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