"The Loire, cradle of French literature and cuisine. The Loire, where they spoke the purest French. He had come to know it relatively late in life. In his younger days he had avoided the area because of the picture it conjured up; all those coachloads of tourists with their cameras. The loss had been his."
The thoughts are those of Monsieur Pamplemousse, the French detective created by Michael Bond, author of the Paddington Bear books, in "Monsieur Pamplemousse and the Secret Mission." The sentiment, with a slight adjustment in age, also applies to me.For years I had stayed away, deciding that I wanted to spend vacations in France with the French and not with my fellow Americans, or contingents of Germans, Spaniards and Italians. And then, after friends invited me to visit their country house in a small Loire village about two and a half hours south of Paris, I found that it is possible to journey through the fabled valley and see more chateaus than video cameras. True, at Chambord and Chenonceau, you will encounter crowds, at least in summer. Chambord, the largest of the Loire chateaus, and Chenonceau, one of Catherine de Medici's favorites, which sits astride the River Cher, are icons of the Loire, Renaissance fantasylands with tourists and tour buses to match.
But there are many smaller chateaus brimming with French history that still get their fill of visitors but never seem to be overwhelmed, where one can look at the furnishings, paintings and wall hangings without peering over a forest of heads.
My three favorites are Cheverny, Sache and Azay-le-Rideau.
Cheverny, a magnificent white-stone 17th-century structure in the Sologne about a 20-minute ride from Blois, is, like Chenonceau, privately owned, but unlike the more famous castle it is still lived in by its owners, the descendants of the Hurault family. Henri Hurault, Count of Cheverny, the son of Philippe Hurault, Chancellor to Henri III and Henri IV, finished the chateau in 1634. It is made of a stone called bourre, which hardens and becomes whiter over the years and creates an impression of stately pristine beauty.
The chateau is dedicated to the hunt - appropriately so, since stag hunting is still a central activity at Cheverny from November to April, as it has been for centuries - and much in the house and the surrounding parkland is devoted to that preoccupation. But there is also a good deal that has nothing to do with the chase.
The grounds themselves convey an exquisite feeling of peace, particularly the old, grandly statuesque trees placed carefully along the lawn. Inside, the rooms are furnished richly but tastefully; there is at least one item in each to savor in great detail. Indeed, the furnishings are considered among the best in the Loire castles.
The canopied bed in the king's bedroom is covered in floral embroidered Persian silk, delicate bits of red and green on a beige background, from the mid-16th century. The chateau's small brochure notes that Henri IV slept in the bed when it was part of the previous castle on the site.
The large drawing room has a Titian portrait of Cosimo de Medici; the gallery contains a framed document about the Society of the Cincinnati signed by George Washington, a co-founder of the society, a group of officers in the Revolutionary War that included three ancestors of the owners.
In the tapestry room are two unusual clocks: a Louis XV balance-wheel clock that still works and provides the day, date, time and phase of the moon, and a mystery clock by Robert Houdin in which two glass tubes create a transparent column below the dial. The mystery is in trying to figure out where the works are. See if you can.
Outside the chateau, about 150 yards away, is an orangery where many art works from French museums were hidden during World War II. One of them was the Mona Lisa. Above all, though, Cheverny is a house of the hunt. Just up the first level of the main staircase, a pair of prehistoric antlers have been mounted on the wall. They are, according to the chateau's brochure, from a Cervus megacerus, an ancestor of the elk. More than 6,000 years old and native to Siberia, they are the first of many sets of antlers one encounters.
Most of those relics have been placed outside the chateau proper, in a trophy room whose walls are filled with almost 2,000 antlers removed from stags hunted since 1850. The antlers cover three walls of the large room; on the fourth is a stained-glass window created in 1982 that portrays the red-jacketed hunters, horses and hounds departing from the castle lawn.
Just outside the trophy room are the kennels, home to about 70 hounds, each a mixture of English foxhound and French Poitevin.
About an hour from Cheverny, in the little village of Sache, southwest of Tours and a few miles from Azay-le-Rideau, sits a small chateau, or manoir, that has none of the grandiloquence or splendor of its larger and better-known counterparts. Actually, if not for one aspect of its history, it would most probably be completely ignored today. But that aspect is a major one. For it was there that Honore de Balzac went to stay with his friends in the house of Jean de Margonne when his physician told him he had been working too hard.
