CHAPTER VI.

TOURAINE: THE GARDEN SPOT OF FRANCE

"C'est une grande dame, une princesse altiere, Chacun de ses chateaux, marque du sceau royal, Lui fait une toilette en dentelle de pierre Et son splendide fleuve un miroir de cristal."

It is difficult to write appreciatively of Touraine without echoing the words of some one who has gone before, and it is likely that those who come after will find the task no easier.

Truly, as a seventeenth-century geographer has said: "Here is the most delicious and the most agreeable province of the kingdom. It has been named the garden of France because of the softness of its climate, the affability of its people, and the ease of its life."

The poets who have sung the praises of Touraine are many, Ronsard, Remy Belleau, Du Bellay, and for prose authors we have at the head, Rabelais, La Fontaine, Balzac, and Alfred de Vigny. Merely to enumerate them all would be impossible, but they furnish a fund of quotable material for the traveller when he is writing home, and are equally useful to the maker of guide-books.

One false note on Touraine, only, has ever rung out in the world of literature, and that was from Stendahl, who said: "_La Belle Touraine n'existe pas!_" The pages of Alfred de Vigny and Balzac answer this emphatically, and to the contrary, and every returning traveller apparently sides with them and not with Stendahl.

How can one not love its prairies, gently sloping to the caressing Loire, its rolling hills and dainty ravines? The broad blue Loire is always vague and tranquil here, at least one seems always to see it so, but the beauty of Touraine is, after all, a quiet beauty which must be seen to be appreciated, and lived with to be loved.

It is a land of most singular attractions, neither too hot nor too cold, too dry nor too damp, with a sufficiency of rain, and an abundance of sunshine. Its market-gardens are prolific in their product, its orchards overflowing with plenitude, and its vineyards generous in their harvest.

Touraine is truly the region where one may read history without books, with the very pages of nature punctuated and adorned with the marvels of the French Renaissance. Louis XI. gave the first impetus to the alliance of the great domestic edifice--which we have come to distinguish as the residential chateau--with the throne, and the idea was amplified by Charles VIII. and glorified by Francois Premier.

In the brilliant, if dissolute, times of the early sixteenth century Francois Premier and his court travelled down through this same Touraine to Loches and to Amboise, where Francois's late gaoler, Charles Quint, was to be received and entertained. It was after Francois had returned from his involuntary exile in Spain, and while he was still in residence at the Louvre, that the plans for the journey were made. To the Duchesse d'Etampes Francois said,--the duchess who was already more than a rival of both Diane and the Comtesse de Chateaubriant,--"I must tear myself away from you to-morrow. I shall await my brother Charles at Amboise on the Loire."

"Shall you not revenge yourself upon him, for his cruel treatment of you?" said the wily favourite of the time. "If he, like a fool, comes to Touraine, will you not make him revoke the treaty of Madrid or shut him up in one of Louis XI.'s oubliettes?"

"I will persuade him, if possible," said Francois, "but I shall never force him."

In due time Francois did receive his brother king at Amboise and it was amid great ceremony and splendour. His guest could not, or would not, mount steps, so that great inclined plane, up which a state coach and its horses might go, was built. Probably there was a good reason for the emperor's peculiarity, for that worthy or unworthy monarch finally died of gout in the monastery of San Juste.

The meeting here at Amboise was a grand and ceremonious affair and the Spanish monarch soon came to recognize a possible enemy in the royal favourite, Anne de Pisselieu. The emperor's eyes, however, melted with admiration, and he told her that only in France could one see such a perfection of elegance and beauty, with the result that--as is popularly adduced--the susceptible, ambitious, and unfaithful duchess betrayed Francois more than once in the affairs attendant upon the subsequent wars between France, England, and Spain.

From Touraine, in the sixteenth century, spread that influence which left its impress even on the capital of the kingdom itself, not only in respect to architectural art, but in manners and customs as well.

Whatever may be the real value of the Renaissance as an artistic expression, the discussion of it shall have no place here, beyond the qualifying statement that what we have come to know as the French Renaissance--which undeniably grew up from a transplanted Italian germ--proved highly tempting to the mediaeval builder for all manner of edifices, whereas it were better if it had been confined to civic and domestic establishments and left the church pure in its full-blown Gothic forms.

Curiously enough, here in Touraine, this is just what did happen. The Renaissance influence crept into church-building here and there--and it is but a short step from the "_gothique rayonnant_" to what are recognized as well-defined Renaissance features; but it is more particularly in respect to the great chateaux, and even smaller dwellings, that the superimposed Italian details were used. A notable illustration of this is seen in the Cathedral of St. Gatien at Tours. It is very beautiful and has some admirable Gothic features, but there are occasional constructive details, as well as those for decorative effect alone, which are decidedly not good Gothic; but, as they are, likewise, not Renaissance, they hence cannot be laid to its door, but rather to the architect's eccentricity.

