CHAPTER II.

THE ORLEANNAIS

Of the many travelled English and Americans who go to Paris, how few visit the Loire valley with its glorious array of mediaeval and Renaissance chateaux. No part of France, except Paris, is so accessible, and none is so comfortably travelled, whether by road or by rail.

At Orleans one is at the very gateway of this splendid, bountiful region, the lower valley of the Loire. Here the river first takes on a complexion which previously it had lacked, for it is only when the Loire becomes the boundary-line between the north and the south that one comes to realize its full importance.

The Orleannais, like many another province of mid-France, is a region where plenty awaits rich and poor alike. Not wholly given over to agriculture, nor yet wholly to manufacturing, it is without that restless activity of the frankly industrial centres of the north. In spite of this, though, the Orleannais is not idle.

Orleans is the obvious _pointe de depart_ for all the wonderland of the Renaissance which is to follow, but itself and its immediate surroundings have not the importance for the visitor, in spite of the vivid historical chapters which have been written here in the past, that many another less famous city possesses. By this is meant that the existing monuments of history are by no means as numerous or splendid here as one might suppose. Not that they are entirely lacking, but rather that they are of a different species altogether from that array of magnificently planned chateaux which line the banks of the Loire below.

To one coming from the north the entrance to the Orleannais will be emphatically marked. It is the first experience of an atmosphere which, if not characteristically or climatically of the south, is at least reminiscent thereof, with a luminosity which the provinces of old France farther north entirely lack.

As Lavedan, the Academicien, says: "Here all focuses itself into one great picture, the combined romance of an epoch. Have you not been struck with a land where the clouds, the atmosphere, the odour of the soil, and the breezes from afar, all comport, one with another, in true and just proportions?" This is the Orleannais, a land where was witnessed the morning of the Valois, the full noon of Louis XIV., and the twilight of Louis XVI.

The Orleannais formed a distinct part of mediaeval France, as it did, ages before, of western Gaul. Of all the provinces through which the Loire flows, the Orleannais is as prolific as any of great names and greater events, and its historical monuments, if not so splendid as those in Touraine, are no less rare.

Orleans itself contains many remarkable Gothic and Renaissance constructions, and not far away is the ancient church of the old abbey of Notre Dame de Clery, one of the most historic and celebrated shrines in the time of the superstitious Louis XI.; while innumerable mediaeval villes and ruined fortresses plentifully besprinkle the province.

One characteristic possessed by the Orleannais differentiates it from the other outlying provinces of the old monarchy. The people and the manners and customs of this great and important duchy were allied, in nearly all things, with the interests and events of the capital itself, and so there was always a lack of individuality, which even to-day is noticeably apparent in the Orleans capital. The shops, hotels, cafes, and the people themselves might well be one of the _quartiers_ of Paris, so like are they in general aspect.

The notable Parisian character of the inhabitants of Orleans, and the resemblance of the people of the surrounding country to those of the Ile of France, is due principally to the fact that the Orleannais was never so isolated as many others of the ancient provinces. It was virtually a neighbour of the capital, and its relations with it were intimate and numerous. Moreover, it was favoured by a great number of lines of communication by road and by water, so that its manners and customs became, more or less unconsciously, interpolations.

The great event of the year in Orleans is the Fete de Jeanne d'Arc, which takes place in the month of May. Usually few English and American visitors are present, though why it is hard to reason out, for it takes place at quite the most delightful season in the year. Perhaps it is because Anglo-Saxons are ashamed of the part played by their ancestors in the shocking death of the maid of Domremy and Orleans. Innumerable are the relics and reminders of the "Maid" scattered throughout the town, and the local booksellers have likewise innumerable and authoritative accounts of the various episodes of her life, which saves the necessity of making further mention here.

There are several statues of Jeanne d'Arc in the city, and they have given rise to the following account written by Jules Lemaitre, the Academicien:

"I believe that the history of Jeanne d'Arc was the first that was ever told to me (before even the fairy-tales of Perrault). The 'Mort de Jeanne d'Arc,' of Casimir Delavigne, was the first fable that I learned, and the equestrian statue of the 'Maid,' in the Place Martroi, at Orleans, is perhaps the oldest vision that my memory guards.

