Chateau de MaintenonChateau de Maintenon
The existence of this princely residence is an agreeable reminder of the life of luxury of the olden time albeit certain modernities which we to-day think necessities are lacking.
Maintenon is certainly one of the most beautiful so-called royal chateaux of France, if not by its actual importance at least by many of the attributes of its architecture, the extent of the domain and the history connected therewith. It bridges the span between the private chateau and those which may properly be called royal.
In the moyen-age Maintenon was a veritable chateau-fort, forming a quadrilateral edifice flanked by round towers at three of its angles, and at the fourth by a great square mass of a donjon, all of which was united by a vast expanse of solidly built wall which possessed all the classic attributes of the best military architecture of its time. Entrance was only over a deep moat spanned by a drawbridge.
Jean Cottereau made his acquisition of thedomain towards 1490 and immediately planned a new scheme of being for the old fortress which, according to a more esthetic conception, would thus be brought into the class of a luxurious residential chateau. He destroyed thecourtineswhich attached the great donjon to the rest of the building, and opened up the courtyard so that it faced directly upon the park. He ornamented sumptuously the window framings, the dormer windows, and the turrets, and framed in the entrance portal with a series of sculptured motives which he also added to the entrance to the great inner stairway. In short it was an enlargement and embellishment that was undertaken, but so thoroughly was it done that the edifice quite lost its original character in the process. Like all the chateaux built at this epoch Maintenon was no longer a mere fortress, but a palatial retreat, luxurious in all its appointments, and shorn of all the manifest militant attributes which it had formerly possessed.
The shell was there, following closely the original outlines, but the added ornamentation had effectually disguised its primordial existence. Living rooms needed light and air, while a fortress or quarters for troops might well be ordained on other lines. The Renaissance livened up considerably the severe lines of the Gothic chateaux of France, and though invariably the marks of the transition are visible to the expert eye it is also true, as in the case of Maintenon, that there is frequently a homogeneousness which is sufficiently pleasing to effectually cover up any discrepancies which might otherwise be apparent. The warrior aspect is invariably lost in the transition, and thus a Renaissance residential chateau enters at once into a different class from that of the feudal fortress regardless of the fact that such may have been its original status.
The armorial device of Jean Cottereau—three unlovely lizards blazoned on a field of silver—is still to be seen sculptured on the two towers flanking the entrance portal which to-day lacks its old drawbridge before mentioned. Surrounding the edifice is a deep, unhealthful, mosquito-breeding moat which is all a mediæval moat should be, but which is actually no great attribute to the place considering its disadvantages. One wonders that it is allowed to exist in so stagnant a condition, as the running waters of the near-by Eure might readily be made use of to change all this. The site of the chateau at the confluence of the Eure and the Voise is altogether charming.
Madame de Maintenon did much to make the property more commodious and convenientand built the great right wing which binds the donjon to the maincorps de logis. Her own apartments were situated in the new part of the palace. She also built the gallery which leads from the Tour de Machicoulis to the pointed chapel, which was a construction of the time of Cottereau, an accessory which every self-respecting country-house of the time was bound to have. It was by this gallery that the open tribune in the little chapel was reached, thus enabling Louis XIV to pass readily to mass while he was so frequent a visitor at that period when, at Maintenon, he was overseeing the construction of his famous aqueduct.
Maintenon has had the honour, too, to count among its illustrious guests Racine, who came at the request of Madame de Maintenon, and here wrote "Esther" and "Athalie" which were later produced at Saint Cyr by Madame de Maintenon's celebrated band of "Demoiselles."
Louis XIV was not the last of royal race to accept the Chateau de Maintenon's hospitality for the unhappy Charles X was obliged to ask shelter of its chatelain for himself and fleeing family. They arrived a little after midnight of a hot August night, slept as well as possible in the former apartments of Madame de Maintenon, and attended mass in the chapel on the following morning. The monarch then discharged the royal guard and the "hundred Swiss" and gave up, defeated at the game of playing monarch against the will of the people.
One enters theCour d'Honneurby a great portal of the time of Louis XIV. Immediately before one is the principal façade, with its towers of brick and its slender little turrets framing in so admirably the entrance door. This façade is of the fifteenth century and on the tympan of the dormer windows one may still see the monogram of its builder, Cottereau. The drawbridge has been made way with, and the turrets over the portal have been bound together by a diminutive balcony of stone, which, while a manifest superfluity, is in no way objectionable.
