Chapter 15 - Page 2

these there is the
usual number of specimens of the contemporary French
school, culled from the annual Salons and presented
to the museum by the State. Wherever the traveller
goes, in France, he is reminded of this very honorable
practice, - the purchase by the Government of a cer-
tain number of "pictures of the year," which are pre-
sently distributed in the provinces. Governments suc-
ceed each other and bid for success by different
devices; but the "patronage of art" is a plank, as we
should say here, in every platform. The works of art
are often ill-selected, - there is an official taste which
you immediately recognize, - but the custom is essen-
tially liberal, and a government which should neglect
it would be felt to be painfully common. The only
thing in this particular Musee that I remember is a
fine portrait of a woman, by Ingres, - very flat and
Chinese, but with an interest of line and a great deal
of style.

There is a castle at Nantes which resembles in
some degree that of Angers, but has, without, much
less of the impressiveness of great size, and, within,
much more interest of detail. The court contains the
remains of a very fine piece of late Gothic, a tall ele-
gant building of the sixteenth century. The chateau
is naturally not wanting in history. It was the residence
of the old Dukes of Brittany, and was brought, with
the rest of the province, by the Duchess Anne, the last
representative of that race, as her dowry, to Charles
VIII. I read in the excellent hand-book of M. Joanne
that it has been visited by almost every one of the
kings of France, from Louis XI. downward; and also
that it has served as a place of sojourn less voluntary
on the part of various other distinguished persons,
from the horrible Merechal de Retz, who in the fifteenth
century was executed at Nantes for the murder of a
couple of hundred young children, sacrificed in abomin-
able rites, to the ardent Duchess of Berry, mother of
the Count of Chambord, who was confined there for a
few hours in 1832, just after her arrest in a neigh-
boring house. I looked at the house in question - you
may see it from the platform in front of the chateau
- and tried to figure to myself that embarrassing scene.
The duchess, after having unsuccessfully raised the
standard of revolt (for the exiled Bourbons), in the
legitimist Bretagne, and being "wanted," as the phrase
is, by the police of Louis Philippe, had hidden herself
in a small but loyal house at Nantes, where, at the end
of five months of seclusion, she was betrayed, for gold,
to the austere M. Guizot, by one of her servants, an
Alsatian Jew named Deutz. For many hours before
her capture