“And a mother?”
“Thank Heaven, I have.”
“And did you leave, her?” Here the old woman gave me a piercing look of reproof; shook her head mournfully, and, with a deep sigh, as if some painful recollection had been awakened in her bosom, turned again to her solitary task. I felt rebuked; for there is something almost prophetic in the admonitions of the old. The eye of age looks meekly into my heart! the voice of age echoes mournfully through it! the hoary head and palsied hand of age plead irresistibly for its sympathies! I venerate old age; and I love not the man who can look without emotion upon the sunset of life, when the dusk of evening begins to gather over the watery eye, and the shadows of twilight grow broader and deeper upon the understanding!
I pursued the pathway which led towards the village, and the next person I encountered was an old man, stretched lazily beneath the vines upon a little strip of turf, at a point where four paths met, forming a crossway in the vineyard. He was clad in a coarse garb of gray, with a pair of long gaiters or spatterdashes. Beside him lay a blue cloth cap, a staff, and an old weather-beaten knapsack. I saw at once that he was a foot-traveller like myself, and therefore, without more ado, entered into conversation with him. From his language, and the peculiar manner in which he now and then wiped his upper lip with the back of his hand, as if in search of the mustache which was no longer there, I judged that he had been a soldier. In this opinion I was not mistaken. He had served under Napoleon, and had followed the imperial eagle across the Alps, and the Pyrenees, and the burning sands of Egypt. Like every vieille moustache, he spake with enthusiasm of the Little Corporal, and cursed the English, the Germans, the Spanish, and every other race on earth, except the Great Nation, — his own.
“I like,” said he, “after a long day’s march, to lie down in this way upon the grass, and enjoy the cool of the evening. It reminds me of the bivouacs of other days, and of old friends who are now up there.”
Here he pointed with his finger to the sky.
“They have reached the last étape before me, in the long march. But I shall go soon. We shall all meet again at the last roll-call. Sacré nom de — ! There ‘s a tear!”
He wiped it away with his sleeve.
Here our colloquy was interrupted by the approach of a group of vintagers, who were returning homeward from their labor. To this party I joined myself, and invited the old soldier to do the same; but he shook his head.
“I thank you; my pathway lies in a different direction.”
“But there is no other village near, and the sun has already set.”
“No matter. I am used to sleeping on the ground. Good night.”
I left the old man to his meditations, and walked on in company with the vintagers. Following a well trodden pathway through the vineyards, we soon descended the valley’s slope, and I suddenly found myself in the bosom of one of those little hamlets from which the laborer rises to his toil as the skylark to his song. My companions wished me a good night, as each entered his own thatch-roofed cottage, and a little girl led me out to the very inn which an hour or two before I had disdained to enter.
When I awoke in the morning, a brilliant autumnal sun was shining in at my window. The merry song of birds mingled sweetly with the sound of rustling leaves and the gurgle of the brook. The vintagers were going forth to their toil; the wine-press was busy in the shade, and the clatter of the mill kept time to the miller’s song. I loitered about the village with a feeling of calm delight. I was unwilling to leave the seclusion of this sequestered hamlet; but at length, with reluctant step, I took the cross-road through the vineyard, and in a moment the little village had sunk again, as if by enchantment, into the bosom of the earth.
I breakfasted at the town of Mer; and, leaving the high-road to Blois on the right, passed down to the banks of the Loire, through a long, broad avenue of poplars and sycamores. I crossed the river in a boat, and in the after part of the day I found myself before the high and massive walls of the château of Chambord. This château is one of the finest specimens of the ancient Gothic castle to be found in Europe. The little river Cosson fills its deep and ample moat, and above it the huge towers and heavy battlements rise in stern and solemn grandeur, moss-grown with age, and blackened by the storms of three centuries. Within, all is mournful and deserted. The grass has overgrown the pavement of the courtyard, and the rude sculpture upon the walls is broken and defaced. From the courtyard I entered the central tower, and, ascending the principal staircase, went out upon the battlements. I seemed to have stepped back into the precincts of the feudal ages; and, as I passed along through echoing corridors, and vast, deserted halls, stripped of their furniture, and mouldering silently away, the distant past came back upon me; and the times when the clang of arms, and the tramp of mail-clad men, and the sounds of music and revelry and wassail, echoed along those high-vaulted and solitary chambers!