Under the entrance vault are doors on either side giving access to the living apartments of therez-de-chaussée. In the inner courtyard is to be found the most exquisite architectural detail of the whole fabric, the tower which encloses the monumental stairway, to which entrance is had by a portal which is a veritable Gothic jewel. In the tympan of this portal, as in the dormer windows, is the device of Jean Cottereau, except in this case it is much more elaborate—a Saint Michel and the dragon, surrounded by a "semis de coquilles" bearing the escutcheonsof the chatelain—d'argent à lezards de sable.
At the left of this stairway tower is the principal courtyard façade, supported by four arcades, pierced with great windows and surmounted by two fine dormer windows, all in the style of Louis XII, of which the same effects to be observed at Blois and in the Hotel d'Alluye are contemporary.
At the left of the inner court is the wing built by Cottereau which terminates in a great round tower, while to the right is that erected by Madame de Maintenon ending at the donjon. Directly opposite is a magnificent vista over the canal of ornamental water framed on either side by patriarchal trees and having as a background the silhouette of the arches of the famous aqueduct which was to lead the waters of the Eure to Versailles.
The interior of the chateau is not less remarkable than the exterior. Entering by the tower portal one comes at once to that magnificentgrand escalierwhich is accounted one of the wonders of the French Renaissance.
The Salle à Manger of to-day was the old-time Salle des Gardes. It is garnished with a fine wainscoting and panels of Cordovan leather. The Chambre à Coucher of Louis XIV, to the left, is to-day the Salon, and here are to be seenportraits of Louis XIV, Louis XII, Francis I, Henri IV, and Louis XIII.
A tiny rotunda contains a statue of Henri IV as a child, and portraits of Madame de Maintenon and Louis XIV in their youth. A portrait gallery of restrained proportions contains effigies of Madame de Maintenon and her niece Mademoiselle d'Aubigné, the Duc de Penthièvre, the Comtesse de Toulouse, the Duc de Noailles, the Duchesse de Villars and the Duchesse de Chaumont.
Aqueduct of Louis XIV at MaintenonAqueduct of Louis XIV at Maintenon
The show-piece of the chateau, albeit of recent construction, is known variously as the "Grand Galerie" and the "Longue Galerie." Its decorations are due to the Duc de Noailles, the father of the present proprietor. Virtually it is a portrait gallery of the Noailles family, going back to the times of the Crusaders and coming down to the twentieth century.
The apartments of Madame de Maintenon form that portion of the chateau which has the chief sentimental interest. In an ante-chamber is achaise à porteursonce having belonged to the Marquise, and her portrait by Mignard. Cordovan leather is hung upon the walls, and the restored sleeping-room is hung with a canopy and separated from the rest of the apartment by a balustrade inbois doré. Above the chimney-piece is a portrait of Louis XIV, after Rigaud, and, finally, the oratory is ornamented by a series of elegant sculptures in wood and a magnificent Boule coffer.
In the left wing is found a beautiful chapel of the fifteenth century, which is very pure in style. It is decorated with a series of Renaissance wood panels of the finest workmanship. The coloured glass of the windows is of the sixteenth century.
The rebuilt monumental stairway connects directly with a passage leading to the entrance portico which opens on the garden terrace before theparterre.
The park of Maintenon is in every way admirable, with itspelouse, its great border of trees, its waterways and more than thirty bridges. Jean Cottereau himself planned the first vegetable and fruit garden, orpotager, the same whose successor is the delight of the dwellers at Maintenon to-day.
Theparterre, the Grand Canal and the two avenues of majestic trees were due to the conception of Le Notre, and their effect, as set off by the alleyed forest background and the pillars of the aqueduct of Louis XIV, is something unique.
The gardens at Maintenon were perhaps notLe Notre's most famous work but they followed the best traditions of their time, and because of their vast expanse of ornamental water were, in a way, quite unequalled.
Ambling off towards the forest is a great avenue flanked with high overhanging shade trees known as the Allée Racine. It gets its name from the fact that the dramatist was wont to take his walks abroad in this direction and woo the muse while he was a guest of Madame de Maintenon.
