Château de Valençay
Château de Valençay

By the orders of Napoleon many royalties and ambassadors here received hospitality, and in 1808-14 it became a gilded cage—or a "golden prison," as the French have it—for the Prince of the Asturias, afterward Ferdinand VII. of Spain, who consoled himself during his captivity by constructing wolf-traps in the garden and planting cauliflowers in the great urns and vases with which the terrace was set out.

There is a great portrait gallery here, where is gathered a collection of portraits in miniature of all the sovereigns who treated with Talleyrand during his ministerial reign, among others one of the Sultan Selim, painted from life, but in secret, since the reproduction of the human form is forbidden by the Koran.

In the Maison de Charité, in the town, beneath the pavement of the chapel, is found the tomb of the family of Talleyrand, where are interred the remains of Talleyrand and of Marie Thérèse Poniatowska, sister of the celebrated King of Poland who served in the French army in 1806. In this chapel also is a rare treasure in the form of a chalice enriched with precious stones, originally belonging to Pope Pius VI., the gift of the Princess Poniatowska.

The Pavillon de la Garenne,—what in England would be called a "shooting-box,"—a rendezvous for the chase, built by Talleyrand, is some distance from the château on the edge of the delightful little Forêt de Gatine.

Varennes, just above Valençay, is thought by the average traveller through the long gallery of charms in the château country to be wholly unworthy of his attention. As a matter of fact, it does not possess much of historical or artistic interest, though its fine old church dates from the twelfth century.

Ascending the Cher from its juncture with the Loire, one passes a number of interesting places. St. Aignan, with its magnificent Gothic and Renaissance château; Selles; Romorantin, a dead little spot, dear as much for its sleepiness as anything else; Vierzon, a rich, industrial town where they make locomotives, automobiles, and mechanical hay-rakes, copying the most approved American models; and Mehun-sur-Yevre, all follow in rapid succession.

Mehun-sur-Yevre, which to most is only a name and to many not even that, is possessed of two architectural monuments, a grand ruin of a Gothic fortress of the time of Charles VII. and a feudal gateway of two great rounded cone-roofed towers, bound by a ligature through which a port-cullis formerly slid up and down like an act-drop in a theatre.

Gateway of Mehun-sur-Yevre
Gateway of Mehun-sur-Yevre

Wonderfully impressive all this, and the more so because these magnificent relics of other days are unspoiled and unrestored.

Le Carrior Dore, Romorantin
Le Carrior Dore, Romorantin

Charles VII. was by no means constant in his devotions, it will be recalled, though he seems to have been seriously enamoured of Agnes Sorel—at any rate while she lived. Afterward he speedily surrounded himself with a galaxy of "belles demoiselles vêtues comme reines." They followed him everywhere, and he spent all but his last sou upon them, as did some of his successors.

One day Charles VII. took refuge in the strong towers of the château of Mehun-sur-Yevre, which he himself had built and which he had frequently made his residence. Here he died miserable and alone,—it is said by history, of hunger. Thus another dark chapter in the history of kings and queens was brought to a close.

If one has the time and so desires, he may follow the Indre, the next confluent of the Loire south of the Cher, from Loches to "George Sand's country," as literary pilgrims will like to think of the pleasant valleys of the ancient province of Berry.

The history of the province before and since Philippe I. united it with the Crown of France was vivid enough to make it fairly well known, but on the whole it has been very little travelled. It is essentially a pastoral region, and, remembering George Sand and her works, one has refreshing memories of the idyls of its prairies and the beautiful valleys of the Indre and the Cher, which join their waters with the Loire near Tours.

If one would love Berry as one loves a greater and more famous haunt of a famous author, and would prepare in advance for the pleasure to be received from threading its highways and byways, he should read those "petits chefs-d'œuvre of sentiment and rustic poesy", the romances of George Sand. If he has done this, he will find almost at every turning some long familiar spot or a peasant who seems already an old friend.

Châteauroux is the real gateway to the country of George Sand.

Nohant is the native place of the great authoress, Madame Dudevant, whom the world best knows as George Sand; a little by-corner of the great busy world, loved by all who know it. Far out in the open country is the little station at which one alights if he comes by rail. Opposite is a "petite route" which leads directly to the banks of the Indre, where it joins the highway to La Châtre.

Nohant itself, as a dainty old-world village, is divine. Has not George Sand expressed her love of it as fervidly as did Marie Antoinette for the Trianon? The French call it a "bon et honnête petit village berrichon." Nude of artifice, it is deliciously unspoiled. A delightful old church, with a curious wooden porch and a parvise as rural as could possibly be, not even a cobblestone detracting from its rustic beauty, is the principal thing which strikes one's eye as he enters the village. Chickens and geese wander about, picking here and there on the very steps of the church, and no one says them nay.

The house of George Sand is just to the right of the church, within whose grounds one sees also the pavilion known to her as the "théâtre des marionettes."

In a corner of the poetic little cemetery at Nohant, one sees among the humble crosses emerging from the midst of the verdure, all weather-beaten and moss-grown, a plain, simple stone, green with mossy dampness, which marks the spot where reposes all that was mortal of George Sand. Here, in the midst of this land which she so loved, she still lives in the memory of all; at the house of the well-lettered for her abounding talent—second only to that of Balzac—and in the homes of the peasants for her generous fellowship.

Through her ancestry she could and did claim relationship with Charles X. and Louis XVIII.; but her life among her people had nought of pretence in it. She was born among the roses and to the sound of music, and she lies buried amid all the rusticity and simple charm of what may well be called the greenwood of her native land.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE UPPER LOIRE

The gateway to the upper valley may be said to be through the Nivernais, and the capital city of the old province, at the juncture of the Allier and the Loire.

