One then comes to the small nobility and their manor-houses, which were only less grand and luxurious in degree, not in kind. They were not fortified, save by an encircling wall, often of great height and thickness, which enclosed the whole domestic establishment and its home grounds. The manor-house of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries took frequent root in Normandy, and was often very splendid in its appointments and proportions.
The château of to-day, as one finds it in France, that is, the strictly modern edifice, which often bears the high-sounding name of château, is nothing more than a country-house of a small manufacturer or merchant; who, after thirty or forty years of a strenuous life, has married off his daughters and sons, and wishes to settle down in the country, and surround himself and his wife with the comforts of life and amid a glamour which, he fancies, somewhat approaches the splendour of the olden times.
All this is commendable enough, of course, and it is much better that such a châtelain should build a brand-new red brick and green-and-yellow tiled pompous edifice, with a plaster cat on the ridge-pole, than that he should buy and seek to remodel in new style a really good old-time edifice.
[Illustration: _Ancient Manor d'Argouges_]
With the inherent good taste undoubtedly possessed by the French, it is astonishing how ugly and bizarre their modern country-houses are, examples of which one often sees in Normandy, along the Seine in the suburbs of Rouen, or in the neighbourhood of Dieppe or Trouville.
In the blazonry of the arms of the nobility of France, the château has a supreme significance. Wherever it is seen incorporated in quarterings, whether with a single tower or three, it signifies that the châtelain thereof has rendered some signal service to the state of France in its royal days.
Renaissance architecture in Normandy never achieved the magnitude that it did elsewhere in France, albeit certain notable structures yet exist to tell of the excellence of its comparatively few examples.
In the beginning Pierre Fain and Guillaume Senault built the archiepiscopal château at Gaillon, truly one of the wonders of the Renaissance. Roland Leroux erected that highly ornate tomb of the Amboise cardinals in Rouen's cathedral, which, however, must be considered as merely a decorative, and not a constructive, work. In Caen and its environs Hector Sohier and a truly great unknown exercised their genius between 1515 and 1545. At Gisors, three generations of architects by the name of Grappin, Jean I., Robert, and Jean II., proved their originality.