CHAPTER XV
GRENOBLE AND VIZILLE: THE CAPITAL OF THE DAUPHINS
DAUPHINY owes its name as a province to the rightful name of the eldest sons of the French kings down to the middle of the nineteenth century. The actual origin of the application of the name seems to have been lost, though the Comtes de Vienne bore a dolphin on their blazon from the eleventh century to the fourteenth, when Comte Humbert, the last Dauphin, made over his rights to the eldest son of Philippe de Valois, who acquired the country in 1343, bestowing it upon his offspring as his patrimony. Thus is logically explained the absorption of the title and its relations with the province, for it was then that it came first to be applied to that glorious mountain region of France lying between the high Alpine valleys and the shores of the Mediterranean.
The Dauphin, Humbert II, first established the Parlement du Dauphiné at Saint Marcellin in 1337, but within three years it was transferred to Grenoble, where it held rank as third among the provincial parliaments of France.
Saint Laurent, the Grenoble suburb, not the mountain town hidden away in the fastness of the mountain massif of Chartreuse, occupies the site of an ancient Gaulish foundation called Cularo. Its name was later changed to Gratianopolis, out of compliment to the Emperor Gratian, which in time evolved itself into Grenoble, the capital of “the good province of our most loyal Dauphin.”
Grenoble’s chief architectural treasure is its present Palais de Justice, the ancient buildings of the old Parliament of Dauphiny and its Cour des Comptes. Virtually it is a chateau of state and is, moreover, the most important monument of the French Renaissance existing in the Rhône valley. Begun under Louis XI, it was terminated under François Premier, when, following upon the Italian wars, it was a place of sojourn for the kings of France.
On entering the portal at the right one comes directly to the Chambre du Tribunal of to-day, its walls panelled with a wonderful series of wood-carvings coming from the ancient Cour des Comptes, the work of a German sculptor, Paul Jude, in 1520.
The portal to the left leads to the Cour d’Appel – the Chambres des Audiences Solennelles – whose ceiling was designed in 1660 by Jean Lepautre, a great decorative artist of the court of Louis XIV, and carved by one Guillebaud, a native of Grenoble. The ancient chapel, or such of it as remains, where the parliament heard mass, is reached through this room. The ancient Chambre des Comptes dates from the reign of Charles VIII.
The Grande Salle on the upper floor is one of the notable works of its epoch with respect to its decorations, though the noble glass of its numerous windows was destroyed long years ago, leaving behind only a record of its magnificently designed armoiries and inscriptions. The chief, out-of-the-ordinary, decorations still to be observed are the sculptured fronts of thirty-eight cupboard doors which enclose the provincial archives. From an artistic, no less than a utilitarian, point of view, they are certainly to be admired, even preferred, before the “elastic” book cases of to-day.
Much of the old Palais des Dauphins’ former magnificent attributes in the shape of decorative details remain to charm the eye and senses to-day, but of the extensive range of apartments of former times only a bare three or four suggest by their groinings, carvings and chimney-pieces the splendour with which the elder sons of the kings of France were wont to surround themselves.
A remarkably successful work of restoration of the façade was accomplished within a dozen years on the model of the best of Renaissance details in other parts of the edifice, until to-day the whole presents a most effective ensemble.
In Grenoble’s museum is a room devoted to portraits of the good and great of Dauphiny. There are a dozen busts in marble of as many Dauphins, a portrait of Marie Vignon, the wife of Lesdiguières, and a crayon sketch of Bayard, which is the earliest portrait of the “Chevalier” extant. In the Église Saint Andre is the tomb of Bayard. The funeral monument surmounting it was erected only in the seventeenth century. The official chapel of the Dauphins has a great rectangular clocher remaining to suggest its former proportions. This fine tower is surmounted by an octagonal upper story and is flanked at each corner with a clocheton rising hardily into the rarefied atmosphere. The grim tower braves the tempests of winter to-day as it has since 1230.
Grenoble’s Hôtel des Trois Dauphins is an historic monument as replete with interest as many of more splendour. It was here that Napoleon lodged, with General Bertrand, on the night when he passed through the city on that eventful return from Elba when he sought to kindle the European war-flame anew.
