initial commit of ebook 37211HEADmain

1 files changed, 9272 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/37211-8.txt b/37211-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c3787be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/37211-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,9272 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Castles and Chateaux of Old Touraine and
+the Loire Country, by Francis Miltoun
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Castles and Chateaux of Old Touraine and the Loire Country
+
+Author: Francis Miltoun
+
+Illustrator: Blanche McManus
+
+Release Date: August 25, 2011 [EBook #37211]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CASTLES, CHATEAUX OF OLD TOURAINE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Elizaveta Shevyakhova, Juliet Sutherland and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian
+Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  Castles and Châteaux of Old Touraine
+  and the Loire Country
+
+
+
+
+  _WORKS OF FRANCIS MILTOUN_
+
+  _The following, each 1 vol., library 12mo, cloth, gilt top,
+  profusely illustrated, $2.50_
+
+  _Rambles on the Riviera_
+  _Rambles in Normandy_
+  _Rambles in Brittany_
+  _The Cathedrals and Churches of the Rhine_
+  _The Cathedrals of Northern France_
+  _The Cathedrals of Southern France_
+  _The Cathedrals of Italy_ (_In preparation_)
+
+  _The following, 1 vol., square octavo, cloth, gilt top, profusely
+  illustrated. $3.00_
+
+  _Castles and Châteaux of Old Touraine and the Loire Country_
+
+  _L. C. PAGE & COMPANY New England Building, Boston, Mass._
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: A PEASANT GIRL OF TOURAINE]
+
+
+
+
+    Castles and Châteaux
+            OF
+        OLD TOURAINE
+    AND THE LOIRE COUNTRY
+
+      BY FRANCIS MILTOUN
+
+    Author of "Rambles in Normandy," "Rambles in Brittany,"
+    "Rambles on the Riviera," etc.
+
+    _With Many Illustrations
+    Reproduced from paintings made on the spot_
+
+      BY BLANCHE MCMANUS
+
+      [Illustration]
+
+          BOSTON
+    L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
+           1906
+
+
+
+
+
+       _Copyright, 1906_
+   BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
+         (Incorporated)
+
+     _All rights reserved_
+
+   First Impression, June, 1906
+
+         _COLONIAL PRESS_
+   _Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co._
+        _Boston, U. S. A._
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Ed VELAY]
+
+
+
+
+By Way of Introduction
+
+
+This book is not the result of ordinary conventional rambles, of
+sightseeing by day, and flying by night, but rather of leisurely
+wanderings, for a somewhat extended period, along the banks of the Loire
+and its tributaries and through the countryside dotted with those
+splendid monuments of Renaissance architecture which have perhaps a more
+appealing interest for strangers than any other similar edifices
+wherever found.
+
+Before this book was projected, the conventional tour of the château
+country had been "done," Baedeker, Joanne and James's "Little Tour" in
+hand. On another occasion Angers, with its almost inconceivably real
+castellated fortress, and Nantes, with its memories of the "Edict" and
+"La Duchesse Anne," had been tasted and digested _en route_ to a certain
+little artist's village in Brittany.
+
+On another occasion, when we were headed due south, we lingered for a
+time in the upper valley, between "the little Italian city of Nevers"
+and "the most picturesque spot in the world"--Le Puy.
+
+But all this left certain ground to be covered, and certain gaps to be
+filled, though the author's note-books were numerous and full to
+overflowing with much comment, and the artist's portfolio was already
+bulging with its contents.
+
+So more note-books were bought, and, following the genial Mark Twain's
+advice, another fountain pen and more crayons and sketch-books, and the
+author and artist set out in the beginning of a warm September to fill
+those gaps and to reduce, if possible, that series of rambles along the
+now flat and now rolling banks of the broad blue Loire to something like
+consecutiveness and uniformity; with what result the reader may judge.
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                                 PAGE
+
+  BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION                                     v
+
+  I. A GENERAL SURVEY                                        1
+
+  II. THE ORLÉANNAIS                                        30
+
+  III. THE BLAISOIS AND THE SOLOGNE                         56
+
+  IV. CHAMBORD                                              94
+
+  V. CHEVERNY, BEAUREGARD, AND CHAUMONT                    110
+
+  VI. TOURAINE: THE GARDEN SPOT OF FRANCE                  128
+
+  VII. AMBOISE                                             148
+
+  VIII. CHENONCEAUX                                        171
+
+  IX. LOCHES                                               188
+
+  X. TOURS AND ABOUT THERE                                 203
+
+  XI. LUYNES AND LANGEAIS                                  221
+
+  XII. AZAY-LE-RIDEAU, USSÉ, AND CHINON                    241
+
+  XIII. ANJOU AND BRETAGNE                                 273
+
+  XIV. SOUTH OF THE LOIRE                                  301
+
+  XV. BERRY AND GEORGE SAND'S COUNTRY                      313
+
+  XVI. THE UPPER LOIRE                                     330
+
+  INDEX                                                    337
+
+
+
+
+List of Illustrations
+
+
+                                                          PAGE
+
+  A PEASANT GIRL OF TOURAINE                    _Frontispiece_
+
+  ITINERARY OF THE LOIRE (MAP)                facing         1
+
+  A LACE-MAKER OF THE UPPER LOIRE             facing         4
+
+  THE LOIRE CHÂTEAUX (MAP)                                   9
+
+  THE ANCIENT PROVINCES OF THE LOIRE VALLEY
+  AND THEIR CAPITALS (MAP)                                  15
+
+  THE LOIRE NEAR LA CHARITÉ                   facing        18
+
+  COIFFES OF AMBOISE AND ORLEANS              facing        20
+
+  THE CHÂTEAUX OF THE LOIRE (MAP)             facing        30
+
+  ENVIRONS OF ORLEANS (MAP)                                 39
+
+  THE LOIRET                                  facing        42
+
+  THE LOIRE AT MEUNG                          facing        46
+
+  BEAUGENCY                                   facing        50
+
+  ARMS OF THE CITY OF BLOIS                                 58
+
+  THE RIVERSIDE AT BLOIS                      facing        58
+
+  SIGNATURE OF FRANÇOIS PREMIER                             60
+
+  CYPHER OF ANNE DE BRETAGNE, AT BLOIS                      62
+
+  ARMS OF LOUIS XII.                                        65
+
+  CENTRAL DOORWAY, CHÂTEAU DE BLOIS           facing        66
+
+  THE CHÂTEAUX OF BLOIS (DIAGRAM)                           71
+
+  CYPHER OF FRANÇOIS PREMIER AND CLAUDE OF
+  FRANCE, AT BLOIS                                          72
+
+  NATIVE TYPES IN THE SOLOGNE                               89
+
+  DONJON OF MONTRICHARD                       facing        92
+
+  ARMS OF FRANÇOIS PREMIER, AT CHAMBORD                     99
+
+  PLAN OF CHÂTEAU DE CHAMBORD                              103
+
+  CHÂTEAU DE CHAMBORD                         facing       104
+
+  CHÂTEAU DE CHEVERNY                         facing       110
+
+  CHEVERNY-SUR-LOIRE                                       113
+
+  CHAUMONT                                    facing       116
+
+  SIGNATURE OF DIANE DE POITIERS                           118
+
+  THE LOIRE IN TOURAINE                       facing       134
+
+  THE VINTAGE IN TOURAINE                     facing       142
+
+  CHÂTEAU D'AMBOISE                           facing       148
+
+  SCULPTURE FROM THE CHAPELLE DE ST. HUBERT   facing       164
+
+  CYPHER OF ANNE DE BRETAGNE, HÔTEL DE
+  VILLE, AMBOISE                                           168
+
+  CHÂTEAU DE CHENONCEAUX                      facing       178
+
+  CHÂTEAU DE CHENONCEAUX (DIAGRAM)                         179
+
+  LOCHES                                                   189
+
+  LOCHES AND ITS CHURCH                       facing       192
+
+  SKETCH PLAN OF LOCHES                                    198
+
+  ST. OURS, LOCHES                            facing       198
+
+  TOURS                                       facing       202
+
+  ARMS OF THE PRINTERS, _AVOCATS_, AND INNKEEPERS,
+  TOURS                                                    205
+
+  SCENE IN THE QUARTIER DE LA CATHÉDRALE,
+  TOURS                                       facing       208
+
+  PLESSIS-LES-TOURS IN THE TIME OF LOUIS XI.               213
+
+  ENVIRONS OF TOURS (MAP)                                  219
+
+  A VINEYARD OF VOUVRAY                       facing       222
+
+  MEDIÆVAL STAIRWAY AND THE CHÂTEAU DE
+  LUYNES                                      facing       224
+
+  RUINS OF CINQ-MARS                          facing       228
+
+  CHÂTEAU DE LANGEAIS                         facing       232
+
+  ARMS OF LOUIS XII. AND ANNE DE BRETAGNE                  237
+
+  CHÂTEAU D'AZAY-LE-RIDEAU                    facing       244
+
+  CHÂTEAU D'USSÉ                              facing       248
+
+  THE ROOF-TOPS OF CHINON                     facing       252
+
+  RABELAIS                                                 255
+
+  CHÂTEAU DE CHINON                           facing       258
+
+  CUISINES, FONTEVRAULT                                    265
+
+  CHÂTEAU DE SAUMUR                           facing       276
+
+  THE PONTS DE CÉ                             facing       284
+
+  CHÂTEAU D'ANGERS                            facing       288
+
+  ENVIRONS OF NANTES (MAP)                                 297
+
+  DONJON OF THE CHÂTEAU DE CLISSON            facing       306
+
+  BERRY (MAP)                                              313
+
+  LA TOUR, SANCERRE                                        317
+
+  CHÂTEAU DE GIEN                             facing       318
+
+  CHÂTEAU DE VALENÇAY                         facing       322
+
+  GATEWAY OF MEHUN-SUR-YEVRE                  facing       324
+
+  LE CARRIOR DORÉ, ROMORANTIN                              325
+
+  ÉGLISE S. AIGNAN, COSNE                                  331
+
+  POUILLY-SUR-LOIRE                           facing       332
+
+  PORTE DU CROUX, NEVERS                      facing       334
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: ITINERARY OF THE LOIRE (MAP)]
+
+
+
+
+Castles and Châteaux
+
+of Old Touraine
+
+and the Loire Country
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+A GENERAL SURVEY
+
+
+Any account of the Loire and of the towns along its banks must naturally
+have for its chief mention Touraine and the long line of splendid feudal
+and Renaissance châteaux which reflect themselves so gloriously in its
+current.
