Читать книгу Castles and Chateaux of Old Touraine and the Loire Country - M. F. Mansfield - Страница 9

The Ancient Provinces of the Loire Valley and Their CapitalsBretagneRennesAnjouAngersTouraineToursOrléannaisOrléansBerryBourgesNivernaisNeversBourbonnaisMoulinsLyonnaisLyonBourgogneDijonAuvergneClermont-FerrandLanguedocToulouse

The Loire is the longest river in France, and the only one of the four great rivers whose basin or watershed lies wholly within French territory. It moreover traverses eleven provinces. It rises in a fissure of granite rock at the foot of the Gerbier-de-Jonc, a volcanic cone in the mountains of the Vivarais, a hundred kilometres or more south of Lyons. In three kilometres, approximately two miles, the little torrent drops a thousand feet, after receiving to its arms a tiny affluent coming from the Croix de Monteuse.

For twelve kilometres the river twists and turns around the base of the Vivarais mountains, and finally enters a gorge between the rocks, and mingles with the waters of the little Lac d'Issarles, entering for the first time a flat lowland plain like that through which its course mostly runs.

The monument-crowned pinnacles of Le Puy and the inverted bowl of Puy-de-Dôme rise high above the plain and point the way to Roanne, where such activity as does actually take place upon the Loire begins.

Navigation, classed officially as "flottable," merely, has already begun at Vorey, just below Le Puy, but the traffic is insignificant.

Meantime the streams coming from the direction of St. Etienne and Lyons have been added to the Loire, but they do not much increase its bulk. St. Galmier, the source dear to patrons of tables d'hôte on account of its palatable mineral water, which is about the only decent drinking-water one can buy at a reasonable price, lies but a short distance away to the right.

At St. Rambert the plain of Forez is entered, and here the stream is enriched by numberless rivulets which make their way from various sources through a thickly wooded country.

From Roanne onward, the Canal Latéral keeps company with the Loire to Chatillon, not far from Orléans.

Before reaching Nevers, the Canal du Nivernais branches off to the left and joins the Loire with the Yonne at Auxerre. Daudet tells of the life of the Canal du Nivernais, in "La Belle Nivernaise," in a manner too convincingly graphic for any one else to attempt the task, in fiction or out of it. Like the Tartarin books, "La Belle Nivernaise" is distinctly local, and forms of itself an excellent guide to a little known and little visited region.

At Nevers the topography changes, or rather, the characteristics of the life of the country round about change, for the topography, so far as its profile is concerned, remains much the same for three-fourths the length of this great river. Nevers, La Charité, Sancerre, Gien, and Cosne follow in quick succession, all reminders of a historic past as vivid as it was varied.

From the heights of Sancerre one sees a wonderful history-making panorama before him. Cæsar crossed the Loire at Gien, the Franks forded the river at La Charité, when they first went against Aquitaine, and Charles the Bald came sadly to grief on a certain occasion at Pouilly.

It is here that the Loire rises to its greatest flood, and hundreds of times, so history tells, from 490 to 1866, the fickle river has caused a devastation so great and terrible that the memory of it is not yet dead.

This hardly seems possible of this usually tranquil stream, and there have always been scoffers.

Madame de Sévigné wrote in 1675 to M. de Coulanges (but in her case perhaps it was mere well-wishing), "La belle Loire, elle est un peu sujette à se déborder, mais elle en est plus douce."

Ancient writers were wont to consider the inundations of the Loire as a punishment from Heaven, and even in later times the superstition—if it was a superstition—still remained.

The Loire near La Charité

In 1825, when thousands of charcoal-burners (charbonniers) were all but ruined, they petitioned the government for assistance. The official who had the matter in charge, and whose name—fortunately for his fame—does not appear to have been recorded, replied simply that the flood was a periodical condition of affairs which the Almighty brought about as occasion demanded, with good cause, and for this reason he refused all assistance.

Important public works have done much to prevent repetitions of these inundations, but the danger still exists, and always, in a wet season, there are those dwellers along the river's banks who fear the rising flood as they would the plague.

Chatillon, with its towers; Gien, a busy hive of industry, though with a historic past; Sully; and St. Benoit-sur-Loire, with its unique double transepted church; all pass in rapid review, and one enters the ancient capital of the Orléannais quite ready for the new chapter which, in colouring, is to be so different from that devoted to the upper valley.

From Orléans, south, one passes through a veritable wonderland of fascinating charms. Châteaux, monasteries, and great civic and ecclesiastical monuments pass quickly in turn.

Then comes Touraine which all love, the river meantime having grown no more swift or ample, nor any more sluggish or attenuated. It is simply the same characteristic flow which one has known before.