Grenoble’s sole vestige of ancient castle or chateau architecture, aside from the temporary royal abode of the French kings and the Dauphins, is a round tower – La Grosse Tour Ronde – now built into the Hôtel de Ville, the only existing relic of a still earlier Palais des Dauphins which in its time stood upon the site of the ancient Roman remains of a structure built in the days of Diocletian.
Grenoble’s citadel possesses to-day only a square tower with machicoulis to give it the distinction of a militant spirit. It was built in 1409, but to-day has been reduced to a mere barrack’s accessory of not the slightest military strength, a “colombier militaire,” the authorities themselves cynically call it.
Vauban’s ancient ramparts have now been turned into a series of those tree-planted promenades so common in France, but the militant aspect of Grenoble is not allowed to be lost sight of, as a mere glance of the eye upward to the hillsides and mountain crests roundabout plainly indicates.
Grenoble, with its fort-crowned hill of “La Bastille,” has been called the Ehrenbreitstein of the Isère, a river which has played a momentous part in the history of Savoy and Dauphiny, but which is little known or recognized by those who follow the main lines of French travel.
Mont Rachet forms the underpinning of “La Bastille” and gives a foothold to an old feudal fortress now built around by a more modern work. Below is the juncture of the Isère and the Drac, and the great plain in the midst of which rests the proud old capital of the Dauphins. The site is truly remarkable and the strategic importance of the fortress was well enough made use of in mediæval times as a feudal stronghold. What its value for military purposes may actually be to-day is another story. The walls of the fortress certainly look grim enough, but it is probable that even the puniest of Alpine mountain batteries could reduce it in short order.
Grenoble, as might be expected of a wealthy provincial capital, is surrounded by a near-by battery of palatial country houses which may well take rank as chateaux de marque. Some are modern and some are remodelled from more ancient foundations, but all are of the imposing order which one associates with a mountain retreat. These of course are of a class quite distinct from the countless forts, fortresses, towers and donjons with which the whole countryside is strewn.
Uriage, a near neighbour, is a popular resort in little, in fact, a ville d’eau, as the French aptly name such places. The Chateau d’Uriage will for most folk have vastly more sympathetic interest than the semi-invalid attractions of the spa itself. It is at present the property of the Saint Ferreol family, and though not strictly to be reckoned as a sight, since it is not open to the public, it still remains one of the most striking residential chateaux of these parts. It was built by the Seigneurs d’Allemon under the old régime. Its architecture is frankly of the nondescript order, a mélange of much that is good and some that is bad, but all of it effective when judged from a more or less distant view-point. With respect to its details it is a livid mass of non-contemporary elements to which the purist would give scant consideration, but the effect, always the most desirable quality after all, is undeniably satisfying. The situation heightens this effect, no doubt, but what would you? The high sloped roof, in place of the mansards one usually sees, may be considered an innovation in a structure of its epoch. It was so built, without question, that it might better shed the snows of winter, which here come early and stay late.
The Chateau de Vizille, in a wooded park bordering upon the little industrial suburb of Grenoble bearing the same name, is a most imposing pile, and is fairly reminiscent of its eighteenth century contemporaries in Touraine and elsewhere in mid-France. It was the place of meeting of the États Généraux of Dauphiny in 1788, one of the momentous preambles to the French Revolution, a chapter of the great drama which was vigorously spoken and acted.
It was on July 21, 1788, under the presidency of the Comte de Marges, that were voted the preliminary paragraphs of the famous “Declaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen.” The occasion is perpetuated in memory by a monument erected in the town to “La Gloire de l’Assemblée de Vizille … et prepare la Revolution Française.”
This was the first parliamentary vote against the sustaining of aristocratic hereditary government in favour of popular representation – really the general signal for revolution, a year before the convention at Versailles.
The massive pile, ornate but not burdensome, with its mansards, its towers and terraces, composes with its environment in a most agreeable manner.