+
+The Loire possesses a certain fascination and charm which many other
+more commercially great rivers entirely lack, and, while the element of
+absolute novelty cannot perforce be claimed for it, it has the merit of
+appealing largely to the lover of the romantic and the picturesque.
+
+A French writer of a hundred years ago dedicated his work on Touraine to
+"Le Baron de Langeais, le Vicomte de Beaumont, le Marquis de Beauregard,
+le Comte de Fontenailles, le Comte de Jouffroy-Gonsans, le Duc de
+Luynes, le Comte de Vouvray, le Comte de Villeneuve, _et als._;" and he
+might have continued with a directory of all the descendants of the
+_noblesse_ of an earlier age, for he afterward grouped them under the
+general category of "_Propriétaires des fortresses et châteaux les plus
+remarquables--au point de vue historique ou architectural_."
+
+He was fortunate in being able, as he said, to have had access to their
+"_papiers de famille_," their souvenirs, and to have been able to
+interrogate them in person.
+
+Most of his facts and his gossip concerning the personalities of the
+later generations of those who inhabited these magnificent
+establishments have come down to us through later writers, and it is
+fortunate that this should be the case, since the present-day aspect of
+the châteaux is ever changing, and one who views them to-day is
+chagrined when he discovers, for instance, that an iron-trussed,
+red-tiled wash-house has been built on the banks of the Cosson before
+the magnificent château of Chambord, and that somewhere within the
+confines of the old castle at Loches a shopkeeper has hung out his
+shingle, announcing a newly discovered dungeon in his own basement,
+accidentally come upon when digging a well.
+
+Balzac, Rabelais, and Descartes are the leading literary celebrities of
+Tours, and Balzac's "Le Lys dans la Vallée" will give one a more
+delightful insight into the old life of the Tourangeaux than whole
+series of guide-books and shelves of dry histories.
+
+Blois and its counts, Tours and its bishops, and Amboise and its kings,
+to say nothing of Fontevrault, redolent of memories of the Plantagenets,
+Nantes and its famous "Edict," and its equally infamous "Revocation,"
+have left vivid impress upon all students of French history. Others will
+perhaps remember Nantes for Dumas's brilliant descriptions of the
+outcome of the Breton conspiracy.
+
+All of us have a natural desire to know more of historic ground, and
+whether we make a start by entering the valley of the Loire at the
+luxurious midway city of Tours, and follow the river first to the sea
+and then to the source, or make the journey from source to mouth, or
+vice versa, it does not matter in the least. We traverse the same ground
+and we meet the same varying conditions as we advance a hundred
+kilometres in either direction.
+
+Tours, for example, stands for all that is typical of the sunny south.
+Prune and palm trees thrust themselves forward in strong contrast to the
+cider-apples of the lower Seine. Below Tours one is almost at the coast,
+and the _tables d'hôte_ are abundantly supplied with sea-food of all
+sorts. Above Tours the Orléannais is typical of a certain well-to-do,
+matter-of-fact existence, neither very luxurious nor very difficult.
+
+Nevers is another step and resembles somewhat the opulence of Burgundy
+as to conditions of life, though the general aspect of the city, as well
+as a great part of its history, is Italian through and through.
+
+The last great step begins at Le Puy, in the great volcanic _Massif
+Centrale_, where conditions of life, if prosperous, are at least harder
+than elsewhere.
+
+Such are the varying characteristics of the towns and cities through
+which the Loire flows. They run the whole gamut from gay to earnest and
+solemn; from the ease and comfort of the country around Tours, almost
+sub-tropical in its softness, to the grime and smoke of busy St.
+Etienne, and the chilliness and rigours of a mountain winter at Le Puy.
+
+[Illustration: _A Lace-maker of the Upper Loire_]
+
+These districts are all very full of memories of events which have
+helped to build up the solidarity of France of to-day, though the
+Nantois still proudly proclaims himself a Breton, and the Tourangeau
+will tell you that his is the tongue, above all others, which speaks the
+purest French,--and so on through the whole category, each and every
+citizen of a _petit pays_ living up to his traditions to the fullest
+extent possible.
+
+In no other journey in France, of a similar length, will one see as many
+varying contrasts in conditions of life as he will along the length of
+the Loire, the broad, shallow river which St. Martin, Charles Martel,
+and Louis XI., the typical figures of church, arms, and state, came to
+know so well.
+
+Du Bellay, a poet of the Renaissance, has sung the praises of the Loire
+in a manner unapproached by any other topographical poet, if one may so
+call him, for that is what he really was in this particular instance.
+
+There is a great deal of patriotism in it all, too, and certainly no
+sweet singer of the present day has even approached these lines, which
+are eulogistic without being fulsome and fervent without being lurid.
+
+The verses have frequently been rendered into English, but the following
+is as good as any, and better than most translations, though it is one
+of those fragments of "newspaper verse" whose authors are lost in
+obscurity.
+
+    "Mightier to me the house my fathers made,
+      Than your audacious heads, O Halls of Rome!
+    More than immortal marbles undecayed,
+      The thin sad slates that cover up my home;
+    More than your Tiber is my Loire to me,
+      More Palatine my little Lyré there;
+    And more than all the winds of all the sea,
+      The quiet kindness of the Angevin air."
+
+In history the Loire valley is rich indeed, from the days of the ancient
+Counts of Touraine to those of Mazarin, who held forth at Nevers.
+Touraine has well been called the heart of the old French monarchy.
+
+Provincial France has a charm never known to Paris-dwellers. Balzac and
+Flaubert were provincials, and Dumas was a city-dweller,--and there lies
+the difference between them.
