LA LISARDIERE.
IN the first days of April, the lanes of Anjou were full of primroses and violets, the fields were thickly scattered with cowslips, while over the banks, in wood and hedgerow, the blue stars of the wild periwinkle ran and crept everywhere. All the young leaf-buds were swelling under soft and constant showers ; the grass by the little rivers was very green ; some- times there were hours of gentle sunshine, while the white clouds lingered on the horizon, leaving lakes of clear, pale- blue sky. The air was chilly, yet mild ; it was just what one imagines that early spring ought to be. Morning and evening, the great blazing wood-fires were very pleasant; towards the middle of the day, they had a way of smouldering and going out. Then was the time for walks in the sweet fresh air, about the flower-strewn country, through the wet, sandy mud and stones of that labyrinth of lanes. And these are not mere objectless country walks ; you cannot go far without
coining on some curious traces of the old history of the province, some relic of its old great families, of its old distinction. Anjou is full of legends and stories, and no wonder : for all the romance of its former greatness lingers on in ruins, buried sometimes in what are now the most out- of-the-way corners of the country. No high-road, for instance, would ever bring a traveller to La Lisardiere, the ruined chateau and cradle of a family that still exists, among the oldest and most distinguished of Anjou.
Wandering away at the back of the Chateau de B—, which once itself belonged to the same family, and was pro- bably quite as old as La Lisardiere, but was rebuilt in the seventeenth century, so that life still goes on there with all its charm and cheerfulness;—wandering up through the lanes, with their high banks and straggling hedges full of flowers, and vineyards beyond them sloping to the south, we pass by a little stone farm here and there, with low archways, and a green pond, and no gates, and a fierce dog that rushes out barking till some distant voice calls him back. Sometimes we skirt a field, where a woman in a short blue petticoat is ploughing with two oxen and a donkey, her dog also in attendance. She shouts at her beasts, and uses a long stick freely, as the plough lurches slowly along in its shallow furrow. From this peasant-farming region—instructive for those interested in the subject—we climb up gradually to the higher ground of fir-woods and commons, and turn round to look back over the curious, quiet view, all soft brown and purple, for it is too early for green leaves, and there are few evergreens below the fir-woods. The woods have not more than the first reddening of spring on their broad brown surface ; here and there is the sparkle of water, the little river in the valley ; and there is the village spire, a few roofs near it, the peaked towers of the chciteau we have left, another more distant house, almost hidden by trees ; all these grey roofs shine in the soft, cloudy light. The road between the woods is rough and very lonely, its margin tufted with flowering gorse and dead bracken and green feathering broom. The woods here are low and young, and constantly cut down ; numbers of trees lie neatly in heaps together, waiting to be sold and carried away. Beyond the woods is a lonely place with a wide view over what might be a Surrey common, only it is so much wilder : here four roads meet, and here malefactors used to be hung in chains by the seigneurs of the old chciteau, the object of our pilgrimage. The road goes on across the upland, presently leaving the wild ground and running on between the hedges of high, bare fields, one of them cut and laid almost like an English hedge; over this, away to the right, one can see a group of old farm-buildings, known as le Moulin-ci-vent. The windmill tower is still there, but the arms are gone ; it is used now as a granary. A smart new gate, all made of little bars, in the middle of the transmogrified hedge, has quite an odd effect in this wild country : here one sees the first marks of a certain new farmer who has lately come, and has brought with him all sorts of new ideas from the Bourbonnais.
The lane breaks into a steep field, something like an old quarry, with its hollows and heights, just as we are beginning to find the walk a long one. There it is : there is La Lisar- diere : and all this unevenness of ground is only the remains of its old circle of fortification. In the valley, looking vague and grey against the grey and green of slopes and fields behind it, with trees, larger and older than one has lately seen, scattered about near it, stands this melancholy ruin of one of the greatest old chateaux of Anjou. Its most remark- able feature is the tall, thin, grey tower, which they call the tour du guetteur, rising up in the middle of the buildings, with an almost human air of peering for ever over the hill. tops round. There is the great square house, its steep grey roof half in ruins, its white walls stained by time, its windows, with their carving and arches, half built up with mortar and stones. At the corner nearest us, as we look down from our field, is a great round tower which seems to have been cut in half, a great part of the chateau having been pulled down. Beyond, near the tour du guetteur, is another round tower, seeming to support its tall, slight neighbour; part of the house next this is roofless, and falling fast to decay. Beyond, again, is another great block of buildings; here, we think, may have been the banquetting-hall; it has a stately row of windows, and great arched doors from the yard. Outside is a well, and near it a flight of steps leading down
underground to immense dungeons or cellars. In front of these grand old buildings is a great wild yard, without gate or entrance of any kind, with rows of cowsheds and pigsties under the windows, where some of the greatest people in Anjou used to look out, perhaps not more than a hundred years ago. Every trace of them, their servants, their defences, is gone now; but the chateau is well guarded, nevertheless,— a fierce black dog and a still fiercer gander make it a rather serious matter to walk down the green slope of the hill, cross the yard, and approach the old ruinous steps which lead up to the once stately door, in search of that advanced farmer from the Bourbonnais, who lives here and farms most of the land all round on the metayer system. The estate was sold some years ago by its old family to some modern man, who makes what he can out of it.