Known originally as the Chateau des Lesdiguières, for it was built originally by that celebrated Constable, Vice-Roi du Dauphiné, the Chateau de Vizille was formerly the property of the family of Casimir Perier, that which gave a president to the later Republic.
In the early part of the seventeenth century a German traveller, Abraham Goelnitz, “greatly admired” the chateau, and compared it to that of the Duc d’Epernon at Cadillac, which contained seventy rooms. That of the Maréchal Lesdiguières had a hundred and twenty-five, among them (at that time) a picture gallery, an arsenal with six hundred suits of armour, two thousand pikes and ten thousand muskets, as the inventory read. No wonder Richelieu would have reduced the power of the local seigneurs when they could get, and keep together, such a store as that.
Vizille abounds in historical memories the most exciting; the very fact that it was the home of Lesdiguières, the terrible companion of the Baron des Adrets – a Dauphinese tyrant, a warrior-pillager and much more that history vouches for – explains this.
“Viendrez ou je brulerai,” Lesdiguières wrote to the recalcitrant vassals of his king who originally had a castle on the same site. And when they stepped out, leaving the edifice unharmed, he stepped in and threw it to the ground and built the less militant chateau which one sees to-day. This edifice as it now stands was practically the work of Lesdiguières. The Protestant governor of Dauphiny was reckoned a “sly fox” by the Duc de Savoie, and doubtless with reason. It is a recorded fact of history that the governor built his chateau with the unpaid labour of the neighbouring peasants. This was in conformity with an old custom by which a governor of the Crown could release his subject from taxes by the payment of a corvée, that is, labour for the State. He took it to mean that as the representative of the state the peasants were bound to work for him. And so they did. The charge goes home nevertheless that it was a case of official sinning.
This “Berceau de la Liberté” is in form an elegant pavilion of the style current with Louis XIII. Originally it possessed certain decorative features, statues and bas reliefs, all more or less mutilated to-day. What is left gives an aspect of magnificence, but after all these features are of no very high artistic order. Within, the decoration of the apartments and their furnishings rise to a considerably higher plane. Everywhere may be seen the arms of the Constable, three roses and a lion, the latter rampant, naturally, as becomes the device of a warrior.
The later career of the Chateau de Vizille has been most ignoble. Twice in the last century it suffered by fire, in 1825 and 1865, and finally it was rented as a store-house for a manufacturing concern, later to become a boarding house controlled by a Société Anglaise. Nothing good came of the last project and the enterprise failed, as might have been anticipated at the commencement. To-day the property is on the market, or was until very recently.
CHAPTER XVI
CHAMBÉRY AND THE LAC DU BOURGET
ONE comes to Chambéry to see the chateau of the Ducs de Savoie, the modest villa “Les Charmettes,” celebrated by the sojourn of Jean Jacques Rousseau and Madame de Warens, and the Fontaine des Elephants. That is all Chambéry has for those who would worship at picturesque or romantic shrines, save its accessibility to all Savoy.
To begin with the last mentioned attraction first, one may dispose of the Fontaine des Elephants in a word. It has absolutely no artistic or sentimental appeal, though the town residents worship before it as a Buddhist does before Buddha. The ducal splendour of the chateau and of “La Sainte Chapelle,” which together form the mass commonly referred to as “the chateau,” is indeed the first of Chambéry’s attractions. Restorations of various epochs have made of the fabric something that will stand the changes of the seasons for generations yet to come and still preserve its mediæval characteristics. This is saying that the restoration of the Chateau de Chambéry has been intelligently conceived and well executed.
The great portal, preceded by an ornate terrace, with a statue of the Frères de Maistre, is the chief and most splendid architectural detail. A good second is the old portal of the Église Saint Dominique, which has been incorporated into the chateau as has been the Sainte Chapelle. Its chevet and its deep-set windows form the most striking externals of this conglomerate structure.
One of the old towers forms another dominant note when viewed from without, but let no one who climbs to its upper platform for a view of the classic panorama of the city and its surroundings think that he, or she, treads the stones where trod lords and ladies of romantic times, for the stairway is a poor modern thing bolstered up by iron rods, as unlovely as a fire-escape ladder on an apartment house, and no more romantic.