The landscape only is changing, while the fruits and flowers, and the trees and foliage are more luxuriant, and the great châteaux are more numerous, splendid, and imposing.

Of his well-beloved Touraine, Balzac wrote: "Do not ask me why I love Touraine; I love it not merely as one loves the cradle of his birth, nor as one loves an oasis in a desert, but as an artist loves his art."

Blois, with its bloody memories; Chaumont, splendid and retired; Chambord, magnificent, pompous, and bare; Amboise, with its great tower high above the river, follow in turn till the Loire makes its regal entrée into Tours. "What a spectacle it is," wrote Sterne in "Tristram Shandy," "for a traveller who journeys through Touraine at the time of the vintage."

And then comes the final step which brings the traveller to where the limpid waters of the Loire mingle with the salty ocean, and what a triumphant meeting it is!

Coiffes of Amboise and Orléans

Most of the cities of the Loire possess but one bridge, but Tours has three, and, as becomes a great provincial capital, sits enthroned upon the river-bank in mighty splendour.

The feudal towers of the Château de Luynes are almost opposite, and Cinq-Mars, with its pagan "pile" and the ruins of its feudal castle high upon a hill, points the way down-stream like a mariner's beacon. Langeais follows, and the Indre, the Cher, and the Vienne, all ample and historic rivers, go to swell the flood which passes under the bridges of Saumur, Ancenis, and Ponts de Cé.

From Tours to the ocean, the Loire comes to its greatest amplitude, though even then, in spite of its breadth, it is, for the greater part of the year, impotent as to the functions of a great river.

Below Angers the Loire receives its first great affluent coming from the country lying back of the right bank: the Maine itself is a considerable river. It rises far up in the Breton peninsula, and before it empties itself into the Loire, it has been aggrandized by three great tributaries, the Loir, the Sarthe, and the Mayenne.

Here in this backwater of the Loire, as one might call it, is as wonderful a collection of natural beauties and historical châteaux as on the Loire itself. Châteaudun, Mayenne, and Vendôme are historic ground of superlative interest, and the great castle at Châteaudun is as magnificent in its way as any of the monuments of the Loire. Vendôme has a Hôtel de Ville which is an admirable relic of a feudal edifice, and the clocher of its church, which dominates many square leagues of country, is counted as one of the most perfectly disposed church spires in existence, as lovely, almost, as Texier's masterwork at Chartres, or the needle-like flêches at Strasburg or Freiburg in Breisgau.

The Maine joins the Loire just below Angers, at a little village significantly called La Pointe. Below La Pointe are St. Georges-sur-Loire, and three châteaux de commerce which give their names to the three principal Angevin vineyards: Château Serrand, l'Epinay, and Chevigné.

Vineyard after vineyard, and château after château follow rapidly, until one reaches the Ponts de Cé with their petite ville—all very delightful. Not so the bridge at Ancenis, where the flow of water is marked daily on a huge black and white scale. The bridge is quite the ugliest wire-rope affair to be seen on the Loire, and one is only too glad to leave it behind, though it is with a real regret that he parts from Ancenis itself.

Some years ago one could go from Angers to St. Nazaire by boat. It must have been a magnificent trip, extraordinarily calm and serene, amid an abundance of picturesque details; old châteaux and bridges in strong contrast to the prairies of Touraine and the Orléannais. One embarked at the foot of the stupendously towered château of King René, and for a petite heure navigated the Maine in the midst of great chalands, fussy little remorqueurs and barques until La Pointe was reached, when the Loire was followed to Nantes and St. Nazaire.

To-day this fine trip is denied one, the boats going only so far as La Pointe.

Below Angers the Loire flows around and about a veritable archipelago of islands and islets, cultivated with all the luxuriance of a back-yard garden, and dotted with tiny hamlets of folk who are supremely happy and content with their lot.

Some currents which run behind the islands are swift flowing and impetuous, while others are practically elongated lakes, as dead as those lômes which in certain places flank the Saône and the Rhône.

All these various branches are united as the Loire flows between the piers of the ungainly bridge of the Chemin-de-fer de Niort as it crosses the river at Chalonnes.

Champtocé and Montjean follow, each with an individuality all its own. Here the commerce takes on an increased activity, thanks to the great national waterway known as the "Canal de Brest à Nantes." Here at the busy port of Montjean—which the Angevins still spell and pronounce Montéjean—the Loire takes on a breadth and grandeur similar to the great rivers in the western part of America. Montjean is dominated by a fine ogival church, with a battery of arcs-boutants which are a joy in themselves.