We braved dog and gander successfully, and in the yard were fortunate enough to meet the farmer himself, a good- looking, fair-haired, blue-eyed man, dressed like any other peasant, in blouse and fur cap. One need hardly say that he does nearly all his work himself. He was glad to see us, though a little condeseending,—the manners of the Bourbonnais are more modern than those of Anjou. He was very good- natured, however, and took us all round the curious old buildings, in which he seemed to feel a really intelligent interest. In several of the great rooms there are still the immense chimney-pieces of that country, elaborately carved in stone, or painted in fresco ; now, of course, all cracked and faded and ruinous. In one of the lower rooms, there is a deep well, no doubt very necessary in those old times when La Lisardiere was fortified. Several yards down this well there is an iron door, probably the entrance to some secret room, or underground passage. The whole place, outside and in, is a scene of old feudal romance, and its history, if it could be written, would be a strange one. I believe that one French writer of some distinction, knowing it and the neighbourhood well, has already made it the scene of a historical novel. The farmer presently brought us into the immense room near the entrance, where he and his wife live. The furniture con- sisted of a table and a few chairs, a large press, and a bed covered with a duvet about two feet thick. A few sticks were burning on the hearth. The farmer's wife, a pale, worn- looking woman, was busily engaged with a small maid- servant in washing pots. She looked kind and smiling, but did not join much in the conversation : her husband was quite the superior being. He sat down by the fire and talked like an Englishman, telling us all his plans and prospects, and how by his superior farming he meant to make four times as much as the general run of farmers in that country. He spoke most loyally of his landlord ; he would follow him to the moon, he said ; and he was convinced that the metayer system was the fairest and most profitable for himself that could have been invented. It had not taken him long to discover that one of his visitors was English ; he had seen an Englishman once at Moulins, where he came from. His wife also brightened up here ; she had once had a letter from England. It is probably not often that the tenants of La Lisardiere have their solitude invaded by curious visitors. In these days it is not every one who knows the way into that lonely valley, where a watchman on the tall grey tower might watch for ever, now, without seeing anything more dangerous than a peasant, or a casual party of people taking a country walk, arousing quite unnecessary rage in the minds of geese and sheep-dogs. It was all one of those strange, romantic con- trasts which one meets with so often in a country like France,— the grand old ruined chateau, with its peasant inhabitants, who yet, in the spirit of old hospitality, light up their sticks and bring out their cider for any stranger who pays them a visit; stateliness and squalor, the despair of old Anjou, the hopeful- ness and enterprise of modern Bourbonnais ; crumbling towers and new cowsheds, hay and corn stored in old banquetting- halls ; the feudal system and the mitayer system, sheltered by the same walls, living in the same rooms. Even the young descendants of the first received and entertained, in what might have been the halls of their own ancestors, by the representatives of the second.
All was quiet as we walked away from La Lisardiere and climbed the green hillside again, in the soft sunlight of that April afternoon. The great black dog was tired of barking, and watched us lazily ; the irrepressible gander had been shut up in some corner of the old buildings. Often looking back as
we crossed the brow of the hill, we gradually lost sight of the strange old place in the valley, its scattered farmyard, its ruinous walls and broken roofs, grand in their ruin. At last we could see nothing but the grey, slight top of the tour du guetteur, the landmark of La Lisardiere, which watched us away, till we began to descend the other side of the high ground, and looking back, could see nothing ; valley and chateau, with all its wild old precincts, had vanished like a dream.
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