It was in the Chateau de Chambéry that was consummated the final ceremony by which Savoy was made an independent duchy in 1416. Historians of all ranks have described the magnificence of the event in no sparing terms. It was the most gorgeous spectacle ever played upon the stage of which this fine old mediæval castle was the theatre.
The final act of the ceremony took place before a throng of princes, prelates and various seigneurs and minor vassals of all the neighbouring kingdoms and principalities. The Emperor Sigismond, Amadée VIII, who was to be the new duke, dined alone upon a raised dais in the Grande Salle, and the service was made by “a richly dressed throng of seigneurs mounted on brilliantly caparisoned chargers.” This is quoted from a historical chronicle, which however neglects to state the quality of the service. It is quite possible that it may not have been above reproach.
Here, a couple of centuries later, another Victor-Amadée married the Princesse Henriette, Duchesse d’Orléans. The bride to be had never met her future husband until they came together at a little village near-by, as she was journeying to the Savoyan castle for the ceremony. Says the chronicle: “When the princess saw the pageant, at the head of which marched Victor-Amadée, the fair young man of distinguished and martial bearing, without a moment’s hesitation, casting to the winds all her previous instruction in matters of etiquette, she flew down the stairs and into the street and finally into the arms of the duke.”
The marriage was not, however, a happy one. The duke became disloyal to his vows and left his wife to pine and moan away her days in the ducal chateau whilst he went off campaigning for other hearts and lands. He acquired Sicily, and became the first King of Sicily and Sardinia, and paved the way for the future greatness of his house, but this was not accomplished by adherence to the code of marital constancy.
The Chateau de Chambéry was finally abandoned definitely by the Savoyan dukes, who, when they became also monarchs of Sardinia, took up their residence at Turin. The “beaux jours” had passed never to return. Henceforth its career was to be less brilliant, for it but rarely received even passing visits from its masters. In 1745 it was considerably damaged by fire; in 1775 it was, in a way, furbished up and put in order for the marriage of Charles Emmanuel and Madame Clotilde of France, but again, in 1798, it was ravaged by fire.
From 1793 to 1810 the chateau was the headquarters of the officialdom of the newly formed Département du Mont Blanc, and in 1860 it was used as the Préfecture of the Département de la Savoie. Napoleon III, journeying this way in 1860, decided to make it an imperial residence and certain transformations to that end were undertaken, but it never came to real distinction again, save that it exists as an admirable example of a “monument historique” of the old régime.
It was on the esplanade, beneath the windows of the chateau, that Amadée VI won the title of the Comte Vert, because of the preponderant colours of his arms and costume in a tournament which was held here in 1348.
The third of Chambéry’s classic sights, “Les Charmettes,” is the “delicious habitation” rendered so celebrated by Rousseau. One arrives at “Les Charmettes” by a discreet and shady by-path. It has been preserved quite in its primitive state and is devoid of any pretence whatever. Its charm is idealistic, romantic and intimate. Nothing grandiose has place here. It is a simple two-story, sloping tiled-roof habitation of the countryside. As the “Confessions” puts it, “Les Charmettes” was discovered thus: “Apres avoir un peu cherché nous nous fixâmes au Charmettes … à la porte de Chambéry, mais retirée et solitaire, comme si l’on en était à cent lieus.”
This dwelling where Jean Jacques passed so many of his “rares bons jours” of his
adventurous life has been bought by the city, and will henceforth be guarded as a public monument, a tourist shrine like the Chateau des Ducs and La Grande Chartreuse. Here Madame de Warens will reign again in the effigy of a reproduction of Quentin de la Tour’s famous portrait, possessed of that “air caressant et tendre” and “sourire angelique” which so captured the author of the “Confessions.” Arthur Young, that observant English agriculturalist, who travelled so extensively in France, paid a warm tribute to Rousseau’s good fairy when he wrote: “There was something so amiable in her character that in spite of her frailties her name rests among those few memories connected with us by ties more easily felt than described.”
