Over Strand and Field

Over Strand and Field, by
Gustave Flaubert

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Title: Over Strand and Field
Author: Gustave Flaubert
Release Date: December 2, 2004 [eBook #14233]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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OVER STRAND AND FIELD

A Record of Travel through Brittany
by
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Simon P. Magee Publisher Chicago, Ill.
1904

OVER STRAND AND FIELD[1]
A Trip through Brittany
CHAPTER I.
CHÂTEAU DE CHAMBORD.
We walked through the empty galleries and deserted rooms where
spiders spin their cobwebs over the salamanders of Francis the First.
One is overcome by a feeling of distress at the sight of this poverty
which has no grandeur. It is not absolute ruin, with the luxury of
blackened and mouldy débris, the delicate embroidery of flowers, and
the drapery of waving vines undulating in the breeze, like pieces of
damask. It is a conscious poverty, for it brushes its threadbare coat and
endeavours to appear respectable. The floor has been repaired in one
room, while in the next it has been allowed to rot. It shows the futile
effort to preserve that which is dying and to bring back that which has
fled. Strange to say, it is all very melancholy, but not at all imposing.
And then it seems as if everything had contributed to injure poor
Chambord, designed by Le Primatice and chiselled and sculptured by
Germain Pilon and Jean Cousin. Upreared by Francis the First, on his
return from Spain, after the humiliating treaty of Madrid (1526), it is
the monument of a pride that sought to dazzle itself in order to forget
defeat. It first harbours Gaston d'Orléans, a crushed pretender, who is
exiled within its walls; then it is Louis XIV, who, out of one floor,

builds three, thus ruining the beautiful double staircase which extended
without interruption from the top to the bottom. Then one day, on the
second floor, facing the front, under the magnificent ceiling covered
with salamanders and painted ornaments which are now crumbling
away, Molière produced for the first time Le Bourgeois gentilhomme.
Then it was given to the Maréchal de Saxe; then to the Polignacs, and
finally to a plain soldier, Berthier. It was afterwards bought back by
subscription and presented to the Duc de Bordeaux. It has been given to
everybody, as if nobody cared to have it or desired to keep it. It looks
as if it had hardly ever been used, and as if it had always been too
spacious. It is like a deserted hostelry where transient guests have not
left even their names on the walls.
When we walked through an outside gallery to the Orléans staircase, in
order to examine the caryatids which are supposed to represent Francis
the First, M. de Chateaubriand, and Madame d'Étampes, and turned
around the celebrated lantern that terminates the big staircase, we stuck
our heads several times through the railing to look down. In the
courtyard was a little donkey nursing its mother, rubbing up against her,
shaking its long ears and playfully jumping around. This is what we
found in the court of honour of the Château de Chambord; these are its
present hosts: a dog rolling in the grass, and a nursing, braying donkey
frolicking on the threshold of kings!
CHÂTEAU D'AMBOISE.
The Château d'Amboise, which dominates the whole city that appears
to be thrown at its feet like a mass of pebbles at the foot of a rock,
looks like an imposing fortress, with its large towers pierced by long,
narrow windows; its arched gallery that extends from the one to the
other, and the brownish tint of its walls, darkened by the contrast of the
flowers, which droop over them like a nodding plume on the bronzed
forehead of an old soldier. We spent fully a quarter of an hour admiring
the tower on the left; it is superb, imbrowned and yellowish in some
places and coated with soot in others; it has charming charlocks
hanging from its battlements, and is, in a word, one of those speaking
monuments that seem to breathe and hold one spellbound and pensive

under their gaze, like those paintings, the originals of which are
unknown to us, but whom we love without knowing why.
The Château is reached by a slight incline which leads to a garden
elevated like a terrace, from which the