The Château De Chambord by Esther Singleton

JULES LOISELEUR.

Chambord is the Versailles of the feudal monarchy; it was to the Château de Blois, that central residence of the Valois, what Versailles was to the Tuileries; it was the country-seat of Royalty. Tapestries from Arras, Venetian mirrors, curiously sculptured chests, crystal chandeliers, massive silver furniture, and miracles of all the arts, amassed in this palace during eight reigns and dispersed in a single day by the breath of the Revolution, can never be collected again save under one condition: that there should be a sovereign sufficiently powerful and sufficiently artistic, sufficiently concerned about the glory and the memories of the ancient monarchy to make of Chambord what has been made out of the Louvre and Versailles -- a museum consecrated to all the intimate marvels, to all the curiosities of the Arts of the Renaissance, at least to all those with which the sovereigns were surrounded, something like the way the Hôtel de Cluny exhibits royal life.