Chapter 6 THE CHTEAU DE MAISONS

NOT long ago the Chateau of Asay-le-Rideau, a masterpiece of the French art of the sixteenth century, was in peril. Today it is the turn of the Chateau de Maisons, a masterpiece of the French art of the seventeenth century. But this time it is not a question of a peril which is more or less distant. The destruction of Maisons is a fact which is decided upon. The property has just fallen into the hands of a real estate speculator. He intends to cut up what remains of the park into house lots.

As to the chateau, the wreckers will first rip out the magnificent mantelpieces and the incomparable sculptures which adorn the walls; they will sell them; then they will tear down the building. The fragments will serve to fill the moats, and on the ground thus made level they will build suburban villas.

Original

The Department of Fine Arts looks on powerlessly at this act of abominable vandalism, for the Chateau de Maisons is not listed as a national monument. And not one of those amateurs who spend fortunes every day to buy childish ornaments, restored pictures and ragged tapestries, not a single one of these can be found who will preserve for France one of the monuments which are the glory of French architecture. Not one of those public administrations which incessantly build at enormous expense hospitals, asylums, colleges, has thought that it might be able, by utilizing this vast building, to render at the same stroke a brilliant service to art and to history! It is said that the department of Seine-et-Oise is looking for a site on which to build a hospital; why did it not long ago decide to appropriate the Chateau de Maisons for this purpose?

It is intolerable to think that one of the most beautiful residences of old France, situated at the very gates of Paris, is going to be stupidly demolished, at a time when the curators of our museums can find the necessary money to purchase archaeological curiosities and foreign trifles! 11 And you will see that, as soon as Maisons is stripped by the house wreckers, it will be found very proper to purchase at great expense for the Louvre a few of the statues and a part of the bas-reliefs which vandals will have been permitted to tear from the place where Fran?ois Mansart had them placed!

The agony of Maisons will have lasted more than seventy years. It was the banker Laffitte who, after 1830, commenced the work of destruction, made way with the terraces and the cascades which were placed between the chateau and the Seine, and demolished the great stables, a magnificent building decorated with precious sculptures, which was the marvel of Maisons. It was he who cut up the greater part of the park, five hundred hectares, and cut down the centenarian trees of the domain of the Longueils.

After Laffitte, what remained of Maisons passed to less barbarous hands. Another proprietor tried to restore some beauty to the fragments of park which had been preserved. Even today there remain pretty thickets, a fine greensward, avenues lined with great antique busts, while the chateau itself is almost intact.

Every Parisian knows, at least by having seen it from the window of a railway train, this superb construction which tomorrow will be no more than a pile of rubble and plaster. It ravishes us by the beauty of its lines, by the happy choice of the site where it is placed, by the just proportion of the architecture to the hillside on which it is seated.

The fa?ade facing the court of honor is composed of two superposed orders. In the pediments of the windows are sculptured eagles, and women, terminated like sphinxes, as lions or dogs. To the right and left, before the pavilions of the wings, rise two projections which form terraces at the height of the first story. The whole monument has a charming air of nervous elegance.

The vestibule (here was formerly the marvelous grille which today closes the gallery of Apollo in the Louvre) rests on beautiful Doric columns. The vault is decorated, on its four faces, with grand bas-reliefs representing four divinities: never did sculptures show more docility, more suppleness, in clothing architectural forms without overloading them, without injuring the purity of their lines. And everywhere the eagle of the Longueils unfolds its great wings of stone.

In the halls of this devastated chateau, there remains nothing but the sculptured decoration. But what a masterpiece! Under the strong and intelligent discipline of Fran?ois Mansart, Gilles Guérin, Buyster, Van Obstal and Sarazin surpassed themselves. The great mantelpiece where, under a medallion of the great Condé, an antique triumph is marshaled, the adorable playing children which Van Obstal carved above the cornice of the grand stone staircase, the noble caryatides which sustain the dome of the bedchamber, all the decoration of the guardroom where, about 1840, a poor painter called Bidault painted tiresome views of the Bay of Naples, all the sculptures scattered through the different rooms of the chateau, form one of the most perfect achievements, if not the most perfect, which the seventeenth century has left us. The wreckers are going to ruin it, they are going to annihilate it.

And they will annihilate also that admirable dining hall where the Count of Artois set up, at the end of the eighteenth century, Houdon's Ceres, Boizot's Vertumnus, Clodion's Erigone, and Foucou's Flora. Plaster casts have replaced the originals on the ancient pedestals. But the hall has retained its coffered ceiling, whose bas-reliefs equal, in grace, fancy and richness of invention, the most delicate works of the Renaissance, in surety and simplicity of execution, the purest works of Greek genius. They will find wretches who will pull down these sacred stones with pick and crowbar! And they will also find those who will tear from the little oratory of Maisons its exquisite, its delicious marquetries!

When we wander through the deserted apartments of the old mansion, now devoted to demolition, the heart contracts, and we ask with anger how such vandalism is still possible in a period when everybody, even to the least politician, talks of art and beauty!