Rambouillet is one of the most famous of the minor royal chateaux of France. Built under the first of the monarchies, in the midst of the vast forest of Yveline, it has always formed a partof the national domain. Even now, under Republican France, it is still the scene of the hunts organized for visiting monarchs, and, within the last half dozen years alone, the monarchs of Spain and Belgium, Italy and England have shot hares and stags and pheasants in company with a Republican president.
The occasions have lacked the picturesque costumes of the disciples of Saint Hubert in other times; but the huntsman still winds his horn to the same traditional tune and the banquets given in the chateau on such occasions are, in no small measure, an echo of what has gone before.
It was in the old chateau of Rambouillet that Francis I died. In the month of March, 1547, Francis, coming from Chambord in the south, crossed the "accursed bridge" and arrived at the foot of the ivy-grown donjon which one sees to-day, the last remaining relic of the mediæval fortress. For a year the monarch had led a wandering life, revisiting all the favourite haunts of his kingdom, and, though scarce turned fifty, was prematurely aged and gray.
He was lifted tenderly from his royal coach, and by the winding stair, carried slowly to his apartments on the second floor, overlooking the three canals and the "accursed bridge" and the tangled forest beyond.
Jacques d'Angennes, to whose ancestors Rambouillet one day belonged, acted as host to his royal master and cared for him as a brother, but Francis was dispirited, and growing weaker every moment. He complained bitterly of the death of his favourite son from the plague, and of that of the gay monarch across the channel, his old friend, Henry VIII of England.
He was restless and wished to move on to Saint Germain, but his condition made that impossible. After a feeble attempt to rouse himself for a hunt in the forest, he took to his bed again, with the admonition to his friend d'Angennes, who never left him: "I am dying, send for my son, Henri."
The prince joined the mourners around the royal bedside and heard his father's confession thus: "My son, I have sinned greatly; I have been led away by my passions; follow that which I have done that is accredited good, and ignore the evil; above all, cherish France; be good to my people."
That was all except the final counsel to "beware of the Guises; they are traitors." After that he spoke no more. Francis I, the gallant, art-loving monarch, the father of the Renaissance in France, was dead.
In 1562, Catherine de Médici, accompaniedby her son Charles IX, here awaited the results of the momentous battle of Dreux. In 1588, Henri III, fleeing Paris after the "journée des barricades" came here to rest, and so fatigued was he on his arrival that he went to bed "tout botté."
Laiterie de la Reine, RambouilletLaiterie de la Reine, Rambouillet
The son of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan came into possession of "the palace and lands" and in his honour the property was made, in spite of its limited area, a Duché-Pairie.
Louis XIV and Madame de Maintenon, as was but natural, because of its proximity to Maintenon and to Paris, frequently honoured Rambouillet with their presence; and, a little later, Louis XV and the beautiful Comtesse de Toulouse followed suit.
The Duc de Penthièvre, to whom the property had by this time descended, at the instance of Louis XVI, ceded to that monarch the domain of Rambouillet.
Louis XVI built vast commons and outbuildings, all with some architectural pretence, to house the appanage of the royal hunt, and also built the Laiterie de la Reine and the model farm where, in 1786, he established the first national sheepfold.
To-day this is the famous École de Bergers, where is quartered the largest flock ofmoutons à laine(merino sheep) in France, they having been brought chiefly from Spain.
The Laiterie de la Reine was a tiny sandstone temple with interior fittings chiefly of white marble, and with a great, round centre-table, and smaller tables in each corner, equally of marble, as becomes a hygienically fitted dairy. It was restored by Louis Napoleon during the Second Empire, and is still to be seen in all its pristine glory.
In addition, Louis XVI had at Rambouillet a private domain of a considerable extent which only the Constitution of 1791 united to the Civil List. This property, except the palace, the park and the forest, was sold later by the State. The Imperial Civil List, formed in 1805 by Napoleon, included these dependencies specifically, and the emperor frequently hunted in the neighbouring forest, though, compared to his predecessors, he had little time to devote to that form of sport. Here, too, was signed, in 1810, the decree which united Holland with the Empire.
Rambouillet has fallen sadly since the Revolution. A decree of theRepresentants du Peuple, of October 14, 1793, provided that "the furnishings of this palace, heretofore royal, shall be sold." Under the Consulate and Empire a certain citizen, Trepsat by name, received an injury in protecting Napoleon in an attack and, as recompense, was made the official Architect and Conservator of the Palace of Rambouillet.
