class, and
its church one of the most beautiful in
Touraine. The tower and donjon are
the only substantial remains of this
early edifice.
A curious chapel, called the "Chapelle des Sept Dormants," is here
cut in the form of a cross into the rock of the hillside, where are
buried the remains of the Seven Sleepers, the disciples of St. Martin,
who, as the holy man had predicted, all died on the same day.
Beyond Marmoutier, a stairway of 122 steps, cut also in the rock,
leads to the plateau on which stands the gaunt and ugly Lanterne de
Rochecorbon, a fourteenth-century construction with a crenelated
summit, an unlovely companion of that even more enigmatic
erection known as "La Pile," a few miles down the Loire at Cinq-
Mars.
 CHAPTER XI.
LUYNES AND LANGEAIS

Below Tours, and before reaching Saumur, are a succession of

panoramic surprises which are only to be likened to those of our
imagination, but they are very real nevertheless.
As one leaves Tours by the road which skirts the right bank of the
Loire, he is once more impressed by the fact that the cailloux de
Loire are the river's chief product, though fried fish, of a similar
variety to those found in the Seine, are found on the menus of all
roadside taverns and restaurants.
Still, the effect of the uncovered bed of the Loire, with its variegated
pebbles and mirror-like pools, is infinitely more picturesque than if it
were mud flats, and its tree-bordered banks are for ever opening
great alleyed vistas such as are only known in France.
The hills on either bank are not of the stupendous and magnificently
scenic order of those of the Seine above and below Rouen; but, such
as they are, they are of much the same composition, a soft talcy
formation which here serves admirably the purposes of cliff-
dwellings for the vineyard and wine-press workers, who form
practically the sole population of the Loire villages from Vouvray, just
above Tours, to Saumur far below.
On the hillsides are the vineyards themselves, growing out of the
thin layer of soil in shades of red and brown and golden, which no
artist has ever been able to copy, for no one has painted the rich
colouring of a vineyard in a manner at all approaching the original.
Not far below Tours, on the right bank, rise the towers and turrets of
the Château de Luynes, hanging perilously high above the lowland
which borders upon the river. An unpleasant tooting tram gives
communication a dozen times a day with Tours, but few, apparently,
patronize it except peasants with market-baskets, and vineyard
workers going into town for a jollification. It is perhaps just as well,
for the fine little town of Luynes, which takes its name from the
château which has been the residence of a Comte de Luynes since
the days of Louis XIII., would be quite spoiled if it were on the
beaten track.
The brusque façade of the Château de
Luynes makes a charming interior,
judging from the descriptions and
drawings which are to be met with in an
elaborately prepared volume devoted to
its history.
The stranger is allowed to enter within
the gates of the courtyard, beneath the
grim coiffed towers; but he may visit only
certain apartments. He will, however, see
enough to indicate that the edifice was
something more than a mere maison de
campagne. All the attributes of an
A Vineyard of Vouvray important fortress are here, great, round,
thickly built towers, with but few exterior
windows, and those high up from the ground. There is nothing of
luxurious elegance about it, and its aspect is forbidding, though
imposing.
The château belies its looks somewhat, for it was built only in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when, in most of its neighbours,
the more or less florid Renaissance was in vogue. A Renaissance
structure in stone and brick forms a part of that which faces on the
interior court, and is flanked by a fine octagonal "tour d'escalier."
From the terrace of the courtyard one gets an impressive view of the
Loire, which glides by two or more kilometres away, and of the
towers and roof-tops of Tours, and the vine-carpeted hills which
stretch away along the river's bank in either direction.
The château of Luynes is still in the possession of a Duc de Luynes,
through whose courtesy one may visit such of the apartments as his
servants are allowed to show. It is not so great an exhibition, nor so
good a one, as is to be had at Langeais; but it is satisfactory as far
as it goes, and, when it is supplemented by the walks and views
which are to be had on the plateau, upon which the grim-towered
château sits, the memory of it all becomes most pleasurable.
The former Ducs de Luynes were continually appearing in the
historic events of the later Renaissance period, but it was only with
Louis XIII., he who would have put France under the protection of
the Virgin, that the chatelain of Luynes came to a position of real
power. Louis made Albert, the Gascon, both Duc de Luynes and
Connétable de France, and thereby gave birth to a tyrant whom he
hated and feared, as he did his mother, his wife, and his minister,
Richelieu.
