Part 5

Beauvais has many interesting things, but the day had become very warm, and we did not linger. We found some of the most satisfactory pastries I have ever seen in France, fresh, and dripping with richness; also a few other delicacies, and by and by, under a cool apple-tree on the road to Compiègne, the Joy and I spread out our feast and ate it and listened to some little French birds singing, "_Vite! Vite! Vite!_" meaning that we must be "Quick! Quick! Quick!" so they could have the crumbs.

It was at Compiègne that Joan of Arc was captured by her enemies, just a year before that last fearful day at Rouen. She had relieved Orleans, she had fought Patay, she had crowned the king at Rheims; she would have had her army safely in Paris if she had not been withheld by a weak king, influenced by his shuffling, time-serving counselors. She had delivered Compiègne the year before, but now again it was in trouble, besieged by the Duke of Burgundy.

"I will go to my good friends of Compiègne," she said, when the news came; and taking such force as she could muster, in number about six hundred cavalry, she went to their relief.

From a green hill commanding the valley of the Oise the Joy and I looked down upon the bright river and pretty city which Joan had seen on that long ago afternoon of her last battle for France. Somewhere on that plain the battle had taken place, and Joan's little force for the first time had failed. There had been a panic; Joan, still fighting and trying to rally her men, had been surrounded, dragged from her horse, and made a prisoner. She had led her last charge.

We crossed a bridge and entered the city, and stopped in the big public square facing Laroux's beautiful statue of Joan which the later "friends of Compiègne" have raised to her memory. It is Joan in semi-armor, holding aloft her banner; and on the base in old French is inscribed, "_Je yray voir mes bons amys de Compiègne_"--"I will go to see my good friends of Compiègne."

Many things in Compiègne are beautiful, but not many of them are very old. Joan's statue looks toward the handsome and richly ornamented hôtel de ville, but Joan could not have seen this building, for it dates a hundred years after her death. There are the handsome churches, in one or both of which she doubtless worshiped, when she had first delivered the city, and possibly a few houses of that ancient time still survive.

Next morning we visited the palace. It has been much occupied by royalty, for Compiègne was always a favorite residence of the rulers of France. Napoleon came there with the Empress Marie Louise, and Louis Philippe and Napoleon III both found retirement there.

I think it could not have been a very inviting or restful home. There are long halls and picture-galleries, all with shiny floors and stiffly placed properties, and the royal suites are just a series of square, fancily decorated and upholstered boxes strung together, with doors between. But then palaces were not meant to be cozy. Pretty soon we went back to the car and drove into a big forest for ten miles or more to an old feudal castle,--such a magnificent old castle, all towers and turrets and battlements,--the château of Pierrefonds, one of the finest in France. It stands upon a rocky height overlooking a lake, and it does not seem so old, though it had been there forty years when Joan of Arc came, and it looks as if it might remain there about as long as the hill it stands on. It was built by Louis of Orleans, brother of Charles VI, and the storm of battle has often raged about its base. Here and there it still shows the mark of bombardment, and two cannon-balls stick fast in the wall of one of its solid towers. Pierrefonds was in bad repair, had become well nigh a ruin, in fact, when Napoleon III at his own expense engaged Viollet-le-Duc to restore it, in order that France might have a perfect type of the feudal castle in its original form. It stands to-day as complete in its structure and decoration as it was when Louis of Orleans moved in, more than five hundred years ago, and it conveys exactly the solid, home surroundings of the mediæval lord. It is just a show place now, and its vast court and its chapel and halls of state are all splendid enough, though nothing inside can be quite as magnificent as its mighty assemblage of towers and turrets rising above the trees and reflecting in the blue waters of a placid lake.

It began raining before we got to Paris, so we did not stop at Crepy-en-Valois or Senlis, or Chantilly, or St. Denis. In fact, neither the Joy nor I hungered even for Paris, which we had once visited. The others had already seen their fill, so, with only a day's delay, we all took the road to Versailles.

It was at Rambouillet that we lodged, an ancient place with a château and a vast park; also, an excellent inn--the Croix Blanche--one of those that you enter by driving through to an inner court. Before dinner we took a walk into the park, along the lakeside and past the château, where Frances I died, in 1547.

We were off next morning, following the rich and lovely valley of the Eure, to Chartres. We had already seen the towers from a long distance, when we turned at last into the cathedral square, and remembered the saying that "The choir of Beauvais and the nave of Amiens, the portal of Rheims and the towers of Chartres would together make the finest church in the world." To confess the truth, I did not think the towers of Chartres as handsome as those of Rouen, but then I am not a purist in cathedral architecture. Certainly, the cathedral itself is glorious. I shall not attempt to describe it. Any number of men have written books trying to do that, and most of them have failed. I only know that the wonder of its architecture, the marvel of its relief carving, "lace in stone," and the sublime glory of its windows somehow possessed us, and we did not know when to go. I met a woman once who said she had spent a month at Chartres and put in most of it sitting in the cathedral, looking at those windows. When she told me of it I had been inclined to be scornful. I was not so any more. Those windows, made by some unknown artist, dead five hundred years, invite a lifetime of contemplation.

