BLOIS[A]

[Footnote A:  From “Castles and Chateaux of Old Touraine.”  By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, L.C.  Page & Co.  Copyright, 1908.]

BY FRANCIS MILTOUN

Blois, among all the other cities of the Loire, is the favorite with the tourist.  Here one first meets a great chateau of state; and certainly the Chateau de Blois lives in one’s memory more than any other chateau in France.

Much has been written of Blois, its counts, its chateau, and its many and famous hotels of the nobility, by writers of all opinions and abilities, from those old chroniclers who wrote of the plots and intrigues of other days to those critics of art and architecture who have discovered—­or think they have discovered—­that Da Vinci designed the famous spiral staircase.

From this one may well gather that Blois is the foremost chateau of all the Loire in popularity and theatrical effect.  Truly this is so, but it is by no manner of means the most lovable; indeed, it is the least lovable of all that great galaxy which begins at Blois and ends at Nantes.  It is a show-place and not much more, and partakes in every form and feature—­as one sees it to-day—­of the attributes of a museum, and such it really is.

All of its former gorgeousness is still there, and all the banalities of the later period when Gaston of Orleans built his ugly wing, for the “personally conducted” to marvel at, and honeymoon couples to envy.  The French are quite fond of visiting this shrine themselves, but usually it is the young people and their mammas, and detached couples of American and English birth that one most sees strolling about the courts and apartments where formerly lords and ladies and cavaliers moved and plotted.

The great chateau of the Counts of Blois is built upon an inclined rock which rises above the roof-tops of the lower town quite in fairy-book fashion.  Commonly referred to as the Chateau de Blois, it is really composed of four separate and distinct foundations; the original chateau of the counts; the later addition of Louis XII.; the palace of Francis I., and the most unsympathetically and dismally disposed pavilion of Gaston of Orleans.

The artistic qualities of the greater part of the distinct edifice which go to make up the chateau as it stands to-day are superb, with the exception of that great wing of Gaston’s, before mentioned, which is as cold and unfeeling as the overrated palace at Versailles.

The Comtes de Chatillon built that portion just to the right of the present entrance; Louis XII., the edifice through which one enters the inner court and which extends far to the left, including also the chapel immediately to the rear; while Francois I., who here as elsewhere let his unbounded Italian proclivities have full sway, built the extended wing to the left of the inner court and fronting on the present Place du Chateau, formerly the Place Royale....