Hardly had Trepsat entered upon his functions when he suggested the demolition of the chateau. Napoleon hesitated, but finally partially agreed, insisting, however, that enough should be left to form a comfortable hunting-lodge. Trepsat would have torn down all and rebuilt anew. Napoleon made an appointment with his architect to visit the property and discuss the matter in detail the following year (1805), but at that moment he was campaigning in Austria, so the interview was not held. This was Trepsat's chance, and he found a pretext to overthrow the entire east wing, but was stopped before he was able to further carry out his ignorant act of vandalism. Trepsat was severely reprimanded by the emperor himself, and was ordered to put things back as he found them. "Even the most battered and sickly architect who ever lived could hardly have had a worse inspiration," said Napoleon. Trepsat, be it recalled, had lost a leg.
The restoration was commenced, but Trepsat, committing one fault after another, and finally juggling with the accounts, was obliged to take on a collaborator by the name of Famin, a youngpensionnaireof the Académie des Beaux Arts, recently returned from Rome. It was he who saved Rambouillet from utter destruction.
The apartments of Napoleon, which were those given over to public functions in the time of the Comte de Toulouse, had been, and were, most luxuriously appointed. That which shows most clearly the imprint of the imperial régime is the curious Salle de Bains which was in direct communication with the study, or Cabinet de Travail.
It might have been a room in a Pompeian house so classic were its lines and decorations. There was a series of medallions painted on the wall representing portraits of members of the imperial family. These were chiefly portraits of the female sex, and Napoleon, the first time he entered his bath, in an excess of modesty and fury cried out: "Who is the ass that did this thing?" Immediately they were painted out, and, for the sum of nine hundred and fifty francs, another artist was found who filled the frames of the medallions with sights and scenes associated less intimately with Napoleonic history.
Under the Empire the architect Famin was commissioned to furnish a series of architectural embellishments to the gardens of Rambouillet. Various stone statues were added and an octagon pavilion on the Ile des Roches was restored andredecorated. Two great avenues were cut through theparterre, and, as if fearing indiscretions on the part of his entourage, the emperor caused to be planted long rows of lindens and tulip trees, which were again masked by two rows of poplars. Thepelouxof the Jardin Français were reëstablished and the curves and sweeps of the paths of the Jardin Anglais laid out anew.
Chateau de RambouilletChateau de Rambouillet
This ancient government property, arisen anew from its ruins, now bore the name of the Pavillon du Roi de Rome, after the son of Napoleon. The Écuries, or stables, which had been built by Louis XVI, were transformed into kennels, and various "posts," or miniature shooting-boxes, were distributed here and there through the park.
Under the Restoration the transformation of the chateau, which had been projected ever since the time of Louis XVI, undertaken and then abandoned by Napoleon, was again commenced, but on a less ambitious scale than formerly. Chiefly this transformation consisted of opening up windows, thus making practically a new façade. It was not wholly a happy thought, and the spirit of economy of Louis XVIII, no less, perhaps, than other motives, arrested this mutilation and the architect was discharged from his functions.
Again the hand of fate fell hard upon Rambouillet and its definite eclipse as a royal abode came with the abdication of Charles X. The abdication was actually signed at Rambouillet, and here, in the same Salle du Conseil, the dauphin renounced the throne in favour of the young Duc de Bordeaux.
It was at Rambouillet that Charles X passed those solemn last days before the abdication. He had been unmercifully harassed at Paris and sought a quiet retreat, "not too far from the Tuileries," where he might repose a moment and take counsel. In view of later events this was significant; perhaps it was significant at the time, for the king speedily repented his abdication. It was too late, for he had classed as rebels all the royalists who would have accepted the "infant king" as their monarch, even though the following Revolution prevented this.
It was on the third of August that the commissioners, deputies of the Provisionary Government, were brought before the king at Rambouillet. They announced that twenty-five thousand armed Parisians were marching on the chateau to compel him to quit his kingdom. It was not a matter for debate, and at nine o'clock on the same night the monarch gave assent to being conducted to Cherbourg, where he embarked upon his fatal exile.
After 1830, with a business-like instinct, the authorities rented the property for twelve years to the Baron Schickler, and, at the end of the Revolution of 1848, its career became more plebeian still; it was rented to a man who converted the palace into an elaborately appointed road-house, and the lawns and groves into open-air restaurants and dancing places.