+
+Balzac has written most charmingly of Touraine in many of his books, in
+"Le Lys dans la Vallée" and "Le Curé de Tours" in particular; not always
+in complimentary terms, either, for he has said that the Tourangeaux
+will not even inconvenience themselves to go in search of pleasure. This
+does not bespeak indolence so much as philosophy, so most of us will not
+cavil. George Sand's country lies a little to the southward of Touraine,
+and Berry, too, as the authoress herself has said, has a climate
+"_souple et chaud, avec pluie abondant et courte_."
+
+The architectural remains in the Loire valley are exceedingly rich and
+varied. The feudal system is illustrated at its best in the great walled
+château at Angers, the still inhabited and less grand château at
+Langeais, the ruins at Cinq-Mars, and the very scanty remains of
+Plessis-les-Tours.
+
+The ecclesiastical remains are quite as great. The churches are, many of
+them, of the first rank, and the great cathedrals at Nantes, Angers,
+Tours, and Orleans are magnificent examples of the church-builders' art
+in the middle ages, and are entitled to rank among the great cathedrals,
+if not actually of the first class.
+
+With modern civic and other public buildings, the case is not far
+different. Tours has a gorgeous Hôtel de Ville, its architecture being
+of the most luxuriant of modern French Renaissance, while the railway
+stations, even, at both Tours and Orleans, are models of what railway
+stations should be, and in addition are decoratively beautiful in their
+appointments and arrangements,--which most railway stations are not.
+
+Altogether, throughout the Loire valley there is an air of prosperity
+which in a more vigorous climate is often lacking. This in spite of the
+alleged tendency in what is commonly known as a relaxing climate toward
+_laisser-aller_.
+
+Finally, the picturesque landscape of the Loire is something quite
+different from the harder, grayer outlines of the north. All is of the
+south, warm and ruddy, and the wooded banks not only refine the
+crudities of a flat shore-line, but form a screen or barrier to the
+flowering charms of the examples of Renaissance architecture which, in
+Touraine, at least, are as thick as leaves in Vallambrosa.
+
+Starting at Gien, the valley of the Loire begins to offer those
+monumental châteaux which have made its fame as the land of castles.
+From the old fortress-château of Gien to the Château de Clisson, or the
+Logis de la Duchesse Anne at Nantes, is one long succession of florid
+masterpieces, not to be equalled elsewhere.
+
+The true château region of Touraine--by which most people usually
+comprehend the Loire châteaux--commences only at Blois. Here the
+edifices, to a great extent, take on these superfine residential
+attributes which were the glory of the Renaissance period of French
+architecture.
+
+[Illustration: THE LOIRE CHÂTEAUX (MAP)]
+
+Both above and below Touraine, at Montrichard, at Loches, and Beaugency,
+are still to be found scattering examples of feudal fortresses and
+donjons which are as representative of their class as are the best
+Norman structures of the same era, the great fortresses of Arques,
+Falaise, Domfront, and Les Andelys being usually accounted as the types
+which gave the stimulus to similar edifices elsewhere.
+
+In this same versatile region also, beginning perhaps with the
+Orléannais, are a vast number of religious monuments equally celebrated.
+For instance, the church of St. Benoit-sur-Loire is one of the most
+important Romanesque churches in all France, and the cathedral of St.
+Gatien, with its "bejewelled façade," at Tours, the twin-spired St.
+Maurice at Angers, and even the pompous, and not very good Gothic,
+edifice at Orleans (especially noteworthy because its crypt is an
+ancient work anterior to the Capetian dynasty) are all wonderfully
+interesting and imposing examples of mediæval ecclesiastical
+architecture.
+
+Three great tributaries enter the Loire below Tours, the Cher, the
+Indre, and the Vienne. The first has for its chief attractions the
+Renaissance châteaux St. Aignan and Chenonceaux, the Roman remains of
+Chabris, Thézée, and Larçay, the Romanesque churches of Selles and St.
+Aignan, and the feudal donjon of Montrichard. The Indre possesses the
+château of Azay-le-Rideau and the sombre fortresses of Montbazon and
+Loches; while the Vienne depends for its chief interest upon the galaxy
+of fortress-châteaux at Chinon.
+
+The Loire is a mighty river and is navigable for nearly nine hundred
+kilometres of its length, almost to Le Puy, or, to be exact, to the
+little town of Vorey in the Department of the Haute Loire.
+
+At Orleans, Blois, or Tours one hardly realizes this, much less at
+Nevers. The river appears to be a great, tranquil, docile stream, with
+scarce enough water in its bed to make a respectable current, leaving
+its beds and bars of _sable_ and _cailloux_ bare to the sky.
+
+The scarcity of water, except at occasional flood, is the principal and
+obvious reason for the absence of water-borne traffic, even though a
+paternal ministerial department of the government calls the river
+navigable.
+
+At the times of the _grandes crues_ there are four metres or more
+registered on the big scale at the Pont d'Ancenis, while at other times
+it falls to less than a metre, and when it does there is a mere rivulet
+of water which trickles through the broad river-bottom at Chaumont, or
+Blois, or Orleans. Below Ancenis navigation is not so difficult, but the
+current is more strong.
+
+From Blois to Angers, on the right bank, extends a long dike which
+carries the roadway beside the river for a couple of hundred kilometres.
+This is one of the charms of travel by the Loire. The only thing usually
+seen on the bosom of the river, save an occasional fishing punt, is one
+of those great flat-bottomed ferry-boats, with a square sail hung on a
+yard amidships, such as Turner always made an accompaniment to his Loire
+pictures, for conditions of traffic on the river have not greatly
+changed.
+
+Whenever one sees a barge or a boat worthy of classification with those
+one finds on the rivers of the east or north, or on the great canals, it
+is only about a quarter of the usual size; so, in spite of its great
+navigable length, the waterway of the Loire is to be considered more as
+a picturesque and healthful element of the landscape than as a
+commercial proposition.
+
+Where the great canals join the river at Orleans, and from Chatillon to
+Roanne, the traffic increases, though more is carried by the canal-boats
+on the _Canal Latéral_ than by the barges on the Loire.
+
+It is only on the Loire between Angers and Nantes that there is any
+semblance of river traffic such as one sees on most of the other great
+waterways of Europe. There is a considerable traffic, too, which
+descends the Maine, particularly from Angers downward, for Angers with
+its Italian skies is usually thought of, and really is to be considered,
+as a Loire town, though it is actually on the banks of the Maine some
+miles from the Loire itself.
+
+One thousand or more bateaux make the ascent to Angers from the Loire at
+La Pointe each year, all laden with a miscellaneous cargo of
+merchandise. The Sarthe and the Loir also bring a notable agricultural
+traffic to the greater Loire, and the smaller confluents, the Dive, the
+Thouet, the Authion, and the Layon, all go to swell the parent stream
+until, when it reaches Nantes, the Loire has at last taken on something
+of the aspect of a well-ordered and useful stream, characteristics which
+above Nantes are painfully lacking. Because of its lack of commerce the
+Loire is in a certain way the most noble, magnificent, and aristocratic
+river of France; and so, too, it is also in respect to its associations
+of the past.
+
+It has not the grandeur of the Rhône when the spring freshets from the
+Jura and the Swiss lakes have filled it to its banks; it has not the
+burning activity of the Seine as it bears its thousands of boat-loads of
+produce and merchandise to and from the Paris market; it has not the
+prettiness of the Thames, nor the legendary aspect of the Rhine; but in
+a way it combines something of the features of all, and has, in
+addition, a tone that is all its own, as it sweeps along through its
+countless miles of ample curves, and holds within its embrace all that
+is best of mediæval and Renaissance France, the period which built up
+the later monarchy and, who shall not say, the present prosperous
+republic.
+
+Throughout most of the river's course, one sees, stretching to the
+horizon, row upon row of staked vineyards with fruit and leaves in
+luxuriant abundance and of all rainbow colours. The peasant here, the
+worker in the vineyards, is a picturesque element. He is not
+particularly brilliant in colouring, but he is usually joyous, and he
+invariably lives in a well-kept and brilliantly environed habitation and
+has an air of content and prosperity amid the well-beloved treasures of
+his household.
+
+The Loire is essentially a river of other days. Truly, as Mr. James has
+said, "It is the very model of a generous, beneficent stream ... a wide
+river which you may follow by a wide road is excellent company."