My third day’s journey brought me to the ancient city of Blois, the chief town of the department of Loire-et-Cher. This city is celebrated for the purity with which even the lower classes of its inhabitants speak their native tongue. It rises precipitously from the northern bank of the Loire; and many of its streets are so steep as to be almost impassable for carriages. On the brow of the hill, overlooking the roofs of the city, and commanding a fine view of the Loire and its noble bridge, and the surrounding country, sprinkled with cottages and châteaux, runs an ample terrace, planted with trees, and laid out as a public walk. The view from this terrace is one of the most beautiful in France. But what most strikes the eye of the traveller at Blois is an old, though still unfinished, castle. Its huge parapets of hewn stone stand upon either side of the street; but they have walled up the wide gateway, from which the colossal drawbridge was to have sprung high in air, connecting together the main towers of the building, and the two hills upon whose slope its foundations stand. The aspect of this vast pile is gloomy and desolate. It seems as if the strong hand of the builder had been arrested in the midst of his task by the stronger hand of death; and the unfinished fabric stands a lasting monument both of the power and weakness of man, — of his vast desires, his sanguine hopes, his ambitious purposes, — and of the unlooked-for conclusion, where all these desires, and hopes, and purposes are so often arrested. There is also at Blois another ancient château, to which some historic interest is attached, as being the scene of the massacre of the Duke of Guise.
On the following day, I left Blois for Amboise; and, after walking several leagues along the dusty highway, crossed the river in a boat to the little village of Moines, which lies amid luxuriant vineyards upon the southern bank of the Loire. From Moines to Amboise the road is truly delightful. The rich lowland scenery, by the margin of the river, is verdant even in October; and occasionally the landscape is diversified with the picturesque cottages of the vintagers, cut in the rock along the road-side, and overhung by the thick foliage of the vines above them.
At Amboise I took a cross-road, which led me to the romantic borders of the Cher and the château of Chernanceau. This beautiful château, as well as that of Chambord, was built by the gay and munificent Francis the First. One is a specimen of strong and massive architecture, — a dwelling for a warrior; but the other is of a lighter and more graceful construction, and was destined for those soft languishments of passion with which the fascinating Diane de Poitiers had filled the bosom of that voluptuous monarch.
The château of Chernanceau is built upon arches across the river Cher, whose waters are made to supply the deep moat at each extremity. There is a spacious courtyard in front, from which a drawbridge conducts to the outer hall of the castle. There the armor of Francis the First still hangs upon the wall, — his shield, and helm, and lance, — as if the chivalrous but dissolute prince had just exchanged them for the silken robes of the drawing-room. From this hall a door opens into a long gallery, extending the whole length of the building across the Cher. The walls of the gallery are hung with the faded portraits of the lon
g line of the descendants of Hugh Capet; and the windows, looking up and down the stream, command a fine reach of pleasant river scenery. This is said to be the only chateau in France in which the ancient furniture of its original age is preserved. In one part of the building, you are shown the bed-chamber of Diane de Poitiers, with its antique chairs covered with faded damask and embroidery, her bed, and a portrait of the royal favorite hanging over the mantelpiece. In another you see the apartment of the infamous Catherine de’ Medici; a venerable arm-chair and an autograph letter of Henry the Fourth; and in an old laboratory, among broken crucibles, and neckless retorts, and drums, and trumpets, and skins of wild beasts, and other ancient lumber of various kinds, are to be seen the bed-posts of Francis the First. Doubtless the naked walls and the vast solitary chambers of an old and desolate château inspire a feeling of greater solemnity and awe; but when the antique furniture of the olden time remains, — the faded tapestry on the walls, and the arm-chair by the fireside, — the effect upon the mind is more magical and delightful. The old inhabitants of the place, long gathered to their fathers, though living still in history, seem to have left their halls for the chase or the tournament; and as the heavy door swings upon its reluctant hinge, one almost expects to see the gallant princes and courtly dames enter those halls again, and sweep in stately procession along the silent corridors.