We left Chartres by one of the old city gates, and through a heavenly June afternoon followed the straight, level way to Châteaudun, an ancient town perched upon the high cliff above the valley of the Loir, which is a different river from the Loire--much smaller and more picturesque.

The château itself hangs on the very verge of the cliffs, with starling effect, and looks out over a picture valley as beautiful as any in France. This was the home of Dunois, who left it to fight under Joan of Arc. He was a great soldier, one of her most loved and trusted generals. We spent an hour or more wandering through Dunois's ancient seat, with an old guardian who clearly was in love with every stone of it and who time and again reminded us that it was more interesting than any of the great châteaux of the Loire, Blois especially, in that it had been scarcely restored at all. About the latest addition to Châteaudun was a beautiful open stairway of the sixteenth century, in perfect condition to-day. On the other side is another fine façade and stairway, which Dunois himself added. In a niche there stands a statue of the famous old soldier, probably made from life. If only some sculptor or painter might have preserved for us the features of Joan!

Through that golden land which lies between the Loir and the Loire we drifted through a long summer afternoon, and came at evening to a noble bridge that crossed a wide, tranquil river, beyond which rose the towers of ancient Tours, capital of Touraine.

The Touraine was a favorite place for kings, who built their magnificent country palaces in all directions. There are more than fifty châteaux within easy driving distance of Tours.

We did not, by any means, intend to visit all of the châteaux, for château visiting from a diversion may easily degenerate into labor. We had planned especially, however, to see Chinon, where Joan of Arc went to meet the king to ask for soldiers.

This is not on the Loire, but on a tributary a little south of it, the Vienne, with the castle crowning the long hill, or ridge, above the town. Some time during the afternoon we came to the outskirts of the ancient place, and looked up to the ruined battlements and towers where occurred that meeting which meant the liberation of France.

The château to-day is the ruin of what originally was three châteaux, built at different times, but closely strung together, so that in ruin they are scarcely divided.

The oldest, Coudray, was built in the tenth century, and still shows three towers standing, in one of which Joan of Arc lived during her stay at Chinon. The middle château was built a hundred years later, on the site of a Roman fort, and it was in one of its rooms, a fragment of which still remains, that Charles VII received the shepherd-girl from Domremy. The Château of St. George was built in the twelfth century, by Henry II of England, who died there in 1189. Though built two hundred years later than Coudray, nothing remains of it to-day but some foundations.

Chinon is a much more extensive ruin than we had expected. Even what remains must be nearly a quarter of a mile in length, and its vast crumbling walls and crenelated towers make it strikingly picturesque. But its ruin is complete, none the less. Once through the entrance tower, and you are under nothing but the sky, with your feet on the grass; there is no longer a shelter there, even for a fugitive king. You wander about viewing it scarcely more than as a ruin, at first, a place for painting, for seclusion, for dreaming in the sun. Then all at once you are facing a wall in which, half-way up, where once was the second story, there is a restored fireplace and a tablet which tells you that in this room Charles VII received Joan of Arc. It is not a room now; it is just a wall, a fragment, with vines matting its ruined edges.

You cross a stone foot-bridge to the tower where Joan lived, and that also is open to the sky and bare and desolate. While, beyond it, there was a little chapel where she prayed, but that is gone. There are other fragments and other towers, but they merely serve as a setting for those which the intimate presence of Joan made sacred.

The Maid did not go immediately to the castle on her arrival in Chinon. She put up at an inn down in the town and waited the king's pleasure. His paltering advisers kept him dallying, and postponing his consent to see her, but through the favor of his mother-in-law, Yolande, Queen of Sicily, Joan and her suite were presently housed in Coudray.

The king was still unready to see Joan. She was only a stone's throw away now, but the whisperings of his advisers kept her there. When there were no further excuses for delay they contrived a trick--a deception. They persuaded the king to put another on the throne, one like him and in his royal dress, so that Joan might pay homage to this make-believe king, thus proving that she had no divine power or protection which would assist her in identifying the real one.

In the space where now is only green grass and sky and a broken wall, Charles VII and his court gathered to receive the shepherd-girl who had come to restore his kingdom. It was evening, and the great hall was lighted, and at one end of it was the throne with its imitation king, and, I suppose, at the other this fireplace with its blazing logs. Down the center of the room were the courtiers, formed in two ranks, facing so that Joan might pass between them to the throne. The occasion was one of great ceremony--Joan and her suite were welcomed with fine honors. Banners waved, torches flared, trumpets blown at intervals marked the stages of her progress down the great hall; every show was made of paying her great honor--everything that would distract her and blind her to their trick.