The site
occupied by
the château
of Luynes is
truly
marvellous,
though, as a
matter of
fact, there is
no great
magnificence
about the
proportions
of the Mediæval Stairway and the Château de Luynes
château
itself. It is piled gracefully on the top of a table-land which rises
abruptly from the Loire and has a charmingly quaint old town
nestled confidingly below it, as if for protection.
One reaches the château by any one of a half-dozen methods, by
the highroad which bends around in hairpin curves until it reaches
the plateau above, by various paths across or around the vineyards
of the hillside, or by a quaintly cut mediæval stairway, levelled and
terraced in the gravelly soil until it ends just beneath the frowning
walls of the château itself. From this point one gets quite the most
imposing aspect of the château to be had, its towers and turrets
piercing the sky high above the head, and carrying the mind back to
the days when civilization meant something more—or less—than it
does to-day, with the toot of a steam-tram down below on the river's
bank and the midday whistles of the factories of Tours rending one's
ears the moment he forgets the past and recalls the present.
To-day the Château de Luynes is modern, at least to the extent that
it is lived in, and has all the refinements of a modern civilization; but
one does not realize all this from an exterior contemplation, and only
as one strolls through the apartments publicly shown, and gets
glimpses of electrical conveniences and modern arrangements, does
he wonder how far different it may have been before all this came to
pass.
Built in early Renaissance times, the château has all the peculiarities
of the feudal period, when window-openings were few and far
between, and high up above the level of the pavement. In feudal
and warlike times this often proved an admirable feature; but one
would have thought that, with the beginning of the Renaissance, a
more ample provision would have been made for the admission of
sunshine.
The chef-d'œuvre of this really great architectural monument is
undoubtedly the façade of the beautiful fifteenth-century courtyard.
There is nothing even remotely feudal here, but a purely decorative
effect which is as charming in its way as is the exterior façade of
Azay-le-Rideau. "A poem," it has been called, "in weather-worn
timber and stone," and the simile could hardly be improved upon.
The town, too, or such of it as immediately adjoins the château, is
likewise charming and quaint, and sleepily indolent as far as any
great activity is concerned.
Luynes was the seat of a seigneurie until 1619, when it became a
possession of the Comte de Maillé. Finally it came to Charles
d'Albert, known as "D'Albert de Luynes," a former page to Henri IV.,
who afterward became the favourite and the Guardian of the Seals
of Louis XIV.; and thus the earlier foundation of Maillé became
known as Luynes.
Except for its old houses of wood and stone, its old wooden market-
house, and its tortuous streets of stairs, there are few features here,
except the château, which take rank as architectural monuments of
worth. The church is a modern structure, built after the Romanesque
manner and wholly without warmth and feeling.
From the height on which stands the château of Luynes one sees, as
his eye follows the course of the Loire to the southwestward, the
gaunt, unbeautiful "Pile" of Cinq-Mars. The origin of this singular
square tower, looking for all the world like a factory chimney or
some great ventilating-shaft, is lost far back in Carlovingian, or
perhaps Roman, times. It is a mystery to archæologists and
antiquarians, some claiming it to be a military monument, others a
beacon by land, and yet others believing it to be of some religious
significance.
At all events, all the explanations ignore the four pyramidions of its
topmost course, and these, be it remarked, are quite the most
curious feature of the whole fabric.
To many the name of the little town of Cinq-Mars will suggest that of
the Marquis de Cinq-Mars, a court favourite of Louis XIII. It was the
ambitious but unhappy career at court of this young gallant which
ultimately resulted in his death on the scaffold, and in the razing, by
Richelieu, of his ancestral residence, the castle of Cinq-Mars, "to the
heights of infamy." The expression is a curious one, but history so
records it. All that is left to-day to remind one of the stronghold of
the D'Effiats of Cinq-Mars are its two crumbling gate-towers with an
arch between and a few fragmentary foundation walls which follow
the summit of the cliff behind "La Pile."
The little town of not more than a couple of thousand inhabitants
nestles in a bend of the Loire, where there is so great a breadth that
it looks like a long-drawn-out lake. The low hills, so characteristic of
these parts, stretch themselves on either bank, unbroken except
where some little streamlet forces its way by a gentle ravine through
the scrubby undergrowth. Oaks and firs and huge limestone cliffs jut
out from the top of the hillside on the right bank and shelter the
town which lies below.