"This statue of Jeanne d'Arc is absurd. She has a Grecian profile, and a charger which is not a war-horse but a race-horse. Nevertheless to me it was noble and imposing.

"In the courtyard of the Hotel de Ville is a _petite pucelle_, very gentle and pious, who holds against her heart her sword, after the manner of a crucifix. At the end of the bridge across the Loire is another Jeanne d'Arc, as the maid of war, surrounded by swirling draperies, as in a picture of Juvenet's. This to me tells the whole story of the reverence with which the martyred 'Maid' is regarded in the city of Orleans by the Loire."

One can appreciate all this, and to the full, for a Frenchman is a stern critic of art, even that of his own countrymen, and Jeanne d'Arc, along with some other celebrities, is one of those historical figures which have seldom had justice done them in sculptured or pictorial representations. The best, perhaps, is the precocious Lepage's fine painting, now in America. What would not the French give for the return of this work of art?

The Orleannais, with the Ile de France, formed the particular domain of the third race of French monarchs. From 1364 to 1498 the province was an appanage known as the Duche d'Orleans, but it was united with the Crown by Louis XII., and finally divided into the Departments of Loir et Cher, Eure et Loir, and Loiret.

Like the "pardons" and "benedictions" of Finistere and other parts of Bretagne, the peasants of the Loiret have a quaint custom which bespeaks a long handed-down superstition. On the first Sunday of Lent they hie themselves to the fields with lighted fagots and chanting the following lines:

"Sortez, sortez d'ici mulots! Ou je vais vous bruler les crocs! Quittez, quittez ces bles; Allez, vous trouverez Dans la cave du cure Plus a boire qu' a manger."

Just how far the cure endorses these sentiments, the author of this book does not know. The explanation of the rather extraordinary proceeding came from one of the participants, who, having played his part in the ceremony, dictated the above lines over sundry _petits verres_ paid for by the writer. The day is not wound up, however, with an orgy of eating and drinking, as is sometimes the case in far-western Brittany. The peasant of the Loiret simply eats rather heavily of "_mi_," which is nothing more or less than oatmeal porridge, after which he goes to bed.

The Loire rolls down through the Orleannais, from Chateauneuf-sur-Loire and Jargeau, and cuts the banks of _sable_, and the very shores themselves, into little capes and bays which are delightful in their eccentricity. Here cuts in the _Canal d'Orleans_, which makes possible the little traffic that goes on between the Seine and the Loire.

A few kilometres away from the right bank of the Loire, in the heart of the Gatanais, is Lorris, the home of Guillaume de Lorris, the first author of the "Roman de la Rose." For this reason alone it should become a literary shrine of the very first rank, though, in spite of its claim, no one ever heard of a literary pilgrim making his way there.

Lorris is simply a big, overgrown French market-town, which is delightful enough in its somnolence, but which lacks most of the attributes which tourists in general seem to demand.

At Lorris a most momentous treaty was signed, known as the "Paix de Lorris," wherein was assured to the posterity of St. Louis the heritage of the Comte de Toulouse, another of those periodical territorial aggrandizements which ultimately welded the French nation into the whole that it is to-day.

From the juncture of the _Canal d'Orleans_ with the Loire one sees shining in the brilliant sunlight the roof-tops of Orleans, the Aurelianum of the Romans, its hybrid cathedral overtopping all else. It was Victor Hugo who said of this cathedral: "This odious church, which from afar holds so much of promise, and which near by has none," and Hugo undoubtedly spoke the truth.

Orleans is an old city and a _cite neuve_. Where the river laps its quays, it is old but commonplace; back from the river is a strata which is really old, fine Gothic house-fronts and old leaning walls; while still farther from the river, as one approaches the railway station, it is strictly modern, with all the devices and appliances of the newest of the new.

The Orleans of history lies riverwards,--the Orleans where the heart of France pulsed itself again into life in the tragic days which were glorified by "the Maid."