Rapt in such fancies as these, and gazing on the beauties of this noble edifice, and the soft scenery around it, I lingered, unwilling to depart, till the rays of the setting sun, streaming through the dusty windows, admonished me that the day was drawing rapidly to a close. I sallied forth from the southern gate of the château, and, crossing the broken drawbridge, pursued a pathway along the bank of the river, still gazing back upon those towering walls, now bathed in the rich glow of sunset, till a turn in the road and a clump of woodland at length shut them out from my sight.
A short time after candle-lighting, I reached the little tavern of the Boule d’Or, a few leagues from Tours, where I passed the night. The following morning was lowering and sad. A veil of mist hung over the landscape, and ever and anon a heavy shower burst from the overburdened clouds, that were driving by before a high and piercing wind. This unpropitious state of the weather detained me until noon, when a cabriolet for Tours drove up; and taking a seat within it, I left the hostess of the Boule d’Or in the middle of a long story about a rich countess, who always alighted there when she passed that way. We drove leisurely along through a beautiful country, till at length we came to. the brow of a steep hill, which commands a fine view of the city of Tours and its delightful environs. But the scene was shrouded by the heavy drifting mist, through which I could trace but indistinctly the graceful sweep of the Loire, and the spires and roofs of the city far below me.
The city of Tours and the delicious plain in which it lies have been too often described by other travellers to render a new description, from so listless a pen as mine, either necessary or desirable. After a sojourn of two cloudy and melancholy days, I set out on my return to Paris, by the way of Vendôme and Chartres. I stopped a few hours at the former place, to examine the ruins of a chateau built by Jeanne d’Albret, mother of Henry the Fourth. It stands upon the summit of a high and precipitous hill, and almost overhangs the town beneath. The French Revolution has completed the ruin that time had already begun; and nothing now remains, but a broken and crumbling bastion, and here and there a solitary tower dropping slowly to decay. In one of these is the grave of Jeanne d’Albret. A marble entablature in the wall above contains the inscription, which is nearly effaced, though enough still remains to tell the curious traveller that there lies buried the mother of the “Bon Henri.” To this is added a prayer that the repose of the dead may be respected.
Here ended my foot excursion. The object of my journey was accomplished; and, delighted with this short ramble through the valley of the Loire, I took my seat in the diligence for Paris, and on the following day was again swallowed up in the crowds of the metropolis, like a drop in the bosom of the sea.
THE TROUVÈRES.
Quant recommence et revient biaux estez, Que foille et flor resplendit par boschage, Que li froiz tanz de l’hyver est passez, Et cil oisel chantent en lor langage, Lors chanterai Et envoisiez serai De cuer verai.
JAQUES DE CHISON.
THE literature of France is peculiarly rich in poetry of the olden time..We can trace up the stream of song until it is lost in the deepening shadows of the Middle Ages. Even there it is not a shallow tinkling rill; but it comes like a mountain stream, rushing and sounding onward through the enchanted regions of romance, and mingles its voice with the tramp of steeds and the brazen sound of arms.
The glorious reign of Charlemagne, at the close of the eighth and the commencement of the ninth century, seems to have breathed a spirit of learning as well as of chivalry throughout all France.
The monarch established schools and academies in different parts of his realm, and took delight in the society and conversation of learned men. It is amusing to see with what evident self-satisfaction some of the magi whom he gathered around him speak of their exertions in widening the sphere of human knowledge, and pouring in light upon the darkness of their age. “For some,” says Alcuin, the director of the school of St. Martin de Tours, “I cause the honey of the Holy Scriptures to flow; I intoxicate others with the old wine of ancient history; these I nourish with the fruits of grammar, gathered by my own hands; and those I enlighten by pointing out to them the stars, like lamps attached by the vaulted ceiling of a great palace!”