In one of his stories Alphonse Daudet tells us of a bourgeois who had purchased an old chateau, and was driven away from it by the ghosts of the family which had preceded him as proprietors. Surely something of the same kind might have happened to that citizen of the United States who proposed to transport “Les Charmettes” to Chicago. The offer was declined and that is how the city of Chambéry came to possess it for all time. It is well that this took place, for there is hardly a house in Europe in which one would imagine that the ghosts of history would so persistently survive.
Not only was “Les Charmettes” and Madame de Warens connected so intimately, but they were also associated with another name less known in the world of letters. Hear what the “Confessions” has to say:
“He was a young man from Viaud; his father, named Vintzinried, was a self-styled captain of the Chateau de Chillon on Lac Leman. The son was a hair-dresser’s assistant and was running about the world in that quality when he came to present himself to Madame de Warens, who received him well, as she did all travellers, and especially those from her own country. He was a big, dull blond, well-made enough, his face insipid, his intelligence the same, speaking like a beautiful Leander … vain, stupid, ignorant, insolent.” For the rest one is referred to the “Confessions.”
Within a radius of fifty kilometres of Chambéry there are more than thirty historic chateaux or fortresses of the middle ages and the Renaissance. Many are in an admirable, if not perfect, state of preservation, and all offer something of historic and artistic interest, though manifestly not all can be included in a rush across France. This fact is patent; that a picturesquely disposed and imposing castle or chateau adds much to the pleasing aspect of a landscape, and here in this land of mountain peaks and smiling valleys the prospect is as varied as one could hope to find. Built often on a mountain slope – and as often on a mountain peak – frequently within sight of one another, the dwellers therein would have been glad of some means of “wireless” communication between their houses, for not always were the seigneurs at war with their neighbours.
Off to the southward, towards Saint Michel de Maurienne, is one of the most conspicuous of these hill-top chateaux. Chignin is still the proud relic of an ancient chateau which is a land-mark for miles around. It has no history worth recounting, but is as much like the conventional Rhine castle of reality and imagination as any to be seen away from the banks of that turgid stream. On a lofty eminence are four great towers to remind one of the more extensive structure to which they were once connected. These ruins, and another rebuilt tower of the old chateau of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, are now practically all devoted to the religious usages of the Chartreux, but in spite of this they present a militant aspect such as one usually associates with things secular.
The round of Lac Bourget, which environs Chambéry on the north, suggests many historic souvenirs of the dukes and the days when they held their court at the Chateau de Chambéry.
Between Chambéry and Aix-les-Bains, just beside that wide dusty road along which scorch the twentieth century nouveau riche, who with their villas and gigantic hotels have all but spoiled this idyllic corner of old Europe, rise the walls of the Chateau de Montagny, captured in 1814 by the allied armies marching against France, and which still conserves, embedded in its portal, a great shot, one of a broadside which finally battered in its door. If one would see war-like souvenirs still more barbarous, a cast of the eye off towards Montmélian and Miolans will awaken even more bloody ones. Their story is told elsewhere in these pages.
At Bourget du Lac, a dozen kilometres out, are the ruins of the Chateau de Bourget, within sight of the ancient Lacus Castilion, and a near neighbour of the celebrated Abbey of Hautecombe.
Comte Amé V was born in the Chateau de Bourget in 1249. It had previously belonged to the Seigneur de la Rochette, and during the thirteenth century was occupied continually by the princes of the house of Savoy. As may be judged by all who view, its site was most ravishing, and though one may not even imagine what its architectural display may actually have been it is known that Amé V bestowed much care and wealth upon it when he came to man’s estate. A pupil of Giotto’s was brought from Italy to superintend the decorations, and evidences have been found in the ruined tower at the right of the present heap of ruins which suggest some of the decorative splendour which the building one day possessed. In spite of its fragmentary condition the ruin of the Chateau de Bourget is one of the most romantically disposed souvenirs of its era in Savoy, and one may well echo the words of a local poet who has praised it with all sincerity.
“O lac, te souvient-il … des beaux jours du vieux castel.”