"The countryside of the Orleannais has the monotony of a desert," said an English traveller some generations ago. He was wrong. To do him justice, however, or to do his observations justice, he meant, probably, that, save the river-bottom of the Loire, the great plain which begins with La Beauce and ends with the Sologne has a comparatively uninteresting topography. This is true; but it is not a desert. La Beauce is the best grain-growing region in all France, and the Sologne is now a reclaimed land whose sandy soil has proved admirably adapted to an unusually abundant growth of the vine. So much for this old-time point of view, which to-day has changed considerably.

The Orleannais is one of the most populous and progressive sections of all France, and its inhabitants, per square kilometre, are constantly increasing in numbers, which is more than can be said of every _departement_. There are multitudes of tiny villages, and one is scarcely ever out of sight and sound of a habitation.

In the great forest, just to the west of Orleans, are two small villages, each a celebrated battle-ground, and a place of a patriotic pilgrimage on the eighth and ninth of November of each year. They are Coulmiers and Bacon, and here some fugitives from Metz and Sedan, with some young troops exposed to fire for the first time, engaged with the Prussians (in 1870) who had occupied Orleans since mid-October. There is the usual conventional "soldiers' monument,"--with considerably more art about it than is usually seen in America,--before which Frenchmen seemingly never cease to worship.

This same _Foret d'Orleans_, one of those wild-woods which so plentifully besprinkle France, has a sad and doleful memory in the traditions of the druidical inhabitants of a former day. Their practices here did not differ greatly from those of their brethren elsewhere, but local history is full of references to atrocities so bloodthirsty that it is difficult to believe that they were ever perpetrated under the guise of religion.

Surrounding the forest are many villages and hamlets, war-stricken all in the dark days of seventy-one, when the Prussians were overrunning the land.

Of all the cities of the Loire, Orleans, Blois, Tours, Angers, and Nantes alone show any spirit of modern progressiveness or of likeness to the capital. The rest, to all appearances, are dead, or at least sleeping in their pasts. But they are charming and restful spots for all that, where in melancholy silence sit the old men, while the younger folk, including the very children, are all at work in the neighbouring vineyards or in the wheat-fields of La Beauce.

Meung-sur-Loire and Beaugency sleep on the river-bank, their proud monuments rising high in the background,--the massive tower of Caesar and a quartette of church spires. Just below Orleans is the juncture of the Loiret and the Loire at St. Mesmin, while only a few kilometres away is Clery, famed for its associations of Louis XI.

The Loiret is not a very ample river, and is classed by the Minister of Public Works as navigable for but four kilometres of its length. This, better than anything else, should define its relative importance among the great waterways of France. Navigation, as it is known elsewhere, is practically non-existent.

The course of the Loiret is perhaps twelve kilometres all told, but it has given its name to a great French _departement_, though it is doubtless the shortest of all the rivers of France thus honoured.

It first comes to light in the dainty park of the Chateau de la Source, where there are two distinct sources. The first forms a small circular basin, known as the "Bouillon," which leads into another semicircular basin called the "Bassin du Miroir," from the fact that it reflects the facade of the chateau in its placid surface. Of course, this is all very artificial and theatrical, but it is a pretty conceit nevertheless. The other source, known as the "Grande Source," joins the rivulet some hundreds of yards below the "Bassin du Miroir."

The Chateau de la Source is a seventeenth-century edifice, of no great architectural beauty in itself, but sufficiently sylvan in its surroundings to give it rank as one of the notable places of pilgrimage for tourists who, said a cynical French writer, "take the chateaux of the Loire _tour a tour_ as they do the morgue, the Moulin Rouge, and the sewers of Paris."

In the early days the chateau belonged to the Cardinal Briconnet, and it was here that Bolingbroke, after having been stripped of his titles in England, went into retirement in 1720. In 1722 he received Voltaire, who read him his "Henriade."

In 1815 the invading Prince Eckmuehl, with his staff, installed himself in the chateau, when, after Waterloo, the Prussian and French armies were separated only by a barrier placed midway on the bridge at Orleans. It was here also that the Prussian army was disbanded, on the agreement of the council held at Angerville, near Orleans.