Charles VII, dressed as a simple courtier, stood a little distance from the throne. Joan, advancing to within a few steps of the pretended king, raised her eyes. Then for a moment she stood silent, puzzled. They expected her to kneel and make obeisance; but a moment later she turned, and, hurrying to the rightful Charles, dropped on her knee and gave him heartfelt salutation. She had never seen him, and was without knowledge of his features. The protectors she had known in her visions had not failed her. It was, perhaps, the greatest moment in French history.

In the quest for outlying châteaux, one is likely to forget that Tours itself is very much worth while. Tours has been a city ever since France had a history, and it fought against Cæsar as far far back as 52 B.C. It took its name from the Gallic tribe of that section, the Turoni, dwellers in the cliffs, I dare say, along the Loire.

Tours was beloved by French royalty. It was the capital of a province as rich as it was beautiful. Among French provinces, Touraine was always the aristocrat. Its language has been kept pure. To this day, the purest French in the world is spoken at Tours. The mechanic who made some repairs for me at the garage leaned on the mud-guard, during a brief intermission of that hottest of days, and told me about the purity of the French language at Tours; and if there was anything wrong with his own locution, my ear was not fine enough to detect it. To me it seemed as limpid as something distilled. Imagine such a thing happening in--say Bridgeport. Tours is still proud, still the aristocrat, still royal.

The Germans held Tours during the early months of 1871, but there is now no trace of their occupation. It was a bad dream which Tours does not care even to remember.

Tours contains a fine cathedral, and the remains of what must have been a still finer one--two noble towers, so widely separated by streets and buildings that it is hard to imagine them ever having belonged to one structure. They are a part of the business of Tours now. Shops are under them, lodgings in them. One of these old relics is called the clock-tower, the other, the tower of Charlemagne, because Luitgard, his third queen, was buried beneath it.

MOTORING THROUGH THE GOLDEN AGE--PART II

BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE

It was a July morning when we got away from Tours--one of those sweltering mornings--and I had spent an hour or two at the garage putting on all our repaired tires and one new one. It was not a good morning for exercise; and by the time we were ready to start, I was a rag. Narcissa photographed me, because she said she had never seen me look so interesting before. She made me stand in the sun bareheaded and hold a tube in my hand, as if I had not enough to bear, already.

But I was repaid the moment we were off. Oh, but it was cool and delicious gliding along the smooth, shaded road! One can almost afford to get as hot and sweltering and cross and gasping as I was for the sake of sitting back and looking across the wheel down a leafy avenue facing the breeze of your own making, a delicious nectar that bathes you through and cools and rests and soothes--an anodyne of peace.

By and by, being really cool in mind and body, we drew up abreast of a meadow which lay a little below the road, a place with a brook and over-spreading shade, and with some men and women harvesting not far away. We thought they would not mind if we lunched there, and I think they must have been as kind-hearted as they were picturesque, for they did not offer to disturb us. It was a lovely spot, and did not seem to belong to the present-day world at all. How could it, with the homes of the old French kings all about, and with these haymakers, whose fashions have not minded the centuries, here in plain view to make us seem a part of an ancient tale?

Chenonceaux, the real heart of the royal district, is not on the Loire itself, but on a small tributary, the Cher. I do not remember that I noticed the river when we entered the grounds, but it is a very important part of the château, which, indeed, is really a bridge over it--a supremely beautiful bridge, to be sure, but a bridge none the less, entirely crossing the pretty river by means of a series of high foundation arches. Upon these arches rises the rare edifice which Thomas Bohier, a receiver-general of taxes, began back in 1515. Bohier did not extend Chenonceaux entirely across the river. The river to him, merely served as a moat. The son who followed him did not have time to make additions. Francis I came along, noticed that it was different from the other châteaux he had confiscated, and added it to his collection. Our present-day collectors cut a poor figure by the side of Francis I. Think of getting together assortments of coins and postage-stamps and ginger-jars when one could go out and pick up châteaux! It was the famous Catherine de Medici, daughter-in-law of Francis I, who finished the palace, extending it across the Cher, making it one of the most beautiful places in the world.

We stopped a little to look at the beautiful façade of Chenonceaux, then crossed the draw-bridge, or what is now the substitute for it, and were welcomed at the door by just the proper person--a fine, dignified woman, of gentle voice and perfect knowledge. She showed us through the beautiful home, for it is still a home, having been bought by Mr. Meunier, of chocolate fame and fortune. I cannot say how glad I am that Mr. Meunier purchased Chenonceaux. He did nothing to the place to spoil it, and it is not a museum. The lower rooms which we saw have many of the original furnishings. The ornaments, the tapestries, the pictures, are the same. There is hardly another place, I think, where one may come so nearly stepping back through the centuries.