In the smaller wayside churches, such as one sees at Cormery, at Cheverny, and at Cour-Cheverny, there is scarcely a sign of Renaissance, while their neighbouring chateaux are nothing else, both in construction and in decoration.

The Chateau de Langeais is, for the most part, excellent Gothic, and so is the church near by. Loches has distinct and pure Gothic details both in its church and its chateau, quite apart from the Hotel de Ville and that portion of the chateau now used as the Sous-Prefecture, which are manifestly Renaissance; hence here in Touraine steps were apparently taken to keep the style strictly non-ecclesiastical.

A glance of the eye at the topography of this fair province stamps it at once as something quite different from any other traversed by the Loire. Two of the great "routes nationales" cross it, the one via Orleans, leading to Nantes, and the other via Chartres, going to Bordeaux. It is crossed and recrossed by innumerable "routes secondaires," "departementales," "vicinales" and "particulieres," second to none of their respective classes in other countries, for assuredly the roads of France are the best in the world. Many of these great ways of communication replaced the ancient Roman roads, which were the pioneers of the magnificent roadways of the France of to-day.

Almost invariably Touraine is flat or rolling, its highest elevation above the sea being but a hundred and forty-six metres, scarce four hundred and fifty feet, a fact which accounts also for the gentle flow of the Loire through these parts.

All the fruits of the southland are found here, the olive alone excepted. Mortality, it is said, and proved by figures, is lower than in any other part of France, and for this reason many dwellers in the large cities, if they may not all have a mediaeval chateau, have at least a villa, far away from "the madding crowd," and yet within four hours' travel of the capital itself.

Touraine, properly speaking, has no natural frontiers, as it is not enclosed by rivers or mountains. It is, however, divided by the Loire into two distinct regions, the Meridionale and the Septentrionale; but the dress, the physiognomy, the language, and the predilections of the people are everywhere the same, though the two sections differ somewhat in temperament. In the south, the Tourangeau is timid and obliging, but more or less engrossed in his affairs; in the north, he is proud, egotistical, and a little arrogant, but, above all, he likes his ease and comfort, something after the manner of "mynheer" of Holland.

These are the characteristics which are enumerated by Stanislas Bellanger of Tours, in "La Touraine Ancienne et Moderne," and they are traceable to-day, in every particular, to one who knows well the by-paths of the region.

Formerly the peasant was, in his own words, "_sous la main de M. le comte_," but, with the coming of the eighteenth century, all this was changed, and the conditions which, in England, succeeded feudalism, are unknown in Touraine, as indeed throughout France.

The two great divisions which nature had made of Touraine were further cut up into five _petits pays_; les Varennes, le Veron, la Champeigne, la Brenne, and les Gatines; names which exist on some maps to-day, but which have lost, in a great measure, their former distinction.

There is a good deal to be said in favour of the physical and moral characteristics of the inhabitants of Touraine. Just as the descendants of the Phoceans, the original settlers of Marseilles, differ from the natives of other parts of France, so, too, do the Tourangeaux differ from the inhabitants of other provinces. The people of Touraine are a mixture of Romans, Visigoths, Saracens, Alains, Normans and Bretons, Anglais and Gaulois; but all have gradually been influenced by local conditions, so that the native of Touraine has become a distinct variety all by himself. The deliciousness of the "garden of France" has altered him so that he stands to-day as more distinctly French than the citizen of Paris itself.

Touraine, too, has the reputation of being that part of France where is spoken the purest French. This, perhaps, is as true of the Blaisois, for the local bookseller at Blois will tell one with the most dulcet and understandable enunciation that it is at Blois that one hears the best accent. At any rate, it is something found within a charmed circle, of perhaps a hundred miles in diameter, that does not find its exact counterpart elsewhere. As Seville stands for the Spanish tongue, Florence for the Italian, and Dresden for the German, so Tours stands for the French.

The history of the Loire in Touraine, as is the case at Le Puy, at Nevers, at Sancerre, or at Orleans, is abundant and vivid, and the monuments which line its banks are numerous and varied, from the fortress-chateau of Amboise to the Cathedral of St. Gatien at Tours with its magnificent bejewelled facade. The ruined towers of the castle of Cinq-Mars, with its still more ancient Roman "pile," and the feudal chateaux of the countryside are all eloquent, even to-day, in their appeal to all lovers of history and romance.

There are some verses, little known, in praise of the Loire, as it comes through Touraine, written by Houdon des Landes, who lived near Tours in the eighteenth century. The following selection expresses their quality well and is certainly worthy to rank with the best that Balzac wrote in praise of his beloved Touraine.