Cinq-Mars is a miniature metropolis, though
not a very progressive one at first sight;
indeed, beyond its long main street and its
houses, which cluster about its grim,
though beautiful, tenth and twelfth century
church, there are few signs of even
provincial importance.
In reality Cinq-Mars is the centre of a large
and important wine industry, where you
may hear discussed, at the table d'hôte of
its not very readily found little inn, the poor
prices which the usually abundant crop
always brings. The native even bewails the
Ruins of Cinq-Mars fact that he is not blessed with a poor
season or two and then he would be able to
sell his fine vintages for something more than three sous a litre. By
the time it reaches Paris this vin de Touraine of commerce has
aggrandized itself so that it commands two francs fifty centimes on
the Boulevards, and a franc fifty in the University quarter.
The fall of Henri Cinq-Mars was most pathetic, though no doubt
moralists will claim that because of his covetous ambitions he
deserved nothing better.
He went up to Paris from Touraine, a boy of twenty, and was
presented to the king, who was immediately impressed by his
distinguished manners. From infancy Cinq-Mars had been a lover of
life in the open. He had hunted the forests of Touraine, and had
angled the waters of the Loire, and thus he came to give a new zest
to the already sad life of Louis XIII. Honour after honour was piled
upon him until he was made Grand Seneschal of France and Master
of the King's Horse, at which time he dropped his natal patronymic
and became known as "Monsieur le Grand."
Cinq-Mars fell madly in love with Marion Delorme and wished to
make her "Madame la Grande," but the dowager Marquise de Cinq-
Mars would not hear of it: Mlle. Marion Delorme, the Aspasia of her
day, would be no honour to the ancestral tree of the Effiats of Cinq-
Mars.
Headstrong and wilful, one early morning, Monsieur le Grand and his
beloved, then only thirty, took coach from her hotel in the Rue des
Tournelles at Paris for the old family castle in Touraine, sitting high
on the hills above the feudal village which bore the name of Cinq-
Mars. In the chapel they were secretly married, and for eight days
the proverbial marriage-bell rang true. Their Nemesis appeared on
the ninth day in the person of the dowager, and Cinq-Mars told his
mother that the whole affair was simply a passe temps, and that
Mlle. Delorme was still Mlle. Delorme. His mother would not be
deceived, however, and she flew for succour to Richelieu, who
himself was more than slightly acquainted with the charms of the
fair Marion.
This was Cinq-Mars's downfall. He advised the king "by fair means or
foul, let Richelieu die," and the king listened. A conspiracy was
formed, by Cinq-Mars and others, to do away with the cardinal, and
even the king, at whose death Gaston of Orleans was to be
proclaimed regent for his nephew, the infant Louis XIV.
The court went to Narbonne, on the Mediterranean, that it might be
near aid from Spain; all of which was a subterfuge of Cinq-Mars. The
rest moves quickly: Richelieu discovered the plot; Cinq-Mars
attempted to flee disguised as a Spaniard, was captured and brought
as a prisoner to the castle at Montpellier.
Richelieu had proved the more powerful of the two; but he was
dying, and this is the reason, perhaps, why he hurried matters. Cinq-
Mars, "the amiable criminal," went to the torture-chamber, and
afterward to the scaffold.
"Then," say the old chronicles, "Richelieu ordered that the feudal
castle of Cinq-Mars, in the valley of the Loire, should be blown up,
and the towers razed to the height of infamy."
From Cinq-Mars to Langeais, whose château is really one of the
most appealing sights of the Loire, the characteristics of the country
are topographically and economically the same; green hills slope,
vine-covered, to the river, with here and there a tiny rivulet flowing
into the greater stream.
As at Cinq-Mars, the chief commodity of Langeais is wine, rich, red
wine and pale amber, too, but all of it wine of a quality and at a
price which would make the city-dweller envious indeed.
There are two distinct châteaux at Langeais; at least, there is the
château, and just beyond the ornamental stone-carpet of its
courtyard are the ruins of one of the earliest donjons, or keeps, in all
France. It dates from the year 990, and was built by the celebrated
Comte d'Anjou, Foulques Nerra, "un criminel dévoyé des hommes et
de Dieu," whose hobby, evidently, was building châteaux, as his
"follies" in stone are said to have encumbered the land in those old
days.
Taken and retaken, dismantled and in part razed in the fifteenth
century, it gave place to the present château by the orders of Louis
XI.
