THE LOIRE
Reading edition
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
THE banks of the Loire, from Blois to Angers, have been high in favour with the two last branches of the royal race that occupied the throne before the House of Bourbon. This beautiful basin so richly deserves the honours paid to it by royalty that this is what one of our most elegant writers has said of it:
“There exists in France a province that has never been sufficiently admired. Perfumed like Italy, flowered like the banks of the Guadalquiver, and beautiful in addition with its individual physiognomy, and entirely French, having always been French, in contrast to our northern provinces, corrupted by German contact, and our southern provinces that have lived in concubinage with the Moors, Spaniards and all races that desired to;—this province pure, chaste, brave and loyal is Touraine! Historic France is there! Auvergne is Auvergne; Languedoc is only Languedoc, but Touraine is France; and for us the most national river of all is the Loire that waters Touraine. Hence, we should not be so astonished at the quantity of monuments found in the Departments that have taken the name and derivatives of the name of the Loire. At every step we take in this land of enchantment, we discover a picture the frame of which is a river or a tranquil oval sheet that reflects in its liquid depths a castle with its turrets, woods and springing waters. It was only natural that where royalty abode by preference and established its court for such a long period the great fortunes and distinctions of race and merit should group themselves and raise palaces there grand as themselves.”
Is it not incomprehensible that Royalty did not follow the advice given by Louis XI. indirectly to make Tours the capital of the kingdom? There, without much expenditure, the Loire could have been made accessible to trading vessels and to ships of war of light draught. There, the seat of government would have been secure from the surprise of an invasion. The northern strongholds would not then have demanded so much money for their fortifications, as costly to themselves as the sumptuousness of Versailles. If Louis XIV. had listened to the advice of Vauban, who wanted to build a residence for him at Mont Louis, between the Loire and the Cher, perhaps the Revolution of 1789 would not have occurred. Still, here and there, those lovely banks bear the marks of the royal affection. The castles of Chambord, Blois, Amboise, Chenonceaux, Chaumont, Plessis-lez-Tours, all those which the mistresses of our kings, and the financiers and great lords built for themselves at Véretz, Azay-le-Rideau, Ussi, Villandri, Valençay, Chanteloup, Duretal (some of which have disappeared but the majority still exist) are admirable monuments that are redolent with the marvels of that epoch that is so ill comprehended by the literary sect of Mediævalists. Among all these castles, that of Blois is the one on which the magnificence of the Orleans and the Valois has set its most brilliant seal; and is the most interesting of all for the historian, the archæologist, and the Roman Catholic.