+
+The Frenchman himself is more flowery: "_C'est la plus noble rivière de
+France. Son domaine est immense et magnifique._"
+
+[Illustration: THE ANCIENT PROVINCES OF THE LOIRE VALLEY AND THEIR
+CAPITALS (MAP)]
+
+      THE ANCIENT
+    PROVINCES OF THE
+     LOIRE VALLEY
+      AND THEIR
+       CAPITALS
+
+  Bretagne     Rennes
+  Anjou        Angers
+  Touraine     Tours
+  Orléannais   Orleans
+  Berry        Bourges
+  Nivernais    Nevers
+  Bourbonnais  Moulins
+  Lyonnais     Lyon
+  Bourgogne    Dijon
+  Auvergne     Clermont-Ferrand
+  Languedoc    Toulouse
+
+The Loire is the longest river in France, and the only one of the four
+great rivers whose basin or watershed lies wholly within French
+territory. It moreover traverses eleven provinces. It rises in a fissure
+of granite rock at the foot of the Gerbier-de-Jonc, a volcanic cone in
+the mountains of the Vivarais, a hundred kilometres or more south of
+Lyons. In three kilometres, approximately two miles, the little torrent
+drops a thousand feet, after receiving to its arms a tiny affluent
+coming from the Croix de Monteuse.
+
+For twelve kilometres the river twists and turns around the base of the
+Vivarais mountains, and finally enters a gorge between the rocks, and
+mingles with the waters of the little Lac d'Issarles, entering for the
+first time a flat lowland plain like that through which its course
+mostly runs.
+
+The monument-crowned pinnacles of Le Puy and the inverted bowl of
+Puy-de-Dôme rise high above the plain and point the way to Roanne, where
+such activity as does actually take place upon the Loire begins.
+
+Navigation, classed officially as "_flottable_," merely, has already
+begun at Vorey, just below Le Puy, but the traffic is insignificant.
+
+Meantime the streams coming from the direction of St. Etienne and Lyons
+have been added to the Loire, but they do not much increase its bulk.
+St. Galmier, the _source_ dear to patrons of _tables d'hôte_ on account
+of its palatable mineral water, which is about the only decent
+drinking-water one can buy at a reasonable price, lies but a short
+distance away to the right.
+
+At St. Rambert the plain of Forez is entered, and here the stream is
+enriched by numberless rivulets which make their way from various
+sources through a thickly wooded country.
+
+From Roanne onward, the _Canal Latéral_ keeps company with the Loire to
+Chatillon, not far from Orleans.
+
+Before reaching Nevers, the _Canal du Nivernais_ branches off to the
+left and joins the Loire with the Yonne at Auxerre. Daudet tells of the
+life of the _Canal du Nivernais_, in "La Belle Nivernaise," in a manner
+too convincingly graphic for any one else to attempt the task, in
+fiction or out of it. Like the Tartarin books, "La Belle Nivernaise" is
+distinctly local, and forms of itself an excellent guide to a little
+known and little visited region.
+
+At Nevers the topography changes, or rather, the characteristics of the
+life of the country round about change, for the topography, so far as
+its profile is concerned, remains much the same for three-fourths the
+length of this great river. Nevers, La Charité, Sancerre, Gien, and
+Cosne follow in quick succession, all reminders of a historic past as
+vivid as it was varied.
+
+From the heights of Sancerre one sees a wonderful history-making
+panorama before him. Cæsar crossed the Loire at Gien, the Franks forded
+the river at La Charité, when they first went against Aquitaine, and
+Charles the Bald came sadly to grief on a certain occasion at Pouilly.
+
+It is here that the Loire rises to its greatest flood, and hundreds of
+times, so history tells, from 490 to 1866, the fickle river has caused a
+devastation so great and terrible that the memory of it is not yet dead.
+
+This hardly seems possible of this usually tranquil stream, and there
+have always been scoffers.
+
+Madame de Sévigné wrote in 1675 to M. de Coulanges (but in her case
+perhaps it was mere well-wishing), "_La belle Loire, elle est un peu
+sujette à se déborder, mais elle en est plus douce_."
+
+Ancient writers were wont to consider the inundations of the Loire as a
+punishment from Heaven, and even in later times the superstition--if it
+was a superstition--still remained.
+
+[Illustration: _The Loire near La Charité_]
+
+In 1825, when thousands of charcoal-burners (_charbonniers_) were all
+but ruined, they petitioned the government for assistance. The official
+who had the matter in charge, and whose name--fortunately for his
+fame--does not appear to have been recorded, replied simply that the
+flood was a periodical condition of affairs which the Almighty brought
+about as occasion demanded, with good cause, and for this reason he
+refused all assistance.
+
+Important public works have done much to prevent repetitions of these
+inundations, but the danger still exists, and always, in a wet season,
+there are those dwellers along the river's banks who fear the rising
+flood as they would the plague.
+
+Chatillon, with its towers; Gien, a busy hive of industry, though with a
+historic past; Sully; and St. Benoit-sur-Loire, with its unique double
+transepted church; all pass in rapid review, and one enters the ancient
+capital of the Orléannais quite ready for the new chapter which, in
+colouring, is to be so different from that devoted to the upper valley.
+
+From Orleans, south, one passes through a veritable wonderland of
+fascinating charms. Châteaux, monasteries, and great civic and
+ecclesiastical monuments pass quickly in turn.
+
+Then comes Touraine which all love, the river meantime having grown no
+more swift or ample, nor any more sluggish or attenuated. It is simply
+the same characteristic flow which one has known before.
+
+The landscape only is changing, while the fruits and flowers, and the
+trees and foliage are more luxuriant, and the great châteaux are more
+numerous, splendid, and imposing.
+
+Of his well-beloved Touraine, Balzac wrote: "Do not ask me _why_ I love
+Touraine; I love it not merely as one loves the cradle of his birth, nor
+as one loves an oasis in a desert, but as an artist loves his art."
+
+Blois, with its bloody memories; Chaumont, splendid and retired;
+Chambord, magnificent, pompous, and bare; Amboise, with its great tower
+high above the river, follow in turn till the Loire makes its regal
+entrée into Tours. "What a spectacle it is," wrote Sterne in "Tristram
+Shandy," "for a traveller who journeys through Touraine at the time of
+the vintage."
+
+And then comes the final step which brings the traveller to where the
+limpid waters of the Loire mingle with the salty ocean, and what a
+triumphant meeting it is!
+
+[Illustration: _Coiffes of Amboise and Orleans_]
+
+Most of the cities of the Loire possess but one bridge, but Tours has
+three, and, as becomes a great provincial capital, sits enthroned
+upon the river-bank in mighty splendour.
+
+The feudal towers of the Château de Luynes are almost opposite, and
+Cinq-Mars, with its pagan "_pile_" and the ruins of its feudal castle
+high upon a hill, points the way down-stream like a mariner's beacon.
+Langeais follows, and the Indre, the Cher, and the Vienne, all ample and
+historic rivers, go to swell the flood which passes under the bridges of
+Saumur, Ancenis, and Ponts de Cé.
+
+From Tours to the ocean, the Loire comes to its greatest amplitude,
+though even then, in spite of its breadth, it is, for the greater part
+of the year, impotent as to the functions of a great river.
+
+Below Angers the Loire receives its first great affluent coming from the
+country lying back of the right bank: the Maine itself is a considerable
+river. It rises far up in the Breton peninsula, and before it empties
+itself into the Loire, it has been aggrandized by three great
+tributaries, the Loir, the Sarthe, and the Mayenne.
+
+Here in this backwater of the Loire, as one might call it, is as
+wonderful a collection of natural beauties and historical châteaux as on
+the Loire itself. Châteaudun, Mayenne, and Vendôme are historic ground
+of superlative interest, and the great castle at Châteaudun is as
+magnificent in its way as any of the monuments of the Loire. Vendôme has
+a Hôtel de Ville which is an admirable relic of a feudal edifice, and
+the _clocher_ of its church, which dominates many square leagues of
+country, is counted as one of the most perfectly disposed church spires
+in existence, as lovely, almost, as Texier's masterwork at Chartres, or
+the needle-like _flêches_ at Strasburg or Freiburg in Breisgau.