The Château de Langeais of to-day is a
robust example of its kind; its walls,
flanked by great hooded towers, have a
surrounding "guette," or gallery, which
served as a means of communication from
one part of the establishment to another
and, in warlike times, allowed boiling oil or
melted lead, or whatever they may have
used for the purpose, to be poured down
upon the heads of any besiegers who had
the audacity to attack it.
There is no glacis or moat, but the
machicolations, sixty feet or more up from
the ground, must have afforded a well- Château de Langeais
nigh perfect means of repelling a near
attack.
Altogether Langeais is a redoubtable little château of the period, and
its aspect to-day has changed but very little. "It is the swan-song of
expiring feudalism," said the Abbé Bossebœuf.
One gets a thrill of heroic emotion when he views its hardy walls for
the first time: "a mountain of stone, a heroic poem of Gothic art," it
has with reason been called.
Jean Bourré, the minister of Louis XI., built the present château
about 1460. The chief events of its history were the drawing up
within its walls of the "common law" of Touraine, by the order of
Charles VII., and the marriage of Charles VIII. with Anne de
Bretagne, on the 16th of December, 1491.
The land belonged, in 1276, to Pierre de Brosse, the minister of
Philippe-le-Hardi; later, to François d'Orleans, son of the celebrated
Bâtard; to the Princesse de Conti, daughter of the Duc de Guise; to
the families Du Bellay and D'Effiats, Barons of Cinq-Mars; and,
finally, to the Duc de Luynes, in whose hands it remained up to the
Revolution.
Honoré de Balzac, who may well be called one of the historians of
Touraine, gave to one of his heroines the name of Langeais. To-day,
however, the family of Langeais does not exist, and, indeed,
according to the chronicles, never had any connection with either
the donjon of Foulques Nerra or the château of the fifteenth century.
The present owner is M. Jacques Siegfreid, who has admirably
restored and furnished it after the Gothic style of the middle ages.
The château of Langeais, like that of Chenonceaux, is occupied, as
one learns from a visit to its interior. A lackey of a superior order
receives you; you pay a franc for an admission ticket, and the lackey
conducts you through nearly, if not quite all, of the apartments.
Where the family goes during this process it is hard to say, but
doubtless they are willing to inconvenience themselves for the
benefit of "touring" humanity.
The interior, no less than the exterior, impresses one as being
something which has lived in the past, and yet exists to-day in all its
original glory, for the present proprietor, with the aid of an admirable
adviser, M. Lucien Roy, a Parisian architect, has produced a
resemblance of its former furnishings which, so far as it goes, is
beyond criticism.
There is nothing of bareness about it, nor is there an over-luxuriant
interpolation of irrelevant things, such as a curator crowds into a
museum. In short, nothing more has been done than to attempt to
reconstitute a habitation of the fifteenth century. For seventeen
years the work has gone on, and there have been collected many
authentic furnishings contemporary with the fabric itself, great oaken
beds, tables, chairs, benches, tapestries, and other articles. In
addition, the decorations have been carried out after the same
manner, copied in many cases from contemporary pictures and
prints.
To-day, the general aspect is that of a peaceful household, with all
recollections of feudal times banished for ever. All is tranquil,
respectable, and luxurious, and it would take a chronic faultfinder
not to be content with the manner with which these admirable
restorations and refurnishings have been carried out.
One notes particularly the infinite variety and appropriateness of the
tiling which goes to make up the floors of these great salons—
modern though it is. The great chimneypieces, however, are ancient,
and have not been retouched. Those in the Salle des Gardes and the
Salle where was celebrated the marriage of Charles VIII. and Anne
de Bretagne, with their ornamentation in the best of Gothic, are
especially noteworthy.
This latter apartment is the chief attraction of the château and the
room of which the present dwellers in this charming monument of
history are naturally the most proud. To-day it forms the great
dining-hall of the establishment. Mementos of this marriage, so
momentous for France, are exceedingly numerous along the lower
Loire, but this handsome room quite leads them all. This marriage,
and the goods and lands it brought to the Crown, had but one
stipulation connected with it, and that was that the Duchesse Anne
should be privileged to marry the elderly king's successor, should she
survive her royal husband.
Louis XII. was not at all opposed to becoming the husband of la
Duchesse Anne after Charles VIII. had met his death on the tennis-
court, because this second marriage would for ever bind to France
that great province ruled by the gentle Anne.
In the Salle des Gardes are six valuable tapestries representing such
heroic figures as Cæsar and Charlemagne, surrounded by their
companions in arms.