Under the Gouvernement du Juillet the chateau, the park and the forest were removed from the Civil List, and entered upon the inventory of the Administration des Domaines.
Under the Second Empire Rambouillet appeared again on the monarchial Civil List. Napoleon III came here at times to hunt, but not to live, and of his rare appearances at the chateau but little record exists. Since 1870 Rambouillet has belonged to the Republican Government, and, since royalties no longer exist in France, Republican chiefs of state now take the lead in Rambouillet's national hunts.
The property, as it stands to-day, is divided readily into four distinct parts, the palace, theparterre, theJardin Anglaisand the park. The grove of lindens is remarkable in every respect, the ornamental waters are gracious and of vast extent, and theLaiterieand theFermeare decidedly models of their kind; but the Chaumière des Coquillages, a rustic summer-house of rocks and shells and questionable débris of all sorts, is hideous and unworthy.
Not the least of the charming features of the park is the great alley of Louisiana cypresses, one of the real sights, indeed, perfecting the charm of the great body of water to the left of the chateau.
Of the structure which existed in the fourteenth century, the chateau of Rambouillet retains to-day only a great battlemented tower, and some low-lying buildings attached to it. Successive enlargements, restorations and mutilations have changed much of the original aspect of the edifice, and modern structures flank and half envelop that which, to all eyes, is manifestly ancient. The débris of the old fortress, which was the foundation of all, adds its bit to the conglomerate mass of which the chief and most imposing elements are the two tallcorps de logisin the centre.
Within, a rather banal Salle de Bal is shown as the chief feature, but it is conventionally unlovely enough to be passed without emotion, save that its easterly portion takes in thecabinet, or private apartment, where Charles X signed his abdication. Adjoining this is the bedroom occupied by that monarch, and a dining-roomwhich also served His Majesty, and which is still used by the head of the government on ceremonious occasions. Its decorative scheme is of the period of Louis XV.
The Salle de Conseil is of the period of Charles X, and has some fairly imposing carved wainscotings showing in places the monograms of Marie Sophie and the Comtesse de Toulouse.
A great map, or plan, of the Forest of Rambouillet covers the end wall, and, if not esthetically beautiful, is at least useful and very interesting.
It was executed under Louis XVI and doubtless served its purpose well when the hunters gathered after a day afield and recounted anecdotes of their adventures.
There is another apartment on the ground floor which is known as theSalle à Manger des Rendezvous de Chasse, whose very name explains well its functions.
The Cabinet de Travail of Marie Antoinette and the Salle de Bain of Napoleon have something more than a mere sentimental interest; they were decidedly practical adjuncts to the royal palace.
Napoleon's bath took the form of a rather short, deep pool. Its fresco decorations, as seen to-day—replacing that family portrait gallery which Napoleon caused to be painted out—are after the pseudo-antique manner and represent bird's-eye views of various French cities and towns, while a series of painted armorial trophies decorates the ceiling.
On the second floor are the apartments occupied by the Duchesse de Berry and those of the Duchesse d'Angouleme.
In the great round tower is the circular apartment where Francis I breathed his last. It is this great truss-vaulted room that most interests the visitor to Rambouillet.
On the ground floor is another Salle de Bain, quite as theatrically disposed as that of Napoleon. Its construction was due to the Comte de Toulouse whose taste ran to Delft tiles and polychrome panels, framing two imposing marines, also worked out in tiles.
Theparterre, extending before the main building, is of an ampleness scarcely conceivable until once viewed. It is purely French in design and is of the epoch of the tenancy of the Comte de Toulouse. Before the admirably grouped lindens was a boathouse, and off in every direction ran alleys of acacias, while here and there tulip beds, rose gardens and hedges of rhododendrons flanked the very considerable ornamental waters. This body of water, in the form of a trapezoid, is divided by four grass-grown islets and separatesthe Jardin Anglais from the Jardin Français. One of the islets is known as the Ile des Roches and contains the Grotte de Rabelais, so named in honour of the Curé of Meudon, when he was presented at Rambouillet by the Cardinal du Bellay. It was on this isle that were given those famous fêtes in honour of the "beaux esprits" who formed the assiduous cortège of Catherine de Vivonne, mythological, pagan andoutré.