Besides this classic erudition of the schools, the age had also its popular literature. Those who were untaught in scholastic wisdom were learned in traditionary lore; for they had their ballads, in which were described the valor and achievements of the early kings of the Franks. These ballads, of which a collection was made by order of Charlemagne, animated the rude soldier as he rushed to battle, and were sung in the midnight bivouacs of the camp. “Perhaps it is not too much to say,” observes the literary historian Schlegel, “that we have still in our possession, if not the original language and form, at least the substance, of many of those ancient poems which were collected by the orders of that prince; — I refer to the Nibelungenlied, and the collection which goes by the name of the Heldenbuch.”
When at length the old Tudesque language, which was the court language of Charlemagne, had given place to the Langue d’Oïl, the northern dialect of the French Romance, these ancient ballads passed from the memories of the descendants of the Franks, and were succeeded by the romances of Charlemagne and his Twelve Peers, — of Rowland, and Olivir, and the other paladins who died at Roncesvalles. Robert Wace, a Norman Trouvère of the twelfth century, says in one of his poems, that a minstrel named Taillefer, mounted on a swift horse, went in front of the Norman army at the battle of Hastings, singing these ancient poems.
These Chansons de Geste, or old historic romances of France, are epic in their character, though, without doubt, they were written to be chanted to the sound of an instrument. To what period many of them belong, in their present form, has never yet been fully determined; and should it finally be proved by philological research that they can claim no higher antiquity than the twelfth or thirteenth century, still there can be little doubt that in their original form many of them reached far back into the ninth or tenth. The long prevalent theory, that the romances of 8 the Twelve Peers of France all originated in the fabulous chronicle of Charlemagne and Rowland, written by the Archbishop Turpin in the twelfth century, if not as yet generally exploded, is nevertheless fast losing ground.
To the twelfth and thirteenth centuries also belong most of the Fabliaux, or metrical tales of the Trouvères. Many of these compositions are remarkable for the inventive talent they display, but as poems they have, generally speaking, little merit, and at times exhibit such a want of refinement, such open and gross obscenity, as to be highly offensive.
It is a remarkable circumstance in the
literary history of France, that, while her antiquarians and scholars have devoted themselves to collecting and illustrating the poetry of the Troubadours, the early lyric poets of the South, that of the Trouvères, or Troubadours of the North, has been almost entirely neglected. By a singular fatality, too, what little time and attention have hitherto been bestowed upon the fathers of French poetry have been so directed as to save from oblivion little of the most valuable portions of their writings; while the more tedious and worthless parts have been brought forth to the public eye, as if to deaden curiosity, and put an end to further research. The ancient historic romances of the land have, for the most part, been left to slumber unnoticed; while the obscene and tiresome Fabliaux have been ushered into the world as fair specimens of the ancient poetry of France. This has created unjust prejudices in the minds of many against the literature of the olden time, and has led them to regard it as nothing more than a confused mass of coarse and vulgar fictions, adapted to a rude and inelegant state of society.
Of late, however, a more discerning judgment has been brought to the difficult task of ancient research; and, in consequence of this, the long-established prejudices against the crumbling monuments of the national literature of France during the Middle Ages is fast disappearing. Several learned men are engaged in rescuing from oblivion the ancient poetic romances of Charlemagne and the Twelve Peers of France, and their labors seem destined to throw new light, not only upon the state of literature, but upon the state of society, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
Among the voluminous remains of Troubadour literature, little else has yet been discovered than poems of a lyric character. The lyre of the Troubadour seems to have responded to the impulse of momentary feelings only, — to the touch of local and transitory circumstances. His song was a sudden burst of excited feeling; — it ceased when the passion was subdued, or rather when its first feverish excitement passed away; and as the liveliest feelings are the most transitory, the songs which embodied them are short, but full of spirit and energy. On the other hand, the great mass of the poetry of the Trouvères is of a narrative or epic character. The genius of the North seems always to have delighted in romantic fiction; and whether we attribute the origin of modern romance to the Arabians or to the Scandinavians, this at least is certain, that there existed marvellous tales in the Northern languages, and from these, in part at least, the Trouvères imbibed the spirit of narrative poetry. There are no traces of lyric compositions among their writings, till about the commencement of the thirteenth century; and it seems probable that the spirit of song-writing was imbibed from the Troubadours of the South.
Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Delphi Poets Series Book 13) Page 188