+
+The Maine joins the Loire just below Angers, at a little village
+significantly called La Pointe. Below La Pointe are St.
+Georges-sur-Loire, and three _châteaux de commerce_ which give their
+names to the three principal Angevin vineyards: Château Serrand,
+l'Epinay, and Chevigné.
+
+Vineyard after vineyard, and château after château follow rapidly, until
+one reaches the Ponts de Cé with their _petite ville_,--all very
+delightful. Not so the bridge at Ancenis, where the flow of water is
+marked daily on a huge black and white scale. The bridge is quite the
+ugliest wire-rope affair to be seen on the Loire, and one is only too
+glad to leave it behind, though it is with a real regret that he parts
+from Ancenis itself.
+
+Some years ago one could go from Angers to St. Nazaire by boat. It must
+have been a magnificent trip, extraordinarily calm and serene, amid an
+abundance of picturesque details; old châteaux and bridges in strong
+contrast to the prairies of Touraine and the Orléannais. One embarked at
+the foot of the stupendously towered château of King René, and for a
+_petite heure_ navigated the Maine in the midst of great _chalands_,
+fussy little _remorqueurs_ and _barques_ until La Pointe was reached,
+when the Loire was followed to Nantes and St. Nazaire.
+
+To-day this fine trip is denied one, the boats going only so far as La
+Pointe.
+
+Below Angers the Loire flows around and about a veritable archipelago of
+islands and islets, cultivated with all the luxuriance of a back-yard
+garden, and dotted with tiny hamlets of folk who are supremely happy and
+content with their lot.
+
+Some currents which run behind the islands are swift flowing and
+impetuous, while others are practically elongated lakes, as dead as
+those _lômes_ which in certain places flank the Saône and the Rhône.
+
+All these various branches are united as the Loire flows between the
+piers of the ungainly bridge of the Chemin-de-fer de Niort as it crosses
+the river at Chalonnes.
+
+Champtocé and Montjean follow, each with an individuality all its own.
+Here the commerce takes on an increased activity, thanks to the great
+national waterway known as the "Canal de Brest à Nantes." Here at the
+busy port of Montjean--which the Angevins still spell and pronounce
+_Montéjean_--the Loire takes on a breadth and grandeur similar to the
+great rivers in the western part of America. Montjean is dominated by a
+fine ogival church, with a battery of arcs-boutants which are a joy in
+themselves.
+
+On the other bank, lying back of a great plain, which stretches away
+from the river itself, is Champtocé, pleasantly situated on the flank of
+a hill and dominated by the ruins of a thirteenth-century château which
+belonged to the cruel Gilles de Retz, somewhat apocryphally known to
+history as "Barbe-bleu"--not the Bluebeard of the nursery tale, who was
+of Eastern origin, but a sort of Occidental successor who was equally
+cruel and bloodthirsty in his attitude toward his whilom wives.
+
+From this point on one comes within the sphere of influence of Nantes,
+and there is more or less of a suburban traffic on the railway, and the
+plodders cityward by road are more numerous than the mere vagabonds of
+the countryside.
+
+The peasant women whom one meets wear a curious bonnet, set on the head
+well to the fore, with wings at the side folded back quite like the
+pictures that one sees of the mediæval dames of these parts, a survival
+indeed of the middle ages.
+
+The Loire becomes more and more animated and occasionally there is a
+great tow of boats like those that one sees continually passing on the
+lower Seine. Here the course of the Loire takes on a singular aspect. It
+is filled with long flat islands, sometimes in archipelagos, but often
+only a great flat prairie surrounded by a tranquil canal, wide and deep,
+and with little resemblance to the mistress Loire of a hundred or two
+kilometres up-stream. All these isles are in a high state of
+cultivation, though wholly worked with the hoe and the spade, both of
+them of a primitiveness that might have come down from Bible times; rare
+it is to see a horse or a harrow on these "bouquets of verdure
+surrounded by waves."
+
+Near Oudon is one of those monumental follies which one comes across
+now and then in most foreign countries: a great edifice which serves no
+useful purpose, and which, were it not for certain redeeming features,
+would be a sorry thing indeed. The "Folie-Siffait," a citadel which
+perches itself high upon the summit of a hill, was--and is--an
+_amusette_ built by a public-spirited man of Nantes in order that his
+workmen might have something to do in a time of a scarcity of work. It
+is a bizarre, incredible thing, but the motive which inspired its
+erection was most worthy, and the roadway running beneath, piercing its
+foundation walls, gives a theatrical effect which, in a way, makes it
+the picturesque rival of many a more famous Rhine castle.
+
+The river valley widens out here at Oudon, practically the frontier of
+Bretagne and Anjou. The railroad pierces the rock walls of the river
+with numerous tunnels along the right bank, and the Vendean country
+stretches far to the southward in long rolling hills quite unlike any of
+the characteristics of other parts of the valley. Finally, the vast
+plain of Mauves comes into sight, beautifully coloured with a white and
+iron-stained rocky background which is startlingly picturesque in its
+way, if not wholly beautiful according to the majority of standards.
+
+Next comes what a Frenchman has called a "tumultuous vision of Nantes."
+To-day the very ancient and historic city which grew up from the Portus
+Namnetum and the Condivicnum of the Romans is indeed a veritable tumult
+of chimneys, masts, and locomotives. But all this will not detract one
+jot from its reputation of being one of the most delightful of
+provincial capitals, and the smoke and activity of its port only tend to
+accentuate a note of colour that in the whole itinerary of the Loire has
+been but pale.
+
+Below Nantes the Loire estuary has turned the surrounding country into a
+little Holland, where fisherfolk and their boats, with sails of red and
+blue, form charming symphonies of pale colour. In the _cabarets_ along
+its shores there is a strange medley of peasants, sea-farers, and fisher
+men and women. Not so cosmopolitan a crew as one sees in the harbourside
+_cabarets_ at Marseilles, or even Le Havre, but sufficiently strange to
+be a fascination to one who has just come down from the headwaters.
+
+The "Section Maritime," from Nantes to the sea, is a matter of some
+sixty kilometres. Here the boats increase in number and size. They are
+known as _gabares_, _chalands_, and _alléges_, and go down with the
+river-current and return on the incoming ebb, for here the river is
+tidal.
+
+Gray and green is the aspect at the Loire's source, and green and gray
+it still is, though of a decidedly different colour-value, at St.
+Nazaire, below Nantes, the real deep-water port of the Loire.
+
+By this time the river has amplified into a broad estuary which is lost
+in the incoming and outgoing tides of the Bay of Biscay.
+
+For nearly a thousand kilometres the Loire has wound its way gently and
+broadly through rocky escarpments, fertile plains, populous and
+luxurious towns,--all of it historic ground,--by stately châteaux and
+through vineyards and fruit orchards, with a placid grandeur.
+
+Now it becomes more or less prosaic and matter-of-fact, though in a way
+no less interesting, as it takes on some of the attributes of the
+outside world.
+
+This outline, then, approximates somewhat a portrait of the Loire. It is
+the result of many pilgrimages enthusiastically undertaken; a long
+contemplation of the charms of perhaps the most beautiful river in
+France, from its source to its mouth, at all seasons of the year.
+
+The riches and curios of the cities along its banks have been
+contemplated with pleasure, intermingled with a memory of many stirring
+scenes of the past, but it is its châteaux that make it famous.
+
+The story of the châteaux has been told before in hundreds of volumes,
+but only a personal view of them will bring home to one the manners and
+customs of one of the most luxurious periods of life in the France of
+other days.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE ORLÉANNAIS
+
+
+Of the many travelled English and Americans who go to Paris, how few
+visit the Loire valley with its glorious array of mediæval and
+Renaissance châteaux. No part of France, except Paris, is so accessible,
+and none is so comfortably travelled, whether by road or by rail.
+
+At Orleans one is at the very gateway of this splendid, bountiful
+region, the lower valley of the Loire. Here the river first takes on a
+complexion which previously it had lacked, for it is only when the Loire
+becomes the boundary-line between the north and the south that one comes
+to realize its full importance.