"La Loire enorgueillit ses antiques cites, Et courounne ses bords de coteaux enchantes; Dans ses vallons heureux, sur ses rives aimees, Les pres ont deploye leurs robes parfumees; Le saule humide et souple y lance ses rameaux. Ses coteaux sont peuples, et le rocher docile A l'homme qui le creuse offre un champetre asile. De notre vieille Gaule, o fleuve paternel! Fleuve des doux climats! la Valliere et Sorel Sur tes bords fortunes naquirent, et la gloire A l'une dut l'amour, a l'autre la victoire."

Again and again Balzac's words echo in one's ears from his "Scene de la Vie de Province." The following quotations are typical of the whole:

"The softness of the air, the beauty of the climate, all tend to a certain ease of existence and simplicity of manner which encourages an appreciation of the arts."

"Touraine is a land to foster the ambition of a Napoleon and the sentiment of a Byron."

Another writer, A. Beaufort, a publicist of the nineteenth century, wrote:

"The Tourangeaux resemble the good Adam in the garden of Eden. They drink, they eat, they sleep and dream, and care not what their neighbour may be doing."

Touraine was indeed, at one time, a veritable Eden, though guarded by fortresses, _hallebardes_, and arquebuses, but not the less an Eden for all that. In addition it was a land where, in the middle ages, the seigneurs made history, almost without a parallel in France or elsewhere.

Touraine, truly enough, was the centre of the old French monarchy in the perfection of its pomp and state; but it is also true that Touraine knew little of the serious affairs of kings, though some all-important results came from events happening within its borders.

Paris was the law-making centre in the sixteenth century, and Touraine knew only the domestic life and pleasures of royalty. Etiquette, form, and ceremony were all relaxed, or at least greatly modified, and the court spent in the country what it had levied in the capital.

Curiously enough, the monarchs were omnipotent and influential here, though immediately they quartered themselves in Paris their powers waned considerably; indeed, they seemed to lose their influence upon ministers and vassals alike.

Louis XIII., it is true, tried to believe that Paris was France,--like the Anglo-Saxon tourists who descend upon it in such great numbers to-day,--and built Versailles; but there was never much real glory about its cold and pompous walls.

The fortunes of the old chateaux of Touraine have been most varied. Chambord is vast and bare, elegant and pompous; Blois, just across the border, is a tourist sight of the first rank whose salamanders and porcupines have been well cared for by the paternal French government. Chaumont, Chenonceaux, Langeais, Azay-le-Rideau, and half a dozen others are still inhabited, and are gay with the life of twentieth-century luxury; Amboise is a possession of the Orleans family; Loches is, in part, given over to the uses of a sous-prefecture; and Chinon's chateaux are but half-demolished ruins. Besides these there are numerous smaller residential chateaux of the nobility scattered here and there in the Loire watershed.

There have been writers who have sought to commiserate with "the poor peasant of Touraine," as they have been pleased to think of him, and have deplored the fact that his sole possession was a small piece of ground which he and his household cultivated, and that he lived in a little whitewashed house, built with his own hands, or those of his ancestors. Though the peasant of Touraine, as well as of other parts of the countryside, works for an absurdly small sum, and for considerably less than his brother nearer Paris, he sells his produce at the nearest market-town for a fair price, and preserves a spirit of independence which is as valuable as are some of the things which are thrust upon him in some other lands under the guise of benevolent charity, really patronage of a most demeaning and un-moral sort. At night the Touraine peasant returns to his own hearthstone conscious that he is a man like all of his fellows, and is not a mere atom ground between the upper and nether millstones of the landlord and the squire. He cooks his "_bouillie_" over three small sticks and retires to rest with the fond hope that on the next market-day following the prices of eggs, chickens, cauliflowers, or tomatoes may be higher. He is the stuff that successful citizens are made of, and is not to be pitied in the least, even though it is only the hundredth man of his community who ever does rise to more wealth than a mere competency.

Touraine, rightly enough, has been called the garden of France, but it is more than that, much more; it is a warm, soft land where all products of the soil take on almost a subtropical luxuriance. Besides the great valley of the Loire, there are the valleys of the tributaries which run into it, in Touraine and the immediate neighbourhood, all of which are fertile as only a river-bottom can be. It is true that there are numerous formerly arid and sandy plateaux, quite unlike the abundant plains of La Beauce, though to-day, by care and skill, they have been made to rival the rest of the region in productiveness.

The Departement d'Indre et Loire is the richest agricultural region in all France so far as the variety and abundance of its product goes, rivalling in every way the opulence of the Burgundian hillsides. Above all, Touraine stands at the head of the vine-culture of all the Loire valley, the _territoire vinicole_ lapping over into Anjou, where are produced the celebrated _vins blancs_ of Saumur.

