strove to harmonize every portion of their design, obliged them to reject the aid of those varied resources which Le Nepveu shrewdly marshaled with a vigorous hand.
"Chambord is in truth a brilliant example of transition. The early Renaissance is there to be seen, taking on itself the burden beneath which the failing forces of the Gothic spirit had sunk. But the intention of the work is wholly foreign to the main direction taken by the new movement, and condemned, by its very nature, to remain, in spite of the wonderful genius lavished upon it, an unfruitful tour de force."
The interior of the palace is now but a great wilderness of hewn stone. The sixteenth century treasures of art which had adorned it were all stolen or destroyed in the Revolution, the spoliation being so complete that it was stripped of even the carved wainscots, panels, doors and shutters, and the four hundred and forty enormous apartments now give only the impression of a vast and comfortless barrack. In the original arrangement of the interior all ideas of practical defense were sacrificed to produce a pleasure palace, and it was furnished with innumerable secret stairways (there are thirteen great staircases, not to mention numberless smaller ones) isolated turrets and a hundred facilities for what the gallant Viollet le Duc calls "les intrigues secrètes de cette cour jeune et tout occupée de galanteries."
"On the whole," writes Mr. Henry James, "Chambord makes a great impression—there is a dignity in its desolation. It speaks with a muffled but audible voice of the vanished monarchy, which had been so strong, so splendid, but today has become a sort of fantastic vision. I thought, while I lingered there, of all the fine things that it takes to make up such a monarchy; and how one of them is a superfluity of mouldering empty palaces."
A Change in
The Brochure Series
|
The attention of subscribers to The Brochure Series is again called to the fact that, beginning with the Seventh Volume, January, 1901, the magazine is to be enlarged, and that the subscription price will then be increased to $1.00 a year, and the price of single copies to ten cents each.
| PLATE LXXX |
CHAMBORD: FROM THE WEST |
