Scott on Waterloo by Walter Scott

Author:Walter Scott
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473521179
Publisher: Random House

But the French artizans, with that lack of all feeling of convenance, or propriety, which has well been described as a principal deficiency in their national character, have endeavoured to make fine things out of the frames themselves, by occupying the room of the superb plates of glass with paltry sheets of blue paper, patched over with gilded fleurs-de-lis, an expedient the pitiful effect of which may be easily conceived. If I understood my guide rightly, however, this work ought not to be severely criticised, being the free-will offering of the inhabitants of Chantilly, who had struggled, in the best manner their funds and taste would admit, to restore the chateau to something like an habitable condition when it was again to be possessed by its legitimate owner. This is the more likely, as the furniture of the duke’s own apartment is plain, simple, and in good taste. He seems popular among the inhabitants, who, the day preceding our arrival, had, under all the unfavourable circumstances of their situation, made a little fete to congratulate him upon his restoration, and to hail the white flag, which now once more floated from the dome of the offices, announcing the second restoration of the Bourbons.

Beside the little chateau are the vestiges of what was once the principal palace, and which, as such, might well have accommodated the proudest monarch in the world. It was situated on a rock, and surrounded by profound and broad ditches of the purest water, built in a style of the richest Gothic architecture, and containing within its precincts every accommodation which pomp or luxury could desire. The demolition has been so complete that little remains excepting the vaults from which the castle arose, and a ruinous flight of double steps, by which visitors formerly gained the principal entrance. The extent, number, and intricacy of the subterranean vaults were such as to afford a retreat for robbers and banditti, for which reason the entrances have been built up by order of the police. The chateau, when in its splendour, communicated with a magnificent theatre, with an orangery and greenhouse of the first order, and was surrounded by a number of separate parterres, or islands, decorated with statuary, with jets d’eau, with columns, and with vases, forming a perspective of the richest architectural magnificence. All is now destroyed, and the stranger only learns, from the sorrowful tale of his guide, that the wasted and desolate patches of ground intersected by the canals, once bore, and deserved, the names of the Gallery of Vases, the Parterre of the Orangerie, and the Island of Love. Such and so sudden is the downfall of the proudest efforts of human magnificence. Let us console ourselves, my dear friend, while we look from the bartizan of the old mansion upon the lake, and its corresponding barrier of mountains, that the beauties with which Nature herself has graced our country are more imperishable than those with which the wealth and power of the house of Bourbon once decorated the abode of Chantilly.

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