Читать книгу Castles and Chateaux of Old Burgundy - Mansfield Milburg Francisco - Страница 5

MONTBARD lies midway between Semur and Châtillon-sur-Seine, on the great highroad leading from Burgundy into Champagne. The old Chateau de Montbard is represented only by the donjon tower which rises grimly above the modern edifice built around its base and the sprawling little town which clusters around its park gates at the edge of the tiny river Brenne.

The “grand seigneur” of Montbard was but a simple man of letters, the naturalist Buffon. Here he found comfort and tranquillity, and loved the place and its old associations accordingly. Here he lived, “having doffed his sword and cloak,” and occupied himself only with his literary labours, though with a gallantry and esprit which could but have produced the eloquent pages ascribed to him.

Buffon was a native of the town, and through him, more than anyone else, the town has since been heard of in history.

Having acquired the property of the old chateau, the donjon of which stood firm and broad on its base, he made of the latter his study, or salon de travail. This is the only remaining portion of the mediæval castle of Montbard. The ancient walls which existed, though in a ruined state, were all either levelled or rebuilt by Buffon into the dependent dwelling which he attached to the donjon. The Revolution, too, did not a little towards wiping out a part of the structure, as indeed it did the tomb of the naturalist in the local churchyard.

Buffon, or, to give him his full title, Georges-Louis-Leclerc-de-Buffon lived here a life of retirement, amid a comfort, perhaps even of luxury, that caused his jealous critics to say that he worked in a velvet coat, and that he was a sort of eighteenth century “nature-fakir.” This is probably an injustice.

In 1774 Louis XV made the “terre de Buffon” a countship, but the naturalist chose not to reside in the village of the name, but to live at Montbard some leagues away.

Montbard’s actual celebrity came long before the time of Buffon, for its chateau was built in the fourteenth century and was for centuries the possessor of an illustrious sequence of annals intimately associated with the dukedom of Burgundy.

Jean-Sans-Peur, it is to be noted, passed a portion of his youth within its walls. This gives it at once rank as a royal chateau, though that was not actually its classification. The Princesse Anne, sister of Philippe le Bon, here married the Duke of Bedford in 1423. All this would seem fame enough for Montbard, but the local old men and women know no more of their remote rulers than they do of Buffon; local pride is a very doubtful commodity.

It is disconcerting for a stranger to accost some bon homme or bonne femme to learn the way to the Chateau de Buffon, and to receive in reply a simple stare and the observation, “I don’t know the man.” Aside, to some crony, you may hear the observation, “Who are these strangers and what do they want with their man Buffon anyway?” This may seem an exaggeration, but it is not, and furthermore the thing may happen anywhere. Glory is but as smoke, and local fame is often an infinitesimal thing. Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas!

Buffon wrote his extensive “Histoire Naturelle” at Montbard. It created much admiration at the time. To-day Buffon, his work and his chateau are all but forgotten or ignored, and but few visitors come to continue the idolatry of Jean Jacques Rousseau, who kissed the “seuil de la noble demure.”

Not long since, within some few years at any rate, a former friend of Alfred de Musset quoted some little known lines of the poet on this “berceau de la histoire naturelle,” with the result that quite recently the local authorities, in establishing the Musée Buffon, have caused them, to be carved on a panel in the naturalist’s former study at the chateau.

Buffon’s additions to the old chateau were made for comfort, whatever they may have lacked of romanticism. The French Pliny was evidently not in the least romantically inclined, or he would not have levelled these historic walls and the alleyed walks and gardens laid out in the profuse and formal manner of those of Italy. The result is a poor substitute for a picturesque grass-grown ruin, or a faithfully restored mediæval castle.

Between the Brenne and a canal which flows through the town rises an admirable feudal tower indicating the one time military and strategic importance of the site. It is called Mont Bard, and marks where once stood the fortress that surrendered in its time to the “Ligueurs.”

Near Montbard is a hamlet which bears the illustrious name of Buffon, but it is doubtful if even a few among its three hundred inhabitants know for whom it is named.

Still further away, on the Châtillon road, is the little town of Villaines-en-Dumois, a bourg of no importance in the life of modernity. It is somnolent to an extreme, comfortable-looking and apparently prosperous. The grand route from Paris to Dijon passes it by a dozen kilometres to the left, and the railway likewise. Coaching days left it out in the cold also, and modern travel hardly knows that it exists.