+
+The Orléannais, like many another province of mid-France, is a region
+where plenty awaits rich and poor alike. Not wholly given over to
+agriculture, nor yet wholly to manufacturing, it is without that
+restless activity of the frankly industrial centres of the north. In
+spite of this, though, the Orléannais is not idle.
+
+[Illustration: THE CHÂTEAUX OF THE LOIRE (MAP)]
+
+Orleans is the obvious _pointe de départ_ for all the wonderland of the
+Renaissance which is to follow, but itself and its immediate
+surroundings have not the importance for the visitor, in spite of the
+vivid historical chapters which have been written here in the past, that
+many another less famous city possesses. By this is meant that the
+existing monuments of history are by no means as numerous or splendid
+here as one might suppose. Not that they are entirely lacking, but
+rather that they are of a different species altogether from that array
+of magnificently planned châteaux which line the banks of the Loire
+below.
+
+To one coming from the north the entrance to the Orléannais will be
+emphatically marked. It is the first experience of an atmosphere which,
+if not characteristically or climatically of the south, is at least
+reminiscent thereof, with a luminosity which the provinces of old France
+farther north entirely lack.
+
+As Lavedan, the Académicien, says: "Here all focuses itself into one
+great picture, the combined romance of an epoch. Have you not been
+struck with a land where the clouds, the atmosphere, the odour of the
+soil, and the breezes from afar, all comport, one with another, in true
+and just proportions?" This is the Orléannais, a land where was
+witnessed the morning of the Valois, the full noon of Louis XIV., and
+the twilight of Louis XVI.
+
+The Orléannais formed a distinct part of mediæval France, as it did,
+ages before, of western Gaul. Of all the provinces through which the
+Loire flows, the Orléannais is as prolific as any of great names and
+greater events, and its historical monuments, if not so splendid as
+those in Touraine, are no less rare.
+
+Orleans itself contains many remarkable Gothic and Renaissance
+constructions, and not far away is the ancient church of the old abbey
+of Notre Dame de Cléry, one of the most historic and celebrated shrines
+in the time of the superstitious Louis XI.; while innumerable mediæval
+villes and ruined fortresses plentifully besprinkle the province.
+
+One characteristic possessed by the Orléannais differentiates it from
+the other outlying provinces of the old monarchy. The people and the
+manners and customs of this great and important duchy were allied, in
+nearly all things, with the interests and events of the capital itself,
+and so there was always a lack of individuality, which even to-day is
+noticeably apparent in the Orleans capital. The shops, hotels, cafés,
+and the people themselves might well be one of the _quartiers_ of Paris,
+so like are they in general aspect.
+
+The notable Parisian character of the inhabitants of Orleans, and the
+resemblance of the people of the surrounding country to those of the Ile
+of France, is due principally to the fact that the Orléannais was never
+so isolated as many others of the ancient provinces. It was virtually a
+neighbour of the capital, and its relations with it were intimate and
+numerous. Moreover, it was favoured by a great number of lines of
+communication by road and by water, so that its manners and customs
+became, more or less unconsciously, interpolations.
+
+The great event of the year in Orleans is the Fête de Jeanne d'Arc,
+which takes place in the month of May. Usually few English and American
+visitors are present, though why it is hard to reason out, for it takes
+place at quite the most delightful season in the year. Perhaps it is
+because Anglo-Saxons are ashamed of the part played by their ancestors
+in the shocking death of the maid of Domremy and Orleans. Innumerable
+are the relics and reminders of the "Maid" scattered throughout the
+town, and the local booksellers have likewise innumerable and
+authoritative accounts of the various episodes of her life, which saves
+the necessity of making further mention here.
+
+There are several statues of Jeanne d'Arc in the city, and they have
+given rise to the following account written by Jules Lemaitre, the
+Académicien:
+
+"I believe that the history of Jeanne d'Arc was the first that was ever
+told to me (before even the fairy-tales of Perrault). The 'Mort de
+Jeanne d'Arc,' of Casimir Delavigne, was the first fable that I learned,
+and the equestrian statue of the 'Maid,' in the Place Martroi, at
+Orleans, is perhaps the oldest vision that my memory guards.
+
+"This statue of Jeanne d'Arc is absurd. She has a Grecian profile, and a
+charger which is not a war-horse but a race-horse. Nevertheless to me it
+was noble and imposing.
+
+"In the courtyard of the Hôtel de Ville is a _petite pucelle_, very
+gentle and pious, who holds against her heart her sword, after the
+manner of a crucifix. At the end of the bridge across the Loire is
+another Jeanne d'Arc, as the maid of war, surrounded by swirling
+draperies, as in a picture of Juvenet's. This to me tells the whole
+story of the reverence with which the martyred 'Maid' is regarded in the
+city of Orleans by the Loire."
+
+One can appreciate all this, and to the full, for a Frenchman is a stern
+critic of art, even that of his own countrymen, and Jeanne d'Arc, along
+with some other celebrities, is one of those historical figures which
+have seldom had justice done them in sculptured or pictorial
+representations. The best, perhaps, is the precocious Lepage's fine
+painting, now in America. What would not the French give for the return
+of this work of art?
+
+The Orléannais, with the Ile de France, formed the particular domain of
+the third race of French monarchs. From 1364 to 1498 the province was an
+appanage known as the Duché d'Orleans, but it was united with the Crown
+by Louis XII., and finally divided into the Departments of Loir et Cher,
+Eure et Loir, and Loiret.
+
+Like the "pardons" and "benedictions" of Finistère and other parts of
+Bretagne, the peasants of the Loiret have a quaint custom which bespeaks
+a long handed-down superstition. On the first Sunday of Lent they hie
+themselves to the fields with lighted fagots and chanting the following
+lines:
+
+      "Sortez, sortez d'ici mulots!
+      Où je vais vous brûler les crocs!
+      Quittez, quittez ces blés;
+      Allez, vous trouverez
+      Dans la cave du curé
+      Plus à boire qu' à manger."
+
+Just how far the curé endorses these sentiments, the author of this book
+does not know. The explanation of the rather extraordinary proceeding
+came from one of the participants, who, having played his part in the
+ceremony, dictated the above lines over sundry _petits verres_ paid for
+by the writer. The day is not wound up, however, with an orgy of eating
+and drinking, as is sometimes the case in far-western Brittany. The
+peasant of the Loiret simply eats rather heavily of "_mi_," which is
+nothing more or less than oatmeal porridge, after which he goes to bed.
+
+The Loire rolls down through the Orléannais, from Châteauneuf-sur-Loire
+and Jargeau, and cuts the banks of _sable_, and the very shores
+themselves, into little capes and bays which are delightful in their
+eccentricity. Here cuts in the _Canal d'Orleans_, which makes possible
+the little traffic that goes on between the Seine and the Loire.
+
+A few kilometres away from the right bank of the Loire, in the heart of
+the Gatanais, is Lorris, the home of Guillaume de Lorris, the first
+author of the "Roman de la Rose." For this reason alone it should become
+a literary shrine of the very first rank, though, in spite of its claim,
+no one ever heard of a literary pilgrim making his way there.
+
+Lorris is simply a big, overgrown French market-town, which is
+delightful enough in its somnolence, but which lacks most of the
+attributes which tourists in general seem to demand.
+
+At Lorris a most momentous treaty was signed, known as the "Paix de
+Lorris," wherein was assured to the posterity of St. Louis the heritage
+of the Comte de Toulouse, another of those periodical territorial
+aggrandizements which ultimately welded the French nation into the whole
+that it is to-day.
+
+From the juncture of the _Canal d'Orleans_ with the Loire one sees
+shining in the brilliant sunlight the roof-tops of Orleans, the
+Aurelianum of the Romans, its hybrid cathedral overtopping all else. It
+was Victor Hugo who said of this cathedral: "This odious church, which
+from afar holds so much of promise, and which near by has none," and
+Hugo undoubtedly spoke the truth.
+
+Orleans is an old city and a _cité neuve_. Where the river laps its
+quays, it is old but commonplace; back from the river is a strata which
+is really old, fine Gothic house-fronts and old leaning walls; while
+still farther from the river, as one approaches the railway station, it
+is strictly modern, with all the devices and appliances of the newest of
+the new.
