THE BROCHURE SERIES The Château of Chambord: France Louis XVI. Sconces OCTOBER, 1900 [Illustration: PLATE LXXV CHAMBORD: SOUTHERN FAÇADE] THE BROCHURE SERIES OF ARCHITECTURAL ILLUSTRATION. 1900. OCTOBER No. 10. THE CHÂTEAU OF CHAMBORD: FRANCE The Château of Chambord is one of the most unique palaces of the Renaissance in existence. "It is," writes Jules Loiseleur, "the Versailles of the feudal monarchy; and was to the Château of Blois, that central residence of the Valois, what Versailles was to the Tuilleries,--the country-seat of royalty. Tapestries from Arras, Venetian mirrors, curiously sculptured chests, crystal chandeliers, massive silver furniture, and miracles of all the arts, were amassed in this palace during eight reigns, and dispersed in a single day by the breath of the Revolution. [Illustration: LANTERN OF THE GREAT STAIRCASE CHAMBORD] "It has often been asked why Francis I., to whom the banks of the Loire presented many marvelous sites, selected such a wild and forsaken spot in the midst of arid plains for the erection of the strange building which he planned. His peculiar choice has been attributed to his passion for the chase and also because of the memory of his amours with the beautiful Comtesse de Thoury, whom he had visited in that neighborhood before he ascended the throne. Independently of these motives, which no doubt counted in his selection, perhaps the very wildness of the place and its distance from the Loire, which reminded him too much of the cares of royalty, was a determining reason. Kings, like private individuals, and even more than they, experience the need at times of burying themselves, and therefore make a hidden and far-away nest where they may be their own masters and live to please themselves. Moreover, Chambord, with its countless rooms, its secret stairways, and its subterranean passages, seems to have been built for one who, tired of the blaze of royal glory, sought here for shadow and mystery. At the same time when he was rearing Chambord in the heart of the uncultivated plains of the Sologne, Francis I. built in the midst of the Blois de Boulogne a château, where, from time to time, he shut himself up with learned men and artists, and to which the courtiers, who were positively forbidden there, gave the name of Madrid, in memory of the prison in which their master had suffered. But Chambord, like Madrid, was not a prison; it was a retreat. [Illustration: PLATE LXXVI CHAMBORD: GENERAL VIEW]