The Jardin Anglais at Rambouillet is the final expression of the species in France. Designed under the Duc de Penthièvre, it was restored and considerably enlarged by Napoleon and, following the contours of an artificial rivulet, it fulfils the description that its name implies.
More remote, and half hidden from the precincts of the chateau, are the Chaumière and the Ermitage and they recall the background of a Fragonard or a Watteau. It is all very "stagy"—but, since it exists, can hardly be called unreal.
The park proper, containing more than twelve hundred hectares, is one of the largest and most thickly wooded in France. Between theparterreand the French and English garden and the park lie the Farm and the Laiterie de la Reine, the caprice of Louis XVI when he would content Marie Antoinette and give her something to think about besides her troubles. Napoleon strippedit of its furnishings to install them, for a great part, at Malmaison, for that other unhappy woman—Josephine. Later, to give pleasure to Marie Louise, he ordered them brought back again to Rambouillet, but it was to Napoleon III that the restoration of this charming conceit was due.
In the neighbourhood of Rambouillet was the famous Chateau de Chasse, or royal shooting-box, which Louis XV was fond of making a place of rendezvous.
On the banks of the Étang de Pourras stood this Chateau de Saint Hubert, named for the patron saint of huntsmen, and within its walls was passed many a happy evening by king and courtiers after a busy day with stag and hound.
The hunt in France was perhaps at the most picturesque phase of its existence at this time. The hunt of to-day is but a pale, though bloody, imitation of the real sport of the days when monarchs and their seigneurs in slashed doublet and hose and velvet cloaks pursued the deer of the forest to his death, and knew not themaitre d'equipageof to-day.
Chantilly, because of its royal associations, properly finds its place in every traveller's French itinerary. Not only did Chantilly come to its great glory through royal favour, but in later years the French government has taken it under its wing, the chateau, the stables and the vast park and forest, until the ensemble is to-day as much of a national show place as Versailles or Saint Germain. It is here in the marble halls, where once dwelt the Condés and the Montmorencys, that are held each year the examinations of the French Académie des Beaux Arts. And besides this it is a place of pilgrimage for thousands of tourists who, as a class, for a couple of generations previously, never got farther away from the capital than Saint Cloud.
Many charters of the tenth century make mention of the estates of Chantilly, which at that time belonged to the Seigneurs of Senlis. The chateau was an evolution from a block-house, or fortress, erected by Catulus in Gallo-Roman times and four centuries later it remained practically of the same rank. In the fourteenth century the chateau was chiefly a vast fortress surrounded by a water defence in the form of an enlarged moat by means of which it was able to resist the Bourguignons and never actually fell until after the taking of Meaux by the English king, Henry V.
Statue of Le Notre, ChantillyStatue of Le Notre, Chantilly
Jean II de Montmorency, by his marriage with Marguerite d'Orgemont, came to be the possessor of the domain, their son, in turn, becoming the heir. It was this son, Guillaume, who became one of the most brilliant servitors of the monarchs Louis XI, Louis XII, and Francis I, and it was through these friends at court that Chantilly first took on its regal aspect.
In turn the celebrated Anne de Montmorency, Connetable de France, came into the succession and finding the old fortress, albeit somewhat enlarged and furbished up by his predecessor, less of a palatial residence than he would have, separated the ancient chateau-fort from an added structure by an ornamental moat, or canal, and laid out thepelouse,parterresand the alleys of greensward leading to the forest which make one of the great charms of Chantilly to-day.
Here resided, as visitors to be sure, but formore or less extended periods, and at various times, Charles V, Charles IX and Henri IV, each of them guests of the hospitable and ambitious Montmorencys.
Chantilly passed in 1632 to Charlotte, the sister of the last Maréchal de Montmorency, the wife of Henri II, Prince de Condé, the mother of the Grand Condé, the Prince de Conti and the Duchesse de Longueville.
With the Grand Condé came the greatest fame, the apotheosis, of Chantilly. This noble was so enamoured of this admirable residence that he never left it from his thoughts and decorated it throughout in the most lavish taste of his time, destroying at this epoch the chateau of the moyen-age and the fortress. These were the days of gallant warriors with a taste for pretty things in art, not mere bloodthirsty slaughterers.