There are three other chateaux on the borders of the Loiret, which are of more than ordinary interest, so far as great country houses and their surroundings go, though their histories are not very striking, with perhaps the exception of the Chateau de la Fontaine, which has a remarkable garden, laid out by Lenotre, the designer of the parks at Versailles.

Leaving Orleans by the right bank of the Loire, one first comes to La Chapelle-St. Mesmin. La Chapelle has a church dating from the eleventh century and a chateau which is to-day the _maison de campagne_ of the Bishop of Orleans. On the opposite bank was the Abbaye de Micy, founded by Clovis at the time of his conversion. A stone cross, only, marks the site to-day.

St. Ay follows next, and is usually set down in the guide-books as "celebrated for good wines." This is not to be denied for a moment, and it is curious to note that the city bears the same name as the famous town in the champagne district, celebrated also for good wine, though of a different kind. The name of the Orleannais Ay is gained from a hermitage founded here by a holy man, who died in the sixth century. His tomb was discovered in 1860, under the choir of the church, which makes it a place of pilgrimage of no little local importance.

At Meung-sur-Loire one should cross the river to Clery, five kilometres off, seldom if ever visited by casual travellers. But why? Simply because it is overlooked in that universal haste shown by most travellers--who are not students of art or architecture, or deep lovers of history--in making their way to more popular shrines. One will not regret the time taken to visit Clery, which shared with Our Lady of Embrun the devotions of Louis XI.

Clery's three thousand pastoral inhabitants of to-day would never give it distinction, and it is only the Maison de Louis XI. and the Basilique de Notre Dame which makes it worth while, but this is enough.

In "Quentin Durward" one reads of the time when the superstitious Louis was held in captivity by the Burgundian, Charles the Bold, and of how the French king made his devotions before the little image, worn in his hat, of the Virgin of Clery; "the grossness of his superstition, none the less than his fickleness, leading him to believe Our Lady of Clery to be quite a different person from the other object of his devotion, the Madonna of Embrun, a tiny mountain village in southwestern France.

"'Sweet Lady of Clery,' he exclaimed, clasping his hands and beating his breast as he spoke, 'Blessed Mother of Mercy! thou who art omnipotent with omnipotence, have compassion with me, a sinner! It is true I have sometimes neglected you for thy blessed sister of Embrun; but I am a king, my power is great, my wealth boundless; and were it otherwise, I would double my _gabelle_ on my subjects rather than not pay my debts to you both.'"

Louis endowed the church at Clery, and the edifice was built in the fine flamboyant style of the period, just previous to his death, which De Commines gives as "_le samedy penultieme jour d'Aoust, l'an mil quatre cens quatre-vingtz et trois, a huit heures du soir_."

Louis XI. was buried here, and the chief "sight" is of course his tomb, beside which is a flagstone which covers the heart of Charles VIII. The Chapelle St. Jacques, within the church, is ornamented by a series of charming sculptures, and the Chapelle des Dunois-Longueville holds the remains of the famous ally of Jeanne d'Arc and members of his family.

In the choir is the massive oaken statue of Our Lady of Clery (thirteenth century); the very one before which Louis made his vows. There is some old glass in the choir and a series of sculptured stalls, which would make famous a more visited and better known shrine. There is a fine sculptured stone portal to the sacristy, and within there are some magnificent old _armoires_, and also two chasubles, which saw service in some great church, perhaps here, in the times of Louis himself.

The "Maison de Louis XI.," near the church, is a house of brick, restored in 1651, and now--or until a very recent date--occupied by a community of nuns. In the Grande Rue is another "Maison de Louis XI.;" at least it has his cipher on the painted ceiling. It is now occupied by the Hotel de la Belle Image. Those who like to dine and sleep where have also dined and slept royal heads will appreciate putting up at this hostelry.

Meung-sur-Loire was the birthplace of Jehan Clopinel, better known as Jean de Meung, who continued Guillaume de Lorris's "Roman de la Rose," the most famous bit of verse produced by the _trouveres_ of the thirteenth century. The voice of the troubadour was soon after hushed for ever, but that thirteenth-century masterwork--though by two hands and the respective portions unequal in merit--lives for ever as the greatest of its kind. In memory of the author, Meung has its Rue Jehan de Meung, for want of a more effective or appealing monument.