We went out into the long wing that is built on the arches above the river, and looked down on the water flowing below. Our conductor told us that the supporting arches had been built on the foundations of an ancient mill. The beautiful gallery which the bridge supports must have known much gaiety; much dancing and promenading up and down; many gallant speeches and some heartache. The Joy wanted to see the dungeons, but perhaps there never were any real dungeons at Chenonceaux. Let us try to think so.

Orleans is on the Loire, and we drove to it in the early morning from Meung, where we had spent the night. I do not know what could be more lovely than that leisurely hour--the distance was fifteen miles--under cool, outspreading branches, with glimpses of the bright river and vistas of happy fields.

We did not even try to imagine, as we approached the outskirts, that the Orleans of Joan's time presented anything of its appearance to-day. Orleans is a modern, or modernized city, and, except the river, there could hardly be anything in the prospect that Joan saw. But it was the scene of her first military conquest, and added its name to the title by which she belongs to history. That is enough to make it one of the holy places of France.

It has been always a military city, a place of battles. Cæsar burned it, Attila attacked it, Clovis captured it--there was often war of one sort or another going on there. The English and Burgundians would have had it in 1429 but for the arrival of Joan's army.

Joan was misled by her generals, whose faith in her was not complete. Orleans lies on the north bank of the Loire; they brought her down on the south bank, fearing the prowess of the enemy's forces. Discovering the deception, the Maid promptly sent the main body of her troops back some thirty-five miles to a safe crossing, and, taking a thousand men, passed over the Loire and entered the city by a gate which was still held by the French. That the city was not completely surrounded made it possible to attack the enemy from within and without, while her presence among the Orleanese would inspire them with new hope and valor. Mark Twain, in his "Recollections," pictures the great moment of her entry.

It was eight in the evening when she and the troops rode in at the Burgundy gate.... She was riding a white horse, and she carried in her hand the sacred sword of Fierbois. You should have seen Orleans then. What a picture it was! Such black seas of people, such a starry firmament of torches, such roaring whirlwinds of welcome, such booming of bells and thundering of cannon! It was as if the world was come to an end. Everywhere in the glare of the torches one saw rank upon rank of upturned, white faces, the mouths wide open, shouting, and the unchecked tears running down; Joan forged her slow way through the solid masses, her mailed form projecting above the pavement of heads like a silver statue. The people about her struggled along, gazing up at her through their tears with the rapt look of men and women who believed they are seeing one who is divine; and always her feet were being kissed by grateful folk, and such as failed of that privilege touched her horse and then kissed their fingers.

This was the twenty-ninth of April. Nine days later, May 8, 1429, after some fierce fighting, during which Joan was severely wounded, the besiegers were scattered. Orleans was free. Mark Twain writes:

No other girl in all history has ever reached such a summit of glory as Joan of Arc reached that day.... Orleans will never forget the eighth of May, nor ever fail to celebrate it. It is Joan of Arc's day--and holy.

Two days, May seventh and eighth, are given each year to the celebration, and Orleans in other ways has honored the memory of her deliverer. A wide street bears her name, and there are noble statues, and a museum, and church offerings. The Boucher home, which sheltered Joan during her sojourn in Orleans, has been preserved--at least, a house is still shown as the Boucher house, though how much of the original structure remains no one of this day seems willing to decide.

We drove there first, for it is the only spot in Orleans that can claim even a possibility of having known Joan's actual presence. It is a house of the old half-timbered architecture, and if these are not the veritable walls that Joan saw, they must, at least, bear a close resemblance to those of the house of Jacques Boucher, treasurer of the Duke of Orleans, where Joan was made welcome. A few doors away is a fine old mansion, now a museum, and fairly overflowing with objects of every conceivable sort relating to Joan of Arc. Books, statuary, paintings, armor, banners, offerings, coins, medals, ornaments, engravings, letters--thousands upon thousands of articles gathered here in the Maid's memory. I think there is not one of them that her hand ever touched, or that she ever saw, but in their entirety they convey, as nothing else could, the reverence that Joan's memory inspired during the centuries that have gone since her presence made this ground sacred. Until the revolution, Orleans preserved Joan's banner, some of her clothing, and other genuine relics; but then the mob burned them, probably because Joan delivered France to royalty. We were shown an ancient copy of the banner, still borne, I believe, in the annual festivities. Baedeker speaks of arms and armor worn at the siege of Orleans, but the guardian of the place was not willing to guarantee their genuineness. I think Narcissa, who worships the memory of Joan, was almost sorry that he thought it necessary to be so honest. He did show us a photograph of Joan's signature. She wrote it "Jehanne," and her pen must have been guided by her secretary, for Joan could neither read nor write.