But attention was not long in coming round to the charming structure that presently rose before us.The pale yellow front of the chateau,the small scale of which is at first a surprise,rises beyond a considerable court,at the entrance of which a massive and detached round tower,with a turret on its brow (a relic of the building that preceded the actual villa),appears to keep guard.This court is not enclosed or is enclosed,at least,only by the gardens,portions of which are at present in a state of violent reformation.Therefore,though Chenonceaux has no great height,its delicate facade stands up boldly enough.
This facade,one of the most finished things in Touraine,consists of two stories,surmounted by an attic which,as so often in the buildings of the French Renaissance,is the richest part of the house.The highpitched roof contains three windows of beautiful design,covered with embroidered caps and flowering into crocketed spires.The window above the door is deeply niched;it opens upon a balcony made in the form of a double pulpit,one of the most charming features of the front.Chenonceaux is not large,as I say,but into its delicate compass is packed a great deal of history,history which differs from that of Amboise and Blois in being of the private and sentimental kind.The echoes of the place,faint and far as they are today,are not political,but personal.
Chenonceaux dates,as a residence,from the year 1515,when the shrewd Thomas Bohier,a public functionary who had grown rich in handling the finances of Normandy,and had acquired the estate from a family which,after giving it many feudal lords,had fallen into poverty,erected the present structure on the foundations of an old mill.The design is attributed,with I know not what justice,to Pierre Nepveu,aliasTrinqueau,the audacious architect of Chambord.On the death of Bohier the house passed to his son,who,however,was forced,under cruel pressure,to surrender it to the crown,in compensation for a socalled deficit in the accounts of the late superintendent of the treasury.Francis I.held the place till his death;but Henry II.,on ascending the throne,presented it out of hand to that mature charmer,the admired of two generations,Diana of Poitiers.Diana enjoyed it till the death of her protector;but when this event occurred,the widow of the monarch,who had been obliged to submit in silence,for years,to the ascendency of a rival,took the most pardonable of all the revenges with which the name of Catherine de'Medici is associated,and turned her outofdoors.Diana was not in want of refuges,and Catherine went through the form of giving her Chaumont in exchange;but there was only one Chenonceaux.Catherine devoted herself to making the place more completely unique.
The feature that renders it sole of its kind is not appreciated till you wander round to either side of the house.If a certain springing lightness is the characteristic of Chenonceaux,if it bears in every line the aspect of a place of recreation,a place intended for delicate,chosen pleasures,nothing can confirm this expression better than the strange,unexpected movement with which,from behind,it carries itself across the river.The earlier building stands in the water;it had inherited the foundations of the mill destroyed by Thomas Bohier.The first step,therefore,had been taken upon solid piles of masonry;and the ingenious Catherine she was a raffinee simply proceeded to take the others.She continued the piles to the opposite bank of the Cher,and over them she threw a long,straight gallery of two stories.This part of the chateau,which looks simply like a house built upon a bridge and occupying its entire length,is of course the great curiosity of Chenonceaux.It forms on each floor a charming corridor,which,within,is illuminated from either side by the flickering riverlight.The architecture of these galleries,seen from without,is less elegant than that of the main building,but the aspect of the whole thing is delightful.I have spoken of Chenonceaux as a "villa,"using the word advisedly,for the place is neither a castle nor a palace.
It is a very exceptional villa,but it has the villaquality,the look of being intended for life in common.This look is not at all contradicted by the wing across the Cher,which only suggests intimate pleasures,as the French say,walks in pairs,on rainy days;games and dances on autumn nights;together with as much as may be of moonlighted dialogue (or silence)in the course,of evenings more genial still,in the wellmarked recesses of windows.
It is safe to say that such things took place there in the last century,during the kindly reign of Monsieur and Madame Dupin.This period presents itself as the happiest in the annals of Chenonceaux.I know not what festive train the great Diana may have led,and my imagination,I am afraid,is only feebly kindled by the records of the luxurious pastimes organized on the banks of the Cher by the terrible daughter of the Medici,whose appreciation of the good things of life was perfectly consistent with a failure to perceive why others should live to enjoy,them.The best society that ever assembled there was collected at Chenonceaux during the middle of the eighteenth century.