+
+The Orleans of history lies riverwards,--the Orleans where the heart of
+France pulsed itself again into life in the tragic days which were
+glorified by "the Maid."
+
+"The countryside of the Orléannais has the monotony of a desert," said
+an English traveller some generations ago. He was wrong. To do him
+justice, however, or to do his observations justice, he meant, probably,
+that, save the river-bottom of the Loire, the great plain which begins
+with La Beauce and ends with the Sologne has a comparatively
+uninteresting topography. This is true; but it is not a desert. La
+Beauce is the best grain-growing region in all France, and the Sologne
+is now a reclaimed land whose sandy soil has proved admirably adapted to
+an unusually abundant growth of the vine. So much for this old-time
+point of view, which to-day has changed considerably.
+
+The Orléannais is one of the most populous and progressive sections of
+all France, and its inhabitants, per square kilometre, are constantly
+increasing in numbers, which is more than can be said of every
+_département_. There are multitudes of tiny villages, and one is
+scarcely ever out of sight and sound of a habitation.
+
+[Illustration: _ENVIRONS of ORLEANS_ (MAP)]
+
+In the great forest, just to the west of Orleans, are two small
+villages, each a celebrated battle-ground, and a place of a patriotic
+pilgrimage on the eighth and ninth of November of each year. They are
+Coulmiers and Bacon, and here some fugitives from Metz and Sedan, with
+some young troops exposed to fire for the first time, engaged with the
+Prussians (in 1870) who had occupied Orleans since mid-October. There is
+the usual conventional "soldiers' monument,"--with considerably more art
+about it than is usually seen in America,--before which Frenchmen
+seemingly never cease to worship.
+
+This same _Forêt d'Orleans_, one of those wild-woods which so
+plentifully besprinkle France, has a sad and doleful memory in the
+traditions of the druidical inhabitants of a former day. Their practices
+here did not differ greatly from those of their brethren elsewhere, but
+local history is full of references to atrocities so bloodthirsty that
+it is difficult to believe that they were ever perpetrated under the
+guise of religion.
+
+Surrounding the forest are many villages and hamlets, war-stricken all
+in the dark days of seventy-one, when the Prussians were overrunning the
+land.
+
+Of all the cities of the Loire, Orleans, Blois, Tours, Angers, and
+Nantes alone show any spirit of modern progressiveness or of likeness
+to the capital. The rest, to all appearances, are dead, or at least
+sleeping in their pasts. But they are charming and restful spots for all
+that, where in melancholy silence sit the old men, while the younger
+folk, including the very children, are all at work in the neighbouring
+vineyards or in the wheat-fields of La Beauce.
+
+Meung-sur-Loire and Beaugency sleep on the river-bank, their proud
+monuments rising high in the background,--the massive tower of Cæsar and
+a quartette of church spires. Just below Orleans is the juncture of the
+Loiret and the Loire at St. Mesmin, while only a few kilometres away is
+Cléry, famed for its associations of Louis XI.
+
+The Loiret is not a very ample river, and is classed by the Minister of
+Public Works as navigable for but four kilometres of its length. This,
+better than anything else, should define its relative importance among
+the great waterways of France. Navigation, as it is known elsewhere, is
+practically non-existent.
+
+The course of the Loiret is perhaps twelve kilometres all told, but it
+has given its name to a great French _département_, though it is
+doubtless the shortest of all the rivers of France thus honoured.
+
+It first comes to light in the dainty park of the Château de la Source,
+where there are two distinct sources. The first forms a small circular
+basin, known as the "Bouillon," which leads into another semicircular
+basin called the "Bassin du Miroir," from the fact that it reflects the
+façade of the château in its placid surface. Of course, this is all very
+artificial and theatrical, but it is a pretty conceit nevertheless. The
+other source, known as the "Grande Source," joins the rivulet some
+hundreds of yards below the "Bassin du Miroir."
+
+The Château de la Source is a seventeenth-century edifice, of no great
+architectural beauty in itself, but sufficiently sylvan in its
+surroundings to give it rank as one of the notable places of pilgrimage
+for tourists who, said a cynical French writer, "take the châteaux of
+the Loire _tour à tour_ as they do the morgue, the Moulin Rouge, and the
+sewers of Paris."
+
+In the early days the château belonged to the Cardinal Briçonnet, and it
+was here that Bolingbroke, after having been stripped of his titles in
+England, went into retirement in 1720. In 1722 he received Voltaire, who
+read him his "Henriade."
+
+[Illustration: THE LOIRET]
+
+In 1815 the invading Prince Eckmühl, with his staff, installed himself
+in the château, when, after Waterloo, the Prussian and French armies
+were separated only by a barrier placed midway on the bridge at Orleans.
+It was here also that the Prussian army was disbanded, on the agreement
+of the council held at Angerville, near Orleans.
+
+There are three other châteaux on the borders of the Loiret, which are
+of more than ordinary interest, so far as great country houses and their
+surroundings go, though their histories are not very striking, with
+perhaps the exception of the Château de la Fontaine, which has a
+remarkable garden, laid out by Lenôtre, the designer of the parks at
+Versailles.
+
+Leaving Orleans by the right bank of the Loire, one first comes to La
+Chapelle-St. Mesmin. La Chapelle has a church dating from the eleventh
+century and a château which is to-day the _maison de campagne_ of the
+Bishop of Orleans. On the opposite bank was the Abbaye de Micy, founded
+by Clovis at the time of his conversion. A stone cross, only, marks the
+site to-day.
+
+St. Ay follows next, and is usually set down in the guide-books as
+"celebrated for good wines." This is not to be denied for a moment, and
+it is curious to note that the city bears the same name as the famous
+town in the champagne district, celebrated also for good wine, though
+of a different kind. The name of the Orléannais Ay is gained from a
+hermitage founded here by a holy man, who died in the sixth century. His
+tomb was discovered in 1860, under the choir of the church, which makes
+it a place of pilgrimage of no little local importance.
+
+At Meung-sur-Loire one should cross the river to Cléry, five kilometres
+off, seldom if ever visited by casual travellers. But why? Simply
+because it is overlooked in that universal haste shown by most
+travellers--who are not students of art or architecture, or deep lovers
+of history--in making their way to more popular shrines. One will not
+regret the time taken to visit Cléry, which shared with Our Lady of
+Embrun the devotions of Louis XI.
+
+Cléry's three thousand pastoral inhabitants of to-day would never give
+it distinction, and it is only the Maison de Louis XI. and the Basilique
+de Notre Dame which makes it worth while, but this is enough.
+
+In "Quentin Durward" one reads of the time when the superstitious Louis
+was held in captivity by the Burgundian, Charles the Bold, and of how
+the French king made his devotions before the little image, worn in his
+hat, of the Virgin of Cléry; "the grossness of his superstition, none
+the less than his fickleness, leading him to believe Our Lady of Cléry
+to be quite a different person from the other object of his devotion,
+the Madonna of Embrun, a tiny mountain village in southwestern France.
+
+"'Sweet Lady of Cléry,' he exclaimed, clasping his hands and beating his
+breast as he spoke, 'Blessed Mother of Mercy! thou who art omnipotent
+with omnipotence, have compassion with me, a sinner! It is true I have
+sometimes neglected you for thy blessed sister of Embrun; but I am a
+king, my power is great, my wealth boundless; and were it otherwise, I
+would double my _gabelle_ on my subjects rather than not pay my debts to
+you both.'"
+
+Louis endowed the church at Cléry, and the edifice was built in the fine
+flamboyant style of the period, just previous to his death, which De
+Commines gives as "_le samedy pénultième jour d'Aoust, l'an mil quatre
+cens quatre-vingtz et trois, à huit heures du soir_."
+
+Louis XI. was buried here, and the chief "sight" is of course his tomb,
+beside which is a flagstone which covers the heart of Charles VIII. The
+Chapelle St. Jacques, within the church, is ornamented by a series of
+charming sculptures, and the Chapelle des Dunois-Longueville holds the
+remains of the famous ally of Jeanne d'Arc and members of his family.