In spite of this the town owns to something more than the trivial morsels of stone which many a township locally claims as a chateau. Here was once a favourite summer residence of the Burgundian dukes, and here to-day the shell, or framework, of the same edifice looks as though it might easily be made habitable. The property came later to the Madame de Longueville, the sister of the Grand Condé. There is nothing absolutely magnificent about it now, but the suggestion of its former estate is still there to a notable degree. The walls and towers, lacking roofs though they do, well suggest the princely part the edifice once played in the life of its time.

In spite of the fact that the name of the town appears in none of the red or blue backed guide-books, enough is known of it to establish it as the former temporary seat of one of the most formal of the minor courts of Europe, where – the records tell – etiquette was as strict as in the ducal palace at Dijon. Four great round towers are each surrounded by a half-filled moat, and the suggestion of the old chapel, in the shape of an expanse of wall which shows a remarkably beautiful ogival window, definitely remains to give the idea of the former luxury and magnificence with which the whole structure was endowed.

A detached dwelling, said to be the house of the prior of a neighbouring monastery who attached himself to the little court, is in rather a better state of preservation than the chateau itself, and might indeed be made habitable by one with a modest purse and a desire to play the “grand seigneur” to-day in some petty gone-to-seed community. These opportunities exist all up and down France to-day, and this seems as likely a spot as any for one who wishes to transplant his, or her, household gods.

Beyond Montbard is Les Laumes, a minor railway junction on the line to Dijon, which is scarcely ever remembered by the traveller who passes it by. But, although there is nothing inspiring to be had from even a glance of the eye in any direction as one stops a brief moment at the station, nevertheless it is a prolific centre for a series of historical pilgrimages which, for pleasurable edification, would make the traveller remember it all his life did he give it more than a passing thought. One must know its history though, or many of the historic souvenirs will be passed by without an impression worth while.

On Mont Auxois, rising up back of the town, stands a colossal statue of Vercingetorix, in memory of a resistance which he here made against the usually redoubtable Cæsar.

Six kilometres away there is one of the most romantically historic of all the minor chateaux of France and one not to be omitted from anybody’s chateaux tour of France. It is the Chateau de Bussy-Rabutin, to-day restored and reinhabited, though for long periods since its construction it was empty save for bats and mice. This restoration, which looks to-day like a part of the original fabric, was the conceit of the Comte de Bussy-Rabutin, a cousin of Madame de Sévigné in the seventeenth century. It gives one the impression of being an exact replica of a seigneurial domain of its time.

The main fabric is a vast square edifice with four towers, each marking one of the cardinal points. The Tour du Donjon to the east, and the Tour de la Chapelle to the west are bound to a heavy ungainly façade which the Comte Roger de Bussy-Rabutin built in 1649. This ligature is a sort of a galleried arcade which itself dates from the reign of Henri II.

As to its foundation the chateau probably dates from an ancestor who came into being in the twelfth century. In later centuries it frequently changed hands, until it came to Leonard du Rabutin, Baron d’Epiry, and father of the Comte Roger who did the real work of remodelling. It was this Comte Roger who has gone down to fame as the too-celebrated cousin of Madame de Sévigné. To-day, the chateau belongs to Madame la Comtesse de Sarcus and although it is perhaps the most historic, at least in a romantic sense, of all the great Renaissance establishments of these parts, it is known to modern map-makers as the Chateau de Savoigny. Much of its early history is closely bound with that picturesque owner, Comte de Bussy-Rabutin.

In Holy Week in 1657, at the age of forty-one, Bussy became involved in some sort of a military scandal and was exiled from France. The following year he made peace with the powers that be and returned to court, when he composed the famous, or infamous, “Histoire Amoureuse des Gaules,” a work of supposed great wit and satirical purport, but scandalous to a degree unspeakable. It was written to curry favour with a certain fair lady, the Marquise de Monglat, who had an axe to grind among a certain coterie of court favourites. Bussy stood her in great stead and the scheme worked to a charm up to a certain point, when Louis XIV, not at all pleased with the unseemly satire, hurried its unthinking, or too willing, author off to the Bastile and kept him there for five years, that no more of his lucubrations of a similar, or any other, nature should see the light.