The chronicles, too, have much to say of the brilliant succession of seigneurs who came to visit the Comtes de Savoie here in their wildwood retreat, “a line of counts as noble, rich and powerful as sovereigns of kingdoms.”
The sepulchre of the Savoyan counts in the old Abbey of Hautecombe must naturally form a part of any pilgrimage to the neighbouring chateau. For no reason whatever can it be neglected by the visitor to these parts, the less so by the chateau-worshipper just because it is a religious foundation. It is in fact the mausoleum of the princes of the house of Savoy. Within its walls are buried various members of the dynasty who would have made of it the Valhalla of their time.
“Il est un coin de terre, au pied d’une montagne
Que baigne le lac du Bourget
…
Hautecombe! port calme! O royal monastere!
Abri des fils de Saint Bernard.”
At the extreme northerly end of the Lac du Bourget is the ancient Manoir de Châtillon, sitting high on an isolated and wooded hillside above the gently lapping waters, and in full view of the snow-capped mountains of the Alpine chain to the eastward.
Here was born, towards the end of the twelfth century, Geoffroi de Châtillon, son of Jean de Châtillon and Cassandra Cribelli, sister of Pope Urban III. In every way the edifice is an ideally picturesque one, as much so because of its site and its historical foundation. As an architectural glory it is a mélange of many sorts, with scarce a definite æsthetic attribute. It is as an historical guide-post that it appears in its best light. Its chief deity, Geoffroi, became a canon and chancellor of the chapter at Milan; later he entered the religious retreat of Hautecombe, from which Gregory IX finally drew him forth to make him a cardinal-bishop. He ultimately succeeded to the pontifical robes and tiara himself as Celestin IV (1241). He died eighteen days later, poisoned, it is said, so his reign at the head of Christendom was perhaps the briefest on record.
Bordeau, another ruined memory of mediævalism, also overlooks the Lac du Bourget from near-by.
Aix-les-Bains is of course the lode-stone which draws the majority of travellers to this corner of the world. It is but a city of pleasure, a modern “Spa,” the outgrowth of another of Roman times when they took “cures” more seriously. It has the reputation to-day, among those who are really in the whirl of things, as being the gayest, if not the most profligate – and there is some suspicion of that – watering place in Europe. Judging from prices alone, and admitting the disposition or willingness of those who would be gay to pay high prices without a murmur, this is probably so.
The site of Aix-les-Bains is lovely, and its waters really beneficial – so the doctors say, and probably with truth. Its Casino is only second to that of Monte Carlo.
The chief charm of Aix-les-Bains after all is, or ought to be, its accessibility to the historic masterpieces roundabout, and its delightful situation by the shores of the “lac bleu” whose praises were so loudly sung by Lamartine in “Raphael.”
North from Chambéry and east from Aix-les-Bains, is a mountain region known as Les Bauges, a little known and less exploited region. It is a charming isolated corner of Savoy, where once roamed the gorgeous equipages of the Ducs de Savoie, who here hunted the wild boar, the deer and the bears and foxes to their hearts’ content. To-day pretty much all game of this nature has disappeared, save an occasional sanglier, or wild boar, which, when met with, usually turns tail and runs.
Midway in this mountain land between Aix-les-Bains and Albertville is Le Chatelard, a tiny townlet on the banks of a mountain torrent, the Chéran. On a hill above the town, at a height of nearly three thousand feet above the sea level, are the insignificant remains of the chateau of Thomas de Savoie. Scant remains they are to be sure, endowed with a history as scant, since little written word is to be met with concerning them.
Otherwise the chateau is a very satisfactory historical monument.
After climbing a tortuous winding path one comes suddenly upon a great walled barrier through which opens a door on which is to be read:
ON EST PRIE
DE FERMER LES
PORTES
(J’exige)
The last line is delicious. Of course one would close the doors after the mere intimation that it was desired that they should be closed. The proprietor says that he demands it, but he takes no measures to see that his demands are carried out. What pretence! All the same the pilgrimage is worth the making, but it’s not an easy jaunt.