After leaving Gien and Briare, the Loire passes through quite the most truly picturesque landscape of its whole course, the great height of Sancerre dominating the view for thirty miles or more in any direction.

Cosne is the first of the towns of note of the Nivernais, and is a gay little bourg of eight or nine thousand souls who live much the same life that their grandfathers lived before them. As a place of residence it might prove dull to the outsider, but as a house of call for the wearied and famished traveller, Cosne, with its charming situation, its tree-bordered quays, and its Hôtel du Grand Cerf, is most attractive.

Église S. Aignan, Cosne
Église S. Aignan, Cosne

Pouilly-sur-Loire is next, with three thousand or more inhabitants wholly devoted to wine-growing, Pouilly being to the upper river what Vouvray is to Touraine. It is not a tourist point in any sense, nor is it very picturesque or attractive.

Some one has said that the pleasure of contemplation is never so great as when one views a noble monument, a great work of art, or a charming French town for the first time. Never was it more true indeed than of the two dissimilar towns of the upper Loire, Nevers, and La Charité-sur-Loire. The old towers of La Charité rise up in the sunlight and give that touch to the view which marks it at once as of the Nivernais, which all archæologists tell one is Italian and not French, in motive as well as sentiment.

It is remarkable, perhaps, that the name La Charité is so seldom met with in the accounts of English travellers in France, for in France it is invariably considered to be one of the most picturesque and famous spots in all mid-France.

It is an unprogressive, sleepy old place, with streets mostly unpaved, whose five thousand odd souls, known roundabout as Les Caritates, live apparently in the past.

Pouilly-sur-Loire
Pouilly-sur-Loire

Below, a stone's throw from the windows of your inn, lies the Loire, its broad, blue bosom scarcely ruffled, except where it slowly eddies around the piers of the two-century-old dos d'ane bridge; a lovely old structure, built, it is recorded, by the regiment known as the "Royal Marine" in the early years of the eighteenth century.

The town is terraced upon the very edge of the river, with views up and down which are unusually lovely for even these parts. Below, almost within sight, is Nevers, while above are the heights of Sancerre, still visible in the glowing western twilight.

Beyond the bridge rises a giant column of blackened stone, festooned by four ranges of arcades, the sole remaining relic of the ancient church standing alone before the present structure which now serves the purposes of the church in La Charité.

The walls which surrounded the ancient town have disappeared or have been built into house walls, but the effect is still of a self-contained old burg.

In the fourteenth century, during the Hundred Years' War, the town was frequently besieged. In 1429 Jeanne d'Arc, coming from her success at St. Pierre-le-Moutier, here met with practically a defeat, as she was able to sustain the siege for only but a month, when she withdrew.

La Charité played an important part in the religious wars of the sixteenth century, and Protestants and Catholics became its occupants in turn. Virtually La Charité-sur-Loire became a Protestant stronghold in spite of its Catholic foundation.

In 1577 it bade defiance to the royal arms of the Duc d'Alençon, as is recounted by the following lines:

"Ou allez-vous, hélas! furieux insensés
 Cherchant de Charité la proie et la ruine,
 Qui sans l'ombre de Foy abbatre la pensez!
    .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .     .     
Le canon ne peut rien contre la Charité,
 Plus tot vous détruira la peste et la famine,
 Car jamais sans Foy n'aurez la Charité."

In spite of this defiance it capitulated, and, on the 15th of May, at the château of Plessis-les-Tours on the Loire, Henri III. celebrated the victory of his brother by a fête "ultra-galante," where, in place of the usual pages, there were employed "des dames vestues en habits d'hommes...." Surely a fantastic and immodest manner of celebrating a victory against religious opponents; but, like many of the customs of the time, the fête was simply a fanatical debauch.

Porte du Croux, Nevers
Porte du Croux, Nevers

At Nevers one meets the Canal du Nivernais, which recalls Daudet's "La Belle Nivernaise" to all readers of fiction, who may accept it without question as a true and correct guide to the region, its manners, and customs.

The chief characteristic of Nevers is that it is Italian in nearly, if not quite all, its aspects; its monuments and its history. Its ancient ducal château, part of which dates from the feudal epoch, was the abode of the Italian dukes who came in the train of Mazarin, the last of whom was the nephew of the cardinal, "who himself was French if his speech was not."

Nevers has also a charming Gothic cathedral (St. Cyr) with a double Romanesque apse (in itself a curiosity seldom, if ever, seen out of Germany), and, in addition to the cathedral, can boast of St. Etienne, one of the most precious of all the Romanesque churches of France.

The old walls at Nevers are not very complete, but what remain are wonderfully expressive. The Tour Gouguin and the Tour St. Eloi are notable examples, but they are completely overshadowed by the Porte du Croux, which is one of the best examples of the city gates which were so plentiful in the France of another day.

Above Nevers, Decize, Bourbon-Lancy, Gilly, and Digoin are mere names which mean nothing to the traveller by rail. They are busy towns of central France, where the bustle of their daily lives is of quite a different variety from that of the Ile de France, of Normandy, or of the Pas de Calais.

From Digoin to Roanne the Loire is followed by the Canal Latéral. Roanne is a not very pleasing, overgrown town which has become a veritable ville des ouvriers, all of whom are engaged in cloth manufacture.

Virtually, then, Roanne is not much more than a guide-post on the route to Le Puy—"the most picturesque place in the world"—and the wonderfully impressive region of the Cevennes and the Vivaris, where shepherds guard their flocks amid the solitudes.

Far above Le Puy, in a rocky gorge known as the Gerbier-de-Jonc, near Ste. Eulalie, in the Ardeche, rises the tiny Liger, which is the real source of the mighty Loire, that natural boundary which divides the north from the south and forms what the French geographers call "la bassin centrale de France."

THE END.

INDEX