In 1666 Bussy got back to his native land and was again heard of by boiling over once more with similar indiscretions at Chazeu, near Autun. Finally he got home to the chateau and there remained for sixteen consecutive years, not a recluse exactly, and yet not daring to show his head at Paris. It was a long time before he again regained favour in royal circles.

The Cour d’Honneur of the chateau is reached by a monumental portal which traverses the middle of the corps du logis. Above this are two marble busts, one of Sainte-Jeanne-de-Chantal, which came originally from the Couvent de Visitation at Dijon, and the other of Colbert, the minister of Louis XIV.

The ancient Salle des Devises (now the modern billiard room) has a very beautiful pavement of hexagonal tiles, and a series of allegorical devises which Bussy had painted in 1667 by way of reproach to one of his feminine admirers. On other panels are painted various reproductions of royal chateaux and a portrait of Bussy with his emblazoned arms.

The Salon des Grands Hommes de Guerre, on the second floor, is well explained by its name. Its decorations are chiefly interlaced monograms of Bussy and the Marquise Monglat, setting off sixty odd portraits of famous French warriors, from Duguesclin and Dunois to Bussy himself, who, though more wielder of the pen than the sword, chose to include himself in the collection. Some of these are originals, contemporary with the period of their subjects; others are manifestly modern copies and mediocre at that, though the array of effigies is undeniably imposing.

The Chambre Sévigné, as one infers, is consecrated to the memory of the most famous letter writer of her time. For ornamentation it has twenty-six portraits, one or more being by Mignard, while that of “La Grande Mademoiselle,” who became the Duchesse de Berry, is by Coypel.

Below a portrait of Madame de Sévigné, Bussy caused to be inscribed the following: “Marie de Rabutin: vive agreable et sage, fille de Celse Béninge de Rabutin et Marie de Coulanges et femme de Henri de Sévigné.” This, one may be justified in thinking, is quite a biography in brief, the sort of a description one might expect to find in a seventeenth century “Who’s Who.”

Beneath the portrait of her daughter – Comtesse de Grignan – the inscription reads thus: “Françoise de Sévigné; jolie, amiable, enfin marchant sur les pas de sa mere sur le chapitre des agreements, fille de Henri de Sévigné et de Marie de Rabutin et femme du Comte de Grignan.” A rather more extended biography than the former, but condensed withal.

Another neighbouring room is known as the Petite Chambre Sévigné, and contains some admirable sculptures and paintings.

Leading to the famous Tour Dorée is a long gallery furnished after the style of the time of Henri II, whilst a great circular room in the tower itself is richly decorated and furnished, including two faisceaux of six standards, each bearing the Bussy colours.

Legend and fable have furnished the motive of the frescoes of this curious apartment, and under one of them, “Céphale et Procris,” in which one recognizes the features of Bussy and the Marquise, his particular friend, are the following lines:

Not logical, you say, and unprincipled. Just that! But as a documentary expression of the life of the times it is probably genuine.

Here and elsewhere on the walls of the chateau are many really worthy works of art, portraits by Mignard, Lebrun, Just, and others, including still another elaborate series of fourteen, representing Richelieu, Louis XIII, Anne d’Autriche, Mazarin, Louis XIV. Again in the plafond of the great tower are other frescoes representing the “Petits Amours” of the time, always with the interlaced cyphers of Bussy and Madame la Comtesse.

From the Chambre Sévigné a gallery leads to the tribune of the chapel. Here is a portrait gallery of the kings of the third race, of the parents of Bussy, and of the four Burgundian dukes and duchesses of the race of Valois. The chapel itself is formed of a part of the Tour Ronde where are two canvasses of Poussin, a Murillo and one of Andrea del Sarto.

The gardens and Park of the chateau are attributed to Le Notre, the garden-maker of Versailles. This may or may not be so, the assertion is advanced cautiously, because the claim has so often falsely been made of other chateau properties. The gardens here, however, were certainly conceived after Le Notre’s magnificent manner. There is a great ornamental water environing the chateau some sixty metres in length and twelve metres in width, and this of itself is enough to give great distinction to any garden-plot.