Chapter 8

[Azay-le-Rideau]

Without fastidiousness it was fair to declare on the other hand that the little inn at Azay-le-Rideau was very bad. It was terribly dirty and it was in charge of a fat _mégère_ whom the appearance of four trustful travellers--we were four, with an illustrious fourth, on that occasion--roused apparently to fury. I attached great importance to this incongruous hostess, for she uttered the only uncivil words I heard spoken (in connection with any business of my own) during a tour of some six weeks in France. Breakfast not at Azay-le-Rideau therefore, too trustful traveller; or if you do so, be either very meek or very bold. Breakfast not, save under stress of circumstance; but let no circumstance whatever prevent your going to see the great house of the place, which is a fair rival to Chenonceaux. The village lies close to the gates, though after you pass these gates you leave it well behind. A little avenue, as at Chenonceaux, leads to the castle,

making a pretty vista as you approach the sculptured doorway. Azay is a most perfect and beautiful thing; I should place it third in any list of the great houses of this part of France in which these houses should be ranked according to charm. For beauty of detail it comes after Blois and Chenonceaux, but it comes before Amboise and Chambord. On the other hand, of course it is inferior in majesty to either of these vast structures. Like Chenonceaux, it is a watery place, though it is more meagrely moated than the small château on the Cher. It consists of a large square _corps de logis_, with a round tower at each angle, rising out of a somewhat too slumberous pond. The water--the water of the Indre--surrounds it, but it is only on one side that it bathes its feet in the moat. On one of the others stretches a little terrace, treated as a garden, and in front prevails a wide court formed by a wing which, on the right, comes forward. This front, covered with sculptures, is of the richest, stateliest effect. The court is approached by a bridge over the pond, and the house would reflect itself in this wealth of water if the water were a trifle less opaque. But there is a certain stagnation--it affects more, senses than one--about the picturesque pools of Azay. On the hither side of the bridge is a garden overshadowed by fine old sycamores--a garden shut in by greenhouses and by a fine last-century gateway flanked with twin lodges. Beyond the château and the standing waters behind it is a so-called _parc_, which, however, it must be confessed, has little of park-like beauty. The old houses--a large number--remain in France; but the old timber does not remain, and the denuded aspect of the few acres that surround the châteaux of Touraine is pitiful to the traveller who has learned to take the measure of such things from the country of "stately homes." The garden-ground of the lordly Chaumont is that of an English suburban villa; and in that and in other places there is little suggestion, in the untended aspect of walk and lawns, of the gardener the British Islands know. The manor as we see it dates from the early part of the sixteenth century; and the industrious Abbé Chevalier, in his very entertaining though slightly rose-coloured book on Touraine,[b] speaks of it as "perhaps the purest expression of the _belle Renaissance françoise_." "Its height," he goes on "is divided between two storeys, terminating under the roof in a projecting entablature which imitates a row of machicolations. Carven chimneys and tall dormer windows, covered with imagery, rise from the roofs; turrets on brackets, of elegant shape, hang with the greatest lightness from the angles of the building. The soberness of the main lines, the harmony of the empty spaces and those that are filled out, the prominence of the crowning parts, the delicacy of all the details, constitute an enchanting whole." And then the Abbé speaks of the admirable staircase which adorns the north front and which, with its extension inside, constitutes the principal treasure of Azay. The staircase passes beneath one of the richest of porticos--a portico over which a monumental salamander indulges in the most decorative contortions. The sculptured vaults of stone which cover the windings of the staircase within, the fruits, flowers, ciphers, heraldic signs, are of the noblest effect. The interior of the château is rich, comfortable, extremely modern; but it makes no picture that compares with its external face, about which, with its charming proportions, its profuse yet not extravagant sculpture, there is something very tranquil and pure.

[b] "Promenades pittoresques en Touraine." Tours: 1869.

I took a particular fancy to the roof, high, steep, old, with its slope of bluish slate, and the way the weather-worn chimneys seemed to grow out of it--living things in a deep soil. The single defect of the house is the blankness and bareness of its walls, which have none of that delicate parasitic deposit that agrees so well--to the eye--with the surface of old dwellings. It is true that this bareness results in a kind of silvery whiteness of complexion which carries out the tone of the quiet pools and even that of the scanty and shadeless park.