Dumas opens the history of "Les Trois Mousquetaires" with the following brilliantly romantic lines anent Meung: "_Le premier lundi du mois d'Avril, 1625, le bourg de Meung, ou naquit l'auteur du 'Roman de la Rose.'_" (One of the authors, he should have said, but here is where Dumas nodded, as he frequently did.)

Continuing, one reads: "The town was in a veritable uproar. It was as if the Huguenots were up in arms and the drama of a second Rochelle was being enacted." Really the description is too brilliant and entrancing to be repeated here, and if any one has forgotten his Dumas to the extent that he has forgotten D'Artagnan's introduction to the hostelry of the "Franc Meunier," he is respectfully referred back to that perennially delightful romance.

Meung was once a Roman fortress, known as Maudunum, and in the eleventh century St. Liphard founded a monastery here.

In the fifteenth century Meung was the prison of Francois Villon. Poor vagabond as he was then, it has become the fashion to laud both the personality and the poesy of Maitre Francois Villon.

By the orders of Thibaut d'Aussigny, Bishop of Orleans, Villon was confined in a strong tower attached to the side of the _clocher_ of the parish church of St. Liphard, and which adjoined the _chateau de plaisance_ belonging to the bishop. Primarily this imprisonment was due to a robbery in which the poet had been concerned at Orleans. He spent the whole of the summer in this dungeon, which was overrun with rats, and into which he had to be lowered by ropes. As his food consisted of bread and water only, his sufferings at this time were probably greater than at any other period in his life. Here the burglar-poet remained until October, 1461, when Louis XI. visited Meung, and, to mark the occasion, ordered the release of all prisoners. For this delivery, Villon, according to the accounts of his life, appears to have been genuinely grateful to the king.

At Beaugency, seven kilometres from Meung, one comes upon an architectural and historical treat which is unexpected.

In the eleventh century Beaugency was a fief of the bishopric of Amiens, and its once strong chateau was occupied by the Barons de Landry, the last of whom died, without children, in the thirteenth century. Philippe-le-Bel bought the fief and united it with the Comte de Blois. It was made an independent _comte_ of itself in 1569, and in 1663 became definitely an appanage of Orleans. The Prince de Galles took Beaugency in 1359, the Gascons in 1361, Duguesclin in 1370 and again in 1417; in 1421 and in 1428 it was taken by the English, from whom it was delivered by Jeanne d'Arc in 1429. Internal wars and warfares continued for another hundred and fifty years, finally culminating in one of the grossest scenes which had been enacted within its walls,--the bloody revenge against the Protestants, encouraged doubtless by the affair of St. Bartholomew's night at Paris.

The ancient square donjon of the eleventh century, known as the Tour de Cesar, still looms high above the town. It must be one of the hugest keeps in all France. The old chateau of the Dunois is now a charitable institution, but reflects, in a way, the splendour of its fourteenth-century inception, and its Salle de Jeanne d'Arc, with its great chimneypiece, is worthy to rank with the best of its kind along the Loire. The spiral staircase, of which the Loire builders were so fond, is admirable here, and dates from 1530.

The Hotel de Ville of Beaugency is a charming edifice of the very best of Renaissance, which many more pretentious structures of the period are not. It dates from 1526, and was entirely restored--not, however, to its detriment, as frequently happens--in the last years of the nineteenth century. Its charm, nevertheless, lies mostly in its exterior, for little remains of value within except a remarkable series of old embroideries taken from the choir of the old abbey of Beaugency.

The Eglise de Notre Dame is a Romanesque structure with Gothic interpolations. It is not bad in its way, but decidedly is not remarkable as mediaeval churches go.

The old streets of Beaugency contain a dazzling array of old houses in wood and stone, and in the Rue des Templiers is a rare example of Romanesque civil architecture; at least the type is rare enough in the Orleannais, though more frequently seen in the south of France. The Tour St. Firmin dates from 1530, and is all that remains of a church which stood here up to revolutionary times. The square ruined towers known as the Porte Tavers are relics of the city's old walls and gates, and are all that are left to mark the ancient enclosure.