Balzac journeyed to the countryside as requested but, the chateau's leaflet notes, he didn't listen to his doctor: often he would get into bed at 10 p.m., wake up at 2 in the morning and work continuously until dinnertime. It was at the chateau that he wrote, among other works, three of his best-known novels, "Pere Goriot," "Cesar Birotteau" and "Le Lys Dans la Vallee."
Now a Balzac museum, the chateau has many notable possessions, including printed proofs of his work with corrections in his handwriting. The corrections often overwhelm the printed text - Balzac would frequently cross out one word and replace it with a hundred new ones. The leaflet points out that because of the extensive changes, his printers refused to spend more than two hours at a time setting his words in type.
The drawing room is decorated with a delightful trompe l'oeil wallpaper of Balzac's day, printed to create the illusion of elaborate, heavy satin draperies. His bedroom has been set up exactly as it was when he worked and slept in it, and one can gently touch his bed, run one's fingers over the desk where he worked and gaze out the window at the forest that gave him inspiration.
As you leave the chateau, turn right and then make the first left. In a few seconds you will arrive at the village square, where a surprise awaits. Standing proudly in the plaza is a glorious red and blue sculpture created by Sache's most prominent 20th-century resident, Alexander Calder. The square is named in honor of the artist, who died in 1976.
Continue along the road, the D17, and in a few minutes you will arrive in the town of Azay-le-Rideau, home of the glorious little Renaissance chateau of the same name. You will encounter tour buses here, but they seem less conspicuous than they are at the larger castles.
The Chateau of Azay-le-Rideau is a personal favorite. There is much to admire inside, including a late-15th-century Spanish cabinet in the first-floor Green Room, covered with ivory inlay and gold leaf and filled with secret drawers, the Rodin molding of a Renaissance chimney piece in the dining room and the views of the Indre River from the staircase windows. Seen from the outside, the chateau sits peacefully on the Indre amid its water lilies, its small wooden bridges and its two miniature waterfalls.
Poetry on a small scale - small, of course, only in comparison to its giant sisters - Azay offers a rarely found perfection of line, scale and color.
Admire the grace of the rounded turrets in each corner, with their precisely spaced crenels and machicolations; as the chateau's brochure points out, these medieval military elements were chosen solely as ornaments, for the pleasure of their design.
As you look, you also begin to sense, quite enviously, that it all seems quite livable.
The chateau was begun in 1518 and finished in about 1525, its construction supervised by Philippa Lesbahy, the wife of Gilles Berthelot, Mayor of Tours and superintendent of finances under King Francois I. Philippa Lesbahy, however, had little time to savor the beauty of what she had created. Her husband soon fell into disfavor; he fled, and in 1527 Francois seized the castle.
The sad story is told in the castle's Spectacle Nocturne, a sound-and-light show in French performed every night in summer that is well worth attending.
If you don't understand French, concentrate on the spectacle: the lilting and majestic Renaissance music that accompanies the narration; the glory of the chateau floodlighted at night, its reflection shimmering in the Indre; the shining, youthful faces of the performers, who are clad in authentic Renaissance costumes and carry flaming torches as they portray the castle's former residents.
If after seeing all these chateaus, you feel an uncontrollable desire to live in one, even for a night, don't despair. It's possible, if a bit expensive.
South of Tours, just outside Montbazon on the road to Sache and Azay-le-Rideau, lies Chateau d'Artigny, a 20th-century structure that is a copy of an 18th-century castle and was built by the perfume magnate Francois Coty.
There are other chateau-hotels, of course, but d'Artigny is perhaps the best known and is among the most beautiful. It overlooks the Indre Valley, in a 65-acre park. It is sumptuously decorated in both its public and private rooms. Particularly notable are the lobby's staircase, made of polished Lens stone, and a library-bar with carved wood paneling and a collection of Armagnacs and Cognacs (available for purchase by the glass) that date to the mid-19th century.
Dine in the circular dining room with its gilded pillars and celery-green walls. Stare out the huge windows as the sun sets on the verdant countryside. Afterward, take a walk around the castle, illuminated at night along with its fountain. Then retire to your room, just as Philippa Lesbahy, Henri Hurault and Balzac retired to theirs.