On the other bank, lying back of a great plain, which stretches away from the river itself, is Champtocé, pleasantly situated on the flank of a hill and dominated by the ruins of a thirteenth-century château which belonged to the cruel Gilles de Retz, somewhat apocryphally known to history as "Barbe-bleu"—not the Bluebeard of the nursery tale, who was of Eastern origin, but a sort of Occidental successor who was equally cruel and bloodthirsty in his attitude toward his whilom wives.

From this point on one comes within the sphere of influence of Nantes, and there is more or less of a suburban traffic on the railway, and the plodders cityward by road are more numerous than the mere vagabonds of the countryside.

The peasant women whom one meets wear a curious bonnet, set on the head well to the fore, with wings at the side folded back quite like the pictures that one sees of the mediæval dames of these parts, a survival indeed of the middle ages.

The Loire becomes more and more animated and occasionally there is a great tow of boats like those that one sees continually passing on the lower Seine. Here the course of the Loire takes on a singular aspect. It is filled with long flat islands, sometimes in archipelagos, but often only a great flat prairie surrounded by a tranquil canal, wide and deep, and with little resemblance to the mistress Loire of a hundred or two kilometres up-stream. All these isles are in a high state of cultivation, though wholly worked with the hoe and the spade, both of them of a primitiveness that might have come down from Bible times; rare it is to see a horse or a harrow on these "bouquets of verdure surrounded by waves."

Near Oudon is one of those monumental follies which one comes across now and then in most foreign countries: a great edifice which serves no useful purpose, and which, were it not for certain redeeming features, would be a sorry thing indeed. The "Folie-Siffait," a citadel which perches itself high upon the summit of a hill, was—and is—an amusette built by a public-spirited man of Nantes in order that his workmen might have something to do in a time of a scarcity of work. It is a bizarre, incredible thing, but the motive which inspired its erection was most worthy, and the roadway running beneath, piercing its foundation walls, gives a theatrical effect which, in a way, makes it the picturesque rival of many a more famous Rhine castle.

The river valley widens out here at Oudon, practically the frontier of Bretagne and Anjou. The railroad pierces the rock walls of the river with numerous tunnels along the right bank, and the Vendean country stretches far to the southward in long rolling hills quite unlike any of the characteristics of other parts of the valley. Finally, the vast plain of Mauves comes into sight, beautifully coloured with a white and iron-stained rocky background which is startlingly picturesque in its way, if not wholly beautiful according to the majority of standards.

Next comes what a Frenchman has called a "tumultuous vision of Nantes." To-day the very ancient and historic city which grew up from the Portus Namnetum and the Condivicnum of the Romans is indeed a veritable tumult of chimneys, masts, and locomotives. But all this will not detract one jot from its reputation of being one of the most delightful of provincial capitals, and the smoke and activity of its port only tend to accentuate a note of colour that in the whole itinerary of the Loire has been but pale.

Below Nantes the Loire estuary has turned the surrounding country into a little Holland, where fisherfolk and their boats, with sails of red and blue, form charming symphonies of pale colour. In the cabarets along its shores there is a strange medley of peasants, sea-farers, and fisher men and women. Not so cosmopolitan a crew as one sees in the harbourside cabarets at Marseilles, or even Le Havre, but sufficiently strange to be a fascination to one who has just come down from the headwaters.

The "Section Maritime," from Nantes to the sea, is a matter of some sixty kilometres. Here the boats increase in number and size. They are known as gabares, chalands, and alléges, and go down with the river-current and return on the incoming ebb, for here the river is tidal.

Gray and green is the aspect at the Loire's source, and green and gray it still is, though of a decidedly different colour-value, at St. Nazaire, below Nantes, the real deep-water port of the Loire.

By this time the river has amplified into a broad estuary which is lost in the incoming and outgoing tides of the Bay of Biscay.

For nearly a thousand kilometres the Loire has wound its way gently and broadly through rocky escarpments, fertile plains, populous and luxurious towns—all of it historic ground—by stately châteaux and through vineyards and fruit orchards, with a placid grandeur.

Now it becomes more or less prosaic and matter-of-fact, though in a way no less interesting, as it takes on some of the attributes of the outside world.

This outline, then, approximates somewhat a portrait of the Loire. It is the result of many pilgrimages enthusiastically undertaken; a long contemplation of the charms of perhaps the most beautiful river in France, from its source to its mouth, at all seasons of the year.

The riches and curios of the cities along its banks have been contemplated with pleasure, intermingled with a memory of many stirring scenes of the past, but it is its châteaux that make it famous.

The story of the châteaux has been told before in hundreds of volumes, but only a personal view of them will bring home to one the manners and customs of one of the most luxurious periods of life in the France of other days.