Below a portrait of Madame de Sévigné, Bussy caused to be inscribed the following: "Marie de Rabutin: vive agreable et sage, fille de Celse Béninge de Rabutin et Marie de Coulanges et femme de Henri de Sévigné." This, one may be justified in thinking, is quite a biography in brief, the sort of a description one might expect to find in a seventeenth century "Who's Who." Beneath the portrait of her daughter--Comtesse de Grignan--the inscription reads thus: "Françoise de Sévigné; jolie, amiable, enfin marchant sur les pas de sa mere sur le chapitre des agreements, fille de Henri de Sévigné et de Marie de Rabutin et femme du Comte de Grignan." A rather more extended biography than the former, but condensed withal. Another neighbouring room is known as the Petite Chambre Sévigné, and contains some admirable sculptures and paintings. Leading to the famous Tour Dorée is a long gallery furnished after the style of the time of Henri II, whilst a great circular room in the tower itself is richly decorated and furnished, including two _faisceaux_ of six standards, each bearing the Bussy colours. Legend and fable have furnished the motive of the frescoes of this curious apartment, and under one of them, "Céphale et Procris," in which one recognizes the features of Bussy and the Marquise, his particular friend, are the following lines: "Eprouver si sa femme a le coeur précieux, C'est être impertinent autant que curieux: Un peu d'obscurité vaut, en cette matière, Mille fois mieux que la lumière." Not logical, you say, and unprincipled. Just that! But as a documentary expression of the life of the times it is probably genuine. Here and elsewhere on the walls of the chateau are many really worthy works of art, portraits by Mignard, Lebrun, Just, and others, including still another elaborate series of fourteen, representing Richelieu, Louis XIII, Anne d'Autriche, Mazarin, Louis XIV. Again in the _plafond_ of the great tower are other frescoes representing the "Petits Amours" of the time, always with the interlaced cyphers of Bussy and Madame la Comtesse. From the Chambre Sévigné a gallery leads to the tribune of the chapel. Here is a portrait gallery of the kings of the third race, of the parents of Bussy, and of the four Burgundian dukes and duchesses of the race of Valois. The chapel itself is formed of a part of the Tour Ronde where are two canvasses of Poussin, a Murillo and one of Andrea del Sarto. The gardens and Park of the chateau are attributed to Le Notre, the garden-maker of Versailles. This may or may not be so, the assertion is advanced cautiously, because the claim has so often falsely been made of other chateau properties. The gardens here, however, were certainly conceived after Le Notre's magnificent manner. There is a great ornamental water environing the chateau some sixty metres in length and twelve metres in width, and this of itself is enough to give great distinction to any garden-plot. CHAPTER VI