The Chateau de Maisons was built by Fran?ois Mansart, between 1642 and 1651, for René de Longueil.

The family of Longueil, originating in Normandy, where its feudal possessions were near Dieppe, possessed the territory of Maisons from the end of the fourteenth century. It has increased it by successive acquisitions.

René de Longueil, Councilor in Parliament, had just been named president of a court, when he commissioned Mansart to build him a new chateau on his domain. He gave entire freedom to his architect in plan and decoration. It is related that Mansart, after he had built the right wing, leveled it with the ground to begin it over again on a new plan, because he was not satisfied with his work. The expense was enormous: it has been estimated at more than six millions. Maisons, when it was finished, was considered one of the most beautiful chateaux of France. How could Longueil afford this royal fancy? We are very ill-informed on this point today. All that is known is that in 1650 the president was named superintendent of finance; when, shortly afterward, he was dismissed, he was responsible for this charming and significant remark: "They are wrong; I have taken care of my own business; I was about to look out for theirs."

Louis XIV sometimes visited Maisons. He came there unexpectedly with the court, July 10, 1671, fleeing from Saint-Germain, where the Duke of Anjou was dying. Bossuet brought the King the news of the death, and the Queen's fool, Tricomini, transmitted it to Mlle, de Montpensier in these terms: "You, great lords, you will all die like the least of men; here is one who comes to say that your nephew is dead." This fool talked like Bossuet. Mlle, de Montpensier adds that she went to pay her respects to the King and that she wept bitterly with him. "He was deeply afflicted, and with reason, for this child was very pretty." After the death of René de Longueil, the chateau passed to his descendants, the last of whom died in 1732. It then passed to the Marquis of Soye-court, who let it fall into ruin; but in 1777 the Count of Artois bought it, restored it, and embellished it magnificently.

We reach the upper stories of the chateau by a narrow and winding staircase, ensconced in the thickness of the wall. Here is a maze of corridors and tiny chambers. A larger apartment, however, exists in the center of the building, below the lantern which crowns the roof. It is ornamented with mythological paintings and Danae adorns the ceiling over the bed in the alcove. This is the chamber of Voltaire.

Original

The great intimacy between Voltaire and the President de Maisons is well known. The latter, great-grandson of the creator of the chateau, was a studious young man of delicate tendencies. At the age of eighteen he was President of Parliament. Re was said to be a good Latinist. His education had been irreligious and he loved science. He had established a chemical laboratory, where he manufactured the most perfect Prussian blue which could be found in Europe, and a botanic garden of rare plants where he cultivated coffee. He belonged to the Academy of Science, and also possessed a collection of coins.

In 1723 Voltaire came to make his home with his friend. He found there a good reception and a society ready to admire him. He knew, above all, that the President was the nephew of Madame de Villars, and Voltaire was then in all the heat of his passion for the Marshal's wife....

He arrived at Maisons in the month of November. He planned to finish his tragedy of Marianne in this retreat. But he was immediately taken sick with the smallpox and thought he would die. So he sent for the curate of Maisons and confessed. The Dana? of the alcove possibly heard the confession of Voltaire! Doctor Gervasi saved the dying man by making him drink "two hundred pints of lemonade." As soon as he was cured, to disembarrass his hosts and not abuse their goodness, Voltaire had himself taken to Paris. Then occurred an episode which almost became tragic. We must let Voltaire tell it:

"I was scarcely two hundred yards from the chateau when a part of the ceiling of the chamber where I had lain fell in flames. The neighboring chambers, the apartments which were below them, the precious furniture with which they were adorned, all were consumed by the fire. The loss amounted to a hundred thousand livres and, without the help of the engines for which they sent to Paris, one of the most beautiful edifices of the kingdom would have been destroyed. They hid this strange news from me on my arrival; I knew it when I awoke; you cannot imagine how great was my despair; you know the generous care which M. de Maisons had taken of me; I had been treated like a brother in his house, and the reward of so much goodness was the burning of his chateau. I could not conceive how the fire had been able to catch so suddenly in my chamber, where I had left only an almost extinguished brand. I learned that the cause of this conflagration was a beam which passed exactly under the fireplace.... The beam of which I speak had charred little by little from the heat of the hearth....

"Madame and Monsieur de Maisons received the news more tranquilly than I did; their generosity was as great as their loss and as my grief. M. de Maisons crowned his bounty by giving me the news himself in letters which make very evident that he excels in heart as in mind; he occupied himself with the care of consoling me and it almost seemed as if it had been my chateau which was burned."

And it is not only the shade of Voltaire which haunts the apartments of Maisons! We may also be shown the chamber of Lafayette. In addition, decorations in Empire style recall to us that in 1804 the chateau was bought and inhabited by Lannes....

But what good is it to evoke these memories, since the admirable beauty of the architecture and of the decorations has not sufficed to arrest the enterprise of the housebreakers? 12

* * *