Along France's river of romance: . n—built by some Aladdin,with supernatural help ! Who, but a person veryromantic and more than a little mad, could have con-ceived such a building in such a place ! The castle inthe middle of its great park, which is enclosed by a stonewall twenty miles round, is not even on the Loire. Thecountry in which it is set is the sandy marshland ofSologne—dotted with lakes and ponds, and divided bya network of small rivers—whose only use, until theadvent of scientific agriculture, was the excellence ofthe sport which it afforded. Chambord is a prodigioushunting-box. B
Along France's river of romance: . n—built by some Aladdin,with supernatural help ! Who, but a person veryromantic and more than a little mad, could have con-ceived such a building in such a place ! The castle inthe middle of its great park, which is enclosed by a stonewall twenty miles round, is not even on the Loire. Thecountry in which it is set is the sandy marshland ofSologne—dotted with lakes and ponds, and divided bya network of small rivers—whose only use, until theadvent of scientific agriculture, was the excellence ofthe sport which it afforded. Chambord is a prodigioushunting-box. But if it has no advantages of situatiopto recommend it, it must be admitted that the buildingneeds none. There had been a feudal castle on the spot before 1519(when the present pile was first conceived by rran5oisI), which the Court visited for the hunting in theSologne swamps. The actual building of the new palace BLOIS 219 began in 1526, from the designs of Pierre le Nepveu,dit Trinqueau, the architect of Chenonceaux ; and. A side street in Blois eighteen hundred men are said to have been at work onit year after year. When Frangois I died in 1547, onlythe centre of the building and the east wing con- 220 THE LOIRE taining his own apartments were finished. In one ofthese private rooms the arch-philanderer wrote on awindow-pane — according to Brantome, who, in his Vie des Dames Galantes, declares that he saw itde ses propres yeux—the famous words, Toute femmevarie. The apocryphal legend gives the couplet: Souvent femme varie,Bien fol qui sy fie. Henri II added a wing, and changes were made byLouis XIV, who apparently thought the enormousplace too small for him, for he had plans prepared fortwo additional wings, which, however, w^ere never Lesczinski, the ex-King of Poland and LouisXVs father-in-law, lived in the palace between 1725and 1733. He had the moat filled up, thus utterlyspoiling the effect of the building, whidi used to rise upgracefully from
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookidalongfrances, bookyear1913
