On another page of this same guide-book you may read how, at the Hôtel de l'Univers in Tours, the château of Amboise was described to us by an English lady of a type that I sadly miss to-day. One met her everywhere then. She was a more fragile sister of that robust, brick-complexioned spinster who used to climb all the Alps in practical but awful garments. She didn't often venture to speak to you for fear you weren't respectable, or might think she wasn't. When she did, it was apt to be with explosive shyness, running all her words together, as she did about Amboise. 'It's-very-very-dirty-and-very-keeawrious!' Curious and furious she always pronounced to rhyme with glorious and victorious; and it invariably made me think of 'God Save the Queen.'
In my interest as to whether we should again have the excellent fare and graceful service which I so well remembered at the little inn, and whether now at last my long-cherished wish to step out of that back door on the river's farther side were to be gratified, Chenonceaux itself had so dropped out of my thoughts that it fairly burst upon my sight. Bursting is, of course, a thing which that delicate and restrained edifice could never really do, only I wasn't thinking about it as our party (we were four on this second visit, and it was spring-time) came into the avenue. There at the other end stood the fair, gay vision of the château, and its beauty and wonder so suddenly waked my admiration, that I exclaimed, 'How young it looks!'
Yes; it didn't look new, but it looked young: youth is the particular and essential note of this enchanted building. None of its neighbors have it, not even Azay-le-Rideau or Blois, which are its rivals, though never its equals. Chenonceaux was four hundred years old in January, 1915. Age makes one type of person decrepit, and so it is with houses. But Chenonceaux, if ever it come to show its years, will belong to the other type: it will look venerable. Did it, do you think, catch its secret from the ring of Charlemagne, by whose sorceries its mistress, Diane de Poitiers, was accused of preserving her youth? This lady's success with François Premier so disconcerted the amiability of the Duchesse d'Etampes, that she constantly reminded Diane she was born on the day Diane was married.--But I resist the temptation to dwell upon Diane and everybody else linked to Chenonceaux by history; it's all accessible to you in books; and I proceed with the visit our party of four made, this spring day.