On the foundations of the older structures there now rose an admirable pile (not that which one sees to-day, however), embellished by the surroundings which were evolved from the brain of the landscape gardener, Le Notre. The Revolution made way with this lavish structure and with the exception of the Chatelet, or the Petit Chateau (designed by Jean Bullant in 1560, and remodelled within by Mansart) the present-day work is a creation of the Duc d'Aumale,the heir to the Condés' name and fame, to whom the National Assembly gave back his ancestral estates which had in the meantime come into the inventory of royal belongings through the claims established by the might of the Second Empire.
Back to the days of the Grand Condé one reads of an extended visit made by Louis XIV to his principal courtier. It was at an expense of two hundred thousandécusthat the welcoming fête was accomplished. Madame de Sévigné has recounted the event more graphically than any other chronicler, and it would be presumption to review it here at length. The incident of Vatel alone has become classic.
To the coterie of poets at Rambouillet must be added those of Chantilly; their sojourn here added much of moment to the careers and reputations of Boileau, Racine, Bourdaloue and Bossuet. It was the latter, who, in the funeral oration which he delivered on the death of the Prince de Condé, said:
"Here under his own roof one saw the Grand Condé as if he were at the head of his armies, a noble always great, as well in action as in repose. Here you have seen him surrounded by his friends in this magnificent dwelling, in the shady alleys of the forest or beside the purlingwaters of the brooks which are silent neither day nor night."
The Grand Condé died, however, at Fontainebleau. The heir, Henri-Jules de Bourbon, did his share towards keeping up and embellishing the property, and to him was due that charming wildwood retreat known as the Parc de Sylvie.
Louis-Henri de Bourbon, Minister of Louis XV at the commencement of his reign, had gained a fabulous sum of money in the notorious "Law's Bank" affair, and, with a profligate and prodigal taste in spending, lived a life of the grandest of grand seigneurs at Chantilly, to which, as his donation to its architectural importance, he contributed the famous Écuries, or stables. To show that he waspersona grataat court he gave a great fête here for Louis XV and the Duchesse du Barry.
The last Prince de Condé but one before the Revolution built the Chateau d'Enghien in the neighbourhood, and sought to people the Parc de Sylvie with a rustic colony of thatchedmaisonettesand install his favourites therein in a weak imitation of what had been done in the Petit Trianon. The note was manifestly a false one and did not endure, not even is its echo plainly audible for all is hearsay to-day and no very definite record of the circumstance exists.
Chantilly in later times has been a favourite abode with modern monarchs. The King of Denmark, the Emperor Joseph II and the King of Sweden were given hospitality here, and much money was spent for their entertainment, and much red and green fire burned for their amusement and that of their suites.
The Revolution's fell blow carried off the principal parts of the Condé's admirable constructions and it is fortunate that the Petit Chateau escaped the talons of the "Bande Noire." Immediately afterwards the Chateau d'Enghien and the Écuries were turned over to the uses of the Minister of War, and the authorities of the Jardin des Plantes were given permission to transplant and transport anything which pleased their fancy among the exotics which had been set out by Le Notre in Chantilly's famousparterres.
Under the imperial régime the Forêt de Chantilly was given in fee simple to Queen Hortense, though all was ultimately returned to the Condé heirs after the Restoration. It was at this period that Chantilly received the visit of Alexander, Emperor of Russia, and the historian's account of that visit makes prominent the fact that during the periods of rain it was necessary that an umbrella be carried over the imperial head ashe passed through the corridors of the palace from one apartment to another.
The host of the emperor died here in 1818 and his son, spending perhaps half of his time here, cared little for restoration and spent all his waking hours hunting in the forest, returning to the Petit Chateau only to eat and sleep.
The Duc de Bourbon added to the flanking wings of the Petit Chateau and cleaned up the débris which was fast becoming moss-grown, weed encumbered and altogether disgraceful. The moats were cleaned out of their miasmatic growth and certain of the grass-carpetedparterresresown and given a semblance of their former selves.
Some days after the Revolution of 1830 the Prince de Condé died in a most dramatic fashion, and his son, the Duc d'Enghien, having been shot at Vincennes under the Empire, he willed the Duc d'Aumale and his issue his legal descendants forever.
Towards 1840 the Duc d'Aumale sought to reconstruct the splendours of Chantilly, but a decree of January 22, 1852, banished the entire Orleans family and interrupted the work when the property was sold to the English bankers, Coutts and Company, for the good round sum of eleven million francs, not by any means anextravagant price for this estate of royal aspect and proportions. The National Assembly of 1872 did the only thing it could do in justice to tradition—bought the property in and decreed that it be restored to its legitimate proprietor.