The vineyard workers of Touraine, in the neighbourhood of Loches, have clung closely to ancient customs, almost, one may say, to the destruction of the industry, though of late new methods have set in, and, since the blight now some years gone by, a new prosperity has come.

The day worker, who cares for the vines and superintends the picking of the grapes by the womenfolk and the children, works for two francs fifty centimes per day; but he invariably carries with him to the scene of his labours a couple of cutlets from a young and juicy _brebis_, or even a _poulet roti_, so one may judge from this that his pay is ample for his needs in this land of plenty.

In the morning he takes his bowl of soup and a cup of white wine, and of course huge hunks of bread, and finally coffee, and on each Sunday he has his _roti a la maison_. All this demonstrates the fact that the French peasant is more of a meat eater in these parts than he is commonly thought to be.

Touraine has no peculiar beauties to offer the visitor; there is nothing _outre_ about it to interest one; but, rather, it wins by sheer charm alone, or perhaps a combination of charms and excellencies makes it so truly a delectable land.

The Tourangeaux themselves will tell you, when speaking of Rabelais and Balzac, that it is the land of "_haute graisse, feconde et spirituelle_." It is all this, and, besides its spirituelle components, it will supply some very real and substantial comforts. It is the Eden of the gourmandiser of such delicacies as _truffes_, _rilettes_, and above all, _pruneaux_, which you get in one form or another at nearly every meal. Most of the good things of life await one here in abundance, with kitchen-gardens and vineyards at every one's back door. Truly Touraine is a land of good living.

Life runs its course in Touraine, "_facile et bonne_," without any extremes of joy or sorrow, without chimerical desires or infinite despair, and the agreeable sensations of life predominate,--the first essential to real happiness.

Some one has said, and certainly not without reason, that every Frenchman has a touch of Rabelais and of Voltaire in his make-up. This is probably true, for France has never been swept by a wave of puritanism such as has been manifest in most other countries, and _le gros rire_ is still the national philosophy.

In a former day a hearty laugh, or at least an amused cynicism, diverted the mind of the martyr from threatened torture and even violent death. Brinvilliers laughed at those who were to torture her to death, and De la Barre and Danton cracked jokes and improvised puns upon the very edge of their untimely graves.

Touraine has the reputation of being a wonderfully productive field for the book collector, though with books, like many other treasures of a past time, the day has passed when one may "pick up" for two sous a MS. worth as many thousands of francs; but still bargains are even now found, and if one wants great calf-covered tomes, filled with fine old engravings, bearing on the local history of the _pays_, he can generally find them at all prices here in old Touraine.

There was a more or less apocryphal story told us and the landlady of our inn concerning a find which a guest had come upon in a little roadside hamlet at which he chanced to stop. He was one of those omnipresent _commis voyageurs_ who thread the French provinces up and down, as no other country in the world is "travelled" or "drummed." He was the representative for a brandy shipper, one of those substantial houses of the cognac region whose product is mostly sold only in France; but this fact need not necessarily put the individual very far down in the social scale. Indeed, he was a most amiable and cultivated person.

Our fellow traveller had come to a village where all the available accommodations of the solitary inn were already engaged; therefore he was obliged to put up with a room in the town, which the landlord hunted out for him. Repairing to his room without any thought save that of sleep, the traveller woke the next morning to find the sun streaming through the opaqueness of a brilliantly coloured window. Not stained glass here, surely, thought the stranger, for his lodging was a most humble one. It proved to be not glass at all; merely four great vellum leaves, taken from some ancient tome and stuck into the window-framing where the glass ought to have been. Daylight was filtering dimly through the rich colouring, and it took but a moment to become convinced that the sheets were something rare and valuable. He learned that the pages were from an old Latin MS., and that the occupant of the little dwelling had used "_the paper_" in the place of the glass which had long since disappeared. The vellum and its illuminations had stood the weather well, though somewhat dimmed in comparison with the brilliancy of the remaining folios, which were found below-stairs. There were in all some eighty pages, which were purchased for a modest forty sous, and everybody satisfied.

The volume had originally been found by the father of the old dame who then had possession of it in an old chateau in revolutionary times. Whether her honoured parent was a pillager or a protector did not come out, but for all these years the possession of this fine work meant no more to this Tourangelle than a supply of "paper" for stopping up broken window-panes.

"She parted readily enough with the remaining leaves," said our Frenchman, "but nothing would induce her to remove those which filled the window." "No, we have no more glass, and these have answered quite well for a long time now," she said. And such is the simplicity of the French provincial, even to-day--_sometimes_.