All of its former gorgeousness is still there, and all the banalities
of the later period when Gaston of Orleans built his ugly wing, for
the "personally conducted" to marvel at, and honeymoon couples to
envy. The French are quite fond of visiting this shrine themselves,
but usually it is the young people and their mammas, and detached
couples of American and English birth that one most sees strolling
about the courts and apartments where formerly lords and ladies and
cavaliers moved and plotted.
The great chateau of the Counts of Blois is built upon an inclined
rock which rises above the roof-tops of the lower town quite in
fairy-book fashion. Commonly referred to as the Chateau de Blois, it
is really composed of four separate and distinct foundations; the
original chateau of the counts; the later addition of Louis XII.; the
palace of Francis I., and the most unsympathetically and dismally
disposed pavilion of Gaston of Orleans.
The artistic qualities of the greater part of the distinct edifice
which go to make up the chateau as it stands to-day are superb, with
the exception of that great wing of Gaston's, before mentioned, which
is as cold and unfeeling as the overrated palace at Versailles.
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