Francis I. had passed his early years at Cognac, at Amboise, or Romorantin, and when he first saw Chambord it was only the old feudal manor-house built by the Counts of Blois.  He transformed it, not by the help of Primaticcio, with whose name it is tempting to associate any building of this king’s, for the methods of contemporary Italian architecture were totally different; but, as Mr. de la Saussaye proves, by the skill of that fertile school of art particularly of one Maitre Pierre Trinqueau, or Le Nepveu, whose name is connected with more successful buildings at Amboise and Blois.  The plan is that of the true French chateau; in the center is the habitation of the seigneur and his family, flanked by four angle towers; on three sides is a court closed by buildings, also with towers at each angle, and like most feudal dwellings the central donjon has one of its sides on the exterior of the whole ...

It may well be imagined that Chambord is the parody of the old castles, just as the Abbey of Theleme parodies the abbeys of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.  Both heaped a fatal ridicule upon the bygone age, but what Rabelais could only dream Francis could realize, yet not with the unfettered perfection that was granted to the vision of Gargantua; for surely never was the spirit of the time, seized and smitten into incongruous shapes of stone at so unfortunate a moment, just when the old Renaissance was striving to take upon itself the burden which was too heavy for the failing Gothic spirit, just when success was coming, but had not yet come.

It is only from within the court, where the great towers fling their shadows over the space, where pinnacles and gables soar into the air, and strange gargoyles and projectures shoot from the darkness into light, that it is possible to realize the admiration which Chambord roused when it was first created.  Brantome waxes enthusiastic over its wonders, and describes how the king had drawn up plans (mercifully never carried out) to divert the waters of the Loire to his new palace, not content with the slender stream of Cosson, from which the place derived its name.  Others compare it to a palace put of the Arabian Nights raised at the Prince’s bidding by a Genie, or like Lippomano, the Venetian ambassador, to “the abode of Morgana or Alcinous”; but this topheavy barrack is anything rather than a “fairy monument”; it might with as much humor be called a “souvenir of first loves,” as M. de la Saussaye has it.  Both descriptions fit Chenonceaux admirably; when used of Chambord they are out of place.

CHENONCEAUX[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, 1906.]

BY FRANCIS MILTOUN