Sometimes the parish church
touches the castle on one side, and there is a private entrance for the
seigneurs. The interior arrangements in some of the old ones leave much
to be desired in the way of comfort and modern improvements,--lighting
very bad, neither gas nor electricity, and I should think no baths
anywhere, hardly a tub. On the banks of the Seine and the Loire, near
the great forests, in all the departments near Paris there are
quantities of chateaux--some just on the border of the highroad,
separated from it by high iron gates, through which one sees long
winding alleys with stone benches and vases with red geraniums planted
in them, a sun-dial and stiff formal rows of trees--some less
pretentious with merely an ordinary wooden gate, generally open, and
always flowers of the simplest kind, geraniums, sunflowers, pinks,
dahlias, and chrysanthemums--what we call a jardin de cure, (curate's
garden)--but in great abundance. With very rare exceptions the lawns are
not well kept--one never sees in this country the smooth green turf that
one does in England.
Some of the old chateaux are very stately--sometimes one enters by a
large quadrangle, quite surrounded by low arcades covered with ivy, a
fountain and good-sized basin in the middle of the courtyard, and a big
clock over the door--sometimes they stand in a moat, one goes over a
drawbridge with massive doors, studded with iron nails and strong iron
bolts and chains which defend the entrance, making one think of old
feudal days, when might was right, and if a man wanted his neighbours
property, he simply took it.
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