It was as late as 1876 that the Duc d'Aumale undertook the restoration of the Chatelet and the rebuilding of the new chateau which is seen to-day. The latter is from the designs of Henri Daumet, member of the Institut de France.
In general the structure of to-day occupies the site of the moyen-age chateau but is of quite a different aspect.
The Duc d'Aumale made a present of the chateau and all that was contained therein to the Institut de France. From a purely sordid point of view it was a gift valued at something like thirty-five million francs, not so great as many new-world public legacies of to-day, but in certain respects of a great deal more artistic worth.
The mass is manifestly imposing, made up as it is, of four distinct parts, the Eglise, dating from 1692, the Écuries, the Chatelet—or Petit Chateau, and the Chateau proper—the modern edifice.
Before the celebrated Écuries is a green, velvetypelousewhich gives an admirable approach. The architecture of the Écuries is of a heavyorder and the sculptured decorations actually of little esthetic worth, representing as they do hunting trophies and the like. Before the great fountain one deciphers a graven plaque which reads as follows:
Louis Henri de BourbonPrince de CondéFut Construire Cette Écurie1701-1784.
Within the two wings may be stabled nearly two hundred horses. The Grand Écuries at Chantilly are assuredly one of the finest examples extant of that luxuriant art of the eighteenth century French builder. Luxurious, excessively ornate and overpowering it is, and, for that reason, open to question. The work of the period knew not the discreet middle road. It was of Chantilly that it was said that the live stock was better lodged than its masters. The architect of this portion of the chateau was Jean Aubert, one of the collaborators of Jules Hardouin Mansart.
The characteristics of Chantilly, take it as a whole, the chateau, the park and the forest, are chiefly theatrical, but with an all-abiding regard for the proprieties, for beyond a certain heaviness of architectural style in parts of the chateau everything is of the finely focussed relative order of which the French architect and landscape gardener have for ages been past masters.
The real French garden is here to be seen almost at its best, its squares and ovals of grassy green apportioned off from the mass by gravelled walks and ornamented waters. The "tapis d'orient" effect, so frequently quoted by the French in writing of such works, is hardly excelled elsewhere.
All this shocked the mid-eighteenth century English traveller, but it was because he did not, perhaps could not, understand. Rigby, "the Norwich alderman" as the French rather contemptuously referred to this fine old English gentleman, said frankly of Chantilly: "All this has cost dear and produced a result far from pleasing." He would have been better pleased doubtless with a privet or box hedge and an imitation plaster rockery, things which have never agreed with French taste, but which were the rule in pretentious English gardens of the same period. Rigby must indeed have been a "grincheau," as the French called him, for this same up-country gentleman said of Versailles: "Lovely surrounding country but palace and park badly designed." Versailles is not that, whatever else its faults may be.
Chantilly is more than a palace, it is a museum of nature, a hermitage of art and of history. The fantasy of itstourelles, itslucarnesand itspignonsare something one may hardly see elsewhere in such profusion, and the fact that they are modern is forgotten in the impression of the general silhouette.
The adventurer who first built a donjon on the Rocher de Chantilly little knew with what seigneurial splendour the site was ultimately to be graced. From a bare outpost it was transformed, as if by magic, into a Renaissance palace of a supreme beauty. The Duc d'Aumale said in his "Acte de Donation de Chantilly": "It stands complete and varied, a monument of French art in all its branches, a history of the best epochs of our glory."
Among all the palatial riches neighbouring upon Paris, not forgetting Versailles, Compiègne, Fontainebleau, Pierrefonds and Rambouillet, Chantilly, by the remarkable splendour of its surroundings, its situation and the artistic treasures which it possesses, is in a class by itself. It is a class more clearly defined by the historic souvenirs which surround it than any other contemporary structure of this part of France.
Its corridors and gravelled walks and the long alleys of the park and forest may not take onthe fête-like aspect which they knew in the eighteenth century, but they are not solitary like those of Fontainebleau and Rambouillet, nor noisily overrun like those of Versailles or Saint Germain.
The ornamental waters which surround the Chateau de Chantilly are of a grand and nearly unique beauty. It is a question if they are not finer than the waters of Versailles, indeed they preceded them and may even have inspired them.