Castles -- France; Touraine (France) -- Description and travel
"Here lies the noble Damoyselle Agnes Seurelle, in her life time Lady of
Beaulte, of Roquesserie, of Issouldun, of Vernon-sur-Seine. Kind and
pitiful to all men, she gave liberally of her goods to the Church and to
the poor. She died the ninth day of February of the Year of Grace 1449.
Pray for her soul. Amen."
You may remember that at the Abbey of Jumieges we saw a richly carved
sarcophagus which contains the heart of Agnes Sorel. M. La Tour says
that she left a legacy to Jumieges, with the request that her heart
should be buried in the abbey. At one time a beautiful kneeling figure
of Agnes, offering her heart to the Virgin in supplication, surmounted
the black marble sarcophagus; but this was destroyed, when and how it is
not known.
In one of the oldest parts of the chateau are the bedroom and oratory of
Anne of Brittany. From these rooms there is a lovely view of the Indre
and of the old town with its steep gables, crenelated roofs, and
picturesque chimneys. The walls of the little oratory are richly
decorated with exquisite carvings of the Queen's devices, the tasseled
cord and the ermine, which even a coat of whitewash has not deprived of
their beauty.
M. La Tour, whom Lydia has dubbed "our H.B.R." handy-book of reference,
tells us that the origin of Queen Anne's favorite device is so far back
in history that it is somewhat mythical. The ermine of which she was so
proud is said to have come from her ancestress, Madame Inoge, wife of
Brutus and daughter of Pindarus the Trojan. It appears that during a
hunting expedition an ermine was pursued by the dogs of King Brutus. The
poor little creature took refuge in the lap of Inoge, who saved it from
death, fed it for a long time and adopted an ermine as her badge.
We had spent so much time in the Chateau Royale and in the various
dungeons that there was little space left for a visit to the very
remarkable Church of St. Ours adjoining the chateau, which, as Viollet
le Duc says, has a remarkable and savage beauty of its own. After seeing
what is left of the girdle of the Virgin, which the verger thought it
very important that we should see, we spent what time we had left in
gazing up at the interesting corbeling of the nave and the two hollow,
stone pyramids that form its roof.
Miss Cassandra and I flatly refused to descend into the depths below,
although the verger with a lighted candle stood ready to conduct us into
a subterranean chapel, which was, at one time, connected with the
chateau. We had seen quite enough of underground places for one day, and
were glad to pass on into the more livable portion of the castle, which
is now inhabited by the sous-prefect of the district, and from thence
into the open, where we stopped to rest under the wide-spreading
chestnut tree planted here by Francis I so many years since.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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