The Tour du Diable and the house of the ruling abbot remain to suggest the power and magnificence of the great abbey which was built here in the tenth century. In 1567 it was burned, and later restored, but beyond the two features just mentioned there is nothing to indicate its former uses, the remaining structures having passed into private hands and being devoted to secular uses.

The old bridge which crosses the Loire at this point is most curious, and dates from various epochs. It is 440 metres in length, and is composed of twenty-six arches, one of which dates from the fourteenth century, when bridge-building was really an art. Eight of the present-day arches are of wood, and on the second is a monolith surmounted by a figure of Christ in bronze, replacing a former chapel to St. Jacques. A chapel on a bridge is not a unique arrangement, but few exist to-day, one of the most famous being, perhaps, that on the ruined bridge of St. Benezet at Avignon.

Altogether, Beaugency, as it sleeps its life away after the strenuous days of the middle ages, is more lovable by far than a great metropolis.

The traveller is well repaid who makes a stop at Beaugency a part of a three days' gentle ramble among the usually neglected towns and villages of the Orleannais and the Blaisois, instead of rushing through to Blois by express-train, which is what one usually does.

Southward one's route lies through pleasant vineyards, on one side the Sologne, and on the other the Coteau de Guignes, which latter ranks as quite the best among the vine-growing districts of the Orleannais.

Near Tavers is a natural curiosity in the shape of the "Fontaine des Sables Mouvants," where the sands of a tiny spring boil and bubble like a miniature geyser.

Mer, another small town, follows, twelve kilometres farther on. Like Beaugency it is a somnolent bourg, and the life of the peasant folk round about, who go to market on one day at Beaugency and on another at Blois, and occasionally as far away as Orleans, is much the same as it was a century ago.

There is a Boulevard de la Gare and a Grande Rue at Mer, the latter leading to a fine Gothic church with a fifteenth-century tower, which is admirable in every way, and forms a beacon by land for many miles around. The primitive church at Mer dates from the eleventh century, the side walls, however, being all that remain of that period. There is a sculptured pulpit of the seventeenth century, and a great painting, which looks ancient and is certainly a masterful work of art, representing an "Adoration of the Magi."

When all is said and done, it is its irresistible and inexpressible charm which makes Mer well-beloved, rather than any great wealth of artistic atmosphere of any nature.

Away to the south, across the Loire to Muides, runs the route to Chambord, through the Sologne, where immediately the whole aspect of life changes from that on the borders of the rich grain-lands of the Orleannais and La Beauce.

All the way from Beaugency to Blois the Loire threads its way through a lovely country, whose rolling slopes, back from the river, are surmounted here and there by windmills, a not very frequent adjunct to the landscape of France, except in the north.

Near Mer is Menars, with its eighteenth-century chateau of La Pompadour; Suevres, the site of an ancient Roman city; the lowlands lying before Chambord; St. Die; Montlivault; St. Claude, and a score of little villages which are entrancing in their old-world aspect even in these days of progress. This completes the panorama to Blois which, with the Blaisois, forms the borderland between the Orleannais and Touraine.

Before reaching Blois, Menars, at any rate, commands attention. It fronts upon the Loire, but is practically upon the northern border of the Foret de Blois, hence properly belongs to the Blaisois. Menars was made a rendezvous for the chase by the wily and pleasure-loving La Pompadour, who quartered herself at the chateau, which afterward passed to her brother, De Marigny.

Before the Revolution, Menars was the seat of a marquisate, of which the land was bought by Louis XV. for his famous, or infamous, _maitresse_. The property has frequently changed hands since that day, but its gardens and terraces, descending toward the river-bank, mark it as one of those _coquette_ establishments, with which France was dotted in the eighteenth century.

These establishments possessed enough of luxurious appointments to be classed as fitting for the butterflies of the time, but in no way, so far as the architectural design or the artistic details were concerned, were any of them worthy to be classed with the great domestic chateaux of the early years of the Renaissance.