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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-646-US (US-ASCII)

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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.

CHATEAU 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 debris, 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'Orleans, 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