+
+In the choir is the massive oaken statue of Our Lady of Cléry
+(thirteenth century); the very one before which Louis made his vows.
+There is some old glass in the choir and a series of sculptured stalls,
+which would make famous a more visited and better known shrine. There is
+a fine sculptured stone portal to the sacristy, and within there are
+some magnificent old _armoires_, and also two chasubles, which saw
+service in some great church, perhaps here, in the times of Louis
+himself.
+
+The "Maison de Louis XI.," near the church, is a house of brick,
+restored in 1651, and now--or until a very recent date--occupied by a
+community of nuns. In the Grande Rue is another "Maison de Louis XI.;"
+at least it has his cipher on the painted ceiling. It is now occupied by
+the Hôtel de la Belle Image. Those who like to dine and sleep where have
+also dined and slept royal heads will appreciate putting up at this
+hostelry.
+
+[Illustration: _The Loire at Meung_]
+
+Meung-sur-Loire was the birthplace of Jehan Clopinel, better known as
+Jean de Meung, who continued Guillaume de Lorris's "Roman de la Rose,"
+the most famous bit of verse produced by the _trouvères_ of the
+thirteenth century. The voice of the troubadour was soon after hushed
+for ever, but that thirteenth-century masterwork--though by two hands
+and the respective portions unequal in merit--lives for ever as the
+greatest of its kind. In memory of the author, Meung has its Rue Jehan
+de Meung, for want of a more effective or appealing monument.
+
+Dumas opens the history of "Les Trois Mousquétaires" with the following
+brilliantly romantic lines anent Meung: "_Le premier lundi du mois
+d'Avril, 1625, le bourg de Meung, où naquit l'auteur du 'Roman de la
+Rose.'_" (One of the authors, he should have said, but here is where
+Dumas nodded, as he frequently did.)
+
+Continuing, one reads: "The town was in a veritable uproar. It was as if
+the Huguenots were up in arms and the drama of a second Rochelle was
+being enacted." Really the description is too brilliant and entrancing
+to be repeated here, and if any one has forgotten his Dumas to the
+extent that he has forgotten D'Artagnan's introduction to the hostelry
+of the "Franc Meunier," he is respectfully referred back to that
+perennially delightful romance.
+
+Meung was once a Roman fortress, known as Maudunum, and in the eleventh
+century St. Liphard founded a monastery here.
+
+In the fifteenth century Meung was the prison of François Villon. Poor
+vagabond as he was then, it has become the fashion to laud both the
+personality and the poesy of Maître François Villon.
+
+By the orders of Thibaut d'Aussigny, Bishop of Orleans, Villon was
+confined in a strong tower attached to the side of the _clocher_ of the
+parish church of St. Liphard, and which adjoined the _château de
+plaisance_ belonging to the bishop. Primarily this imprisonment was due
+to a robbery in which the poet had been concerned at Orleans. He spent
+the whole of the summer in this dungeon, which was overrun with rats,
+and into which he had to be lowered by ropes. As his food consisted of
+bread and water only, his sufferings at this time were probably greater
+than at any other period in his life. Here the burglar-poet remained
+until October, 1461, when Louis XI. visited Meung, and, to mark the
+occasion, ordered the release of all prisoners. For this delivery,
+Villon, according to the accounts of his life, appears to have been
+genuinely grateful to the king.
+
+At Beaugency, seven kilometres from Meung, one comes upon an
+architectural and historical treat which is unexpected.
+
+In the eleventh century Beaugency was a fief of the bishopric of Amiens,
+and its once strong château was occupied by the Barons de Landry, the
+last of whom died, without children, in the thirteenth century.
+Philippe-le-Bel bought the fief and united it with the Comté de Blois.
+It was made an independent _comté_ of itself in 1569, and in 1663 became
+definitely an appanage of Orleans. The Prince de Galles took Beaugency
+in 1359, the Gascons in 1361, Duguesclin in 1370 and again in 1417; in
+1421 and in 1428 it was taken by the English, from whom it was delivered
+by Jeanne d'Arc in 1429. Internal wars and warfares continued for
+another hundred and fifty years, finally culminating in one of the
+grossest scenes which had been enacted within its walls,--the bloody
+revenge against the Protestants, encouraged doubtless by the affair of
+St. Bartholomew's night at Paris.
+
+The ancient square donjon of the eleventh century, known as the Tour de
+César, still looms high above the town. It must be one of the hugest
+keeps in all France. The old château of the Dunois is now a charitable
+institution, but reflects, in a way, the splendour of its
+fourteenth-century inception, and its Salle de Jeanne d'Arc, with its
+great chimneypiece, is worthy to rank with the best of its kind along
+the Loire. The spiral staircase, of which the Loire builders were so
+fond, is admirable here, and dates from 1530.
+
+The Hôtel de Ville of Beaugency is a charming edifice of the very best
+of Renaissance, which many more pretentious structures of the period are
+not. It dates from 1526, and was entirely restored--not, however, to its
+detriment, as frequently happens--in the last years of the nineteenth
+century. Its charm, nevertheless, lies mostly in its exterior, for
+little remains of value within except a remarkable series of old
+embroideries taken from the choir of the old abbey of Beaugency.
+
+The Église de Notre Dame is a Romanesque structure with Gothic
+interpolations. It is not bad in its way, but decidedly is not
+remarkable as mediæval churches go.
+
+The old streets of Beaugency contain a dazzling array of old houses in
+wood and stone, and in the Rue des Templiers is a rare example of
+Romanesque civil architecture; at least the type is rare enough in the
+Orléannais, though more frequently seen in the south of France. The Tour
+St. Firmin dates from 1530, and is all that remains of a church which
+stood here up to revolutionary times. The square ruined towers known
+as the Porte Tavers are relics of the city's old walls and gates, and
+are all that are left to mark the ancient enclosure.
+
+[Illustration: _Beaugency_]
+
+The Tour du Diable and the house of the ruling abbot remain to suggest
+the power and magnificence of the great abbey which was built here in
+the tenth century. In 1567 it was burned, and later restored, but beyond
+the two features just mentioned there is nothing to indicate its former
+uses, the remaining structures having passed into private hands and
+being devoted to secular uses.
+
+The old bridge which crosses the Loire at this point is most curious,
+and dates from various epochs. It is 440 metres in length, and is
+composed of twenty-six arches, one of which dates from the fourteenth
+century, when bridge-building was really an art. Eight of the
+present-day arches are of wood, and on the second is a monolith
+surmounted by a figure of Christ in bronze, replacing a former chapel to
+St. Jacques. A chapel on a bridge is not a unique arrangement, but few
+exist to-day, one of the most famous being, perhaps, that on the ruined
+bridge of St. Bénezet at Avignon.
+
+Altogether, Beaugency, as it sleeps its life away after the strenuous
+days of the middle ages, is more lovable by far than a great
+metropolis.
+
+The traveller is well repaid who makes a stop at Beaugency a part of a
+three days' gentle ramble among the usually neglected towns and villages
+of the Orléannais and the Blaisois, instead of rushing through to Blois
+by express-train, which is what one usually does.
+
+Southward one's route lies through pleasant vineyards, on one side the
+Sologne, and on the other the Coteau de Guignes, which latter ranks as
+quite the best among the vine-growing districts of the Orléannais.
+
+Near Tavers is a natural curiosity in the shape of the "Fontaine des
+Sables Mouvants," where the sands of a tiny spring boil and bubble like
+a miniature geyser.
+
+Mer, another small town, follows, twelve kilometres farther on. Like
+Beaugency it is a somnolent bourg, and the life of the peasant folk
+round about, who go to market on one day at Beaugency and on another at
+Blois, and occasionally as far away as Orleans, is much the same as it
+was a century ago.
+
+There is a Boulevard de la Gare and a Grande Rue at Mer, the latter
+leading to a fine Gothic church with a fifteenth-century tower, which is
+admirable in every way, and forms a beacon by land for many miles
+around. The primitive church at Mer dates from the eleventh century, the
+side walls, however, being all that remain of that period. There is a
+sculptured pulpit of the seventeenth century, and a great painting,
+which looks ancient and is certainly a masterful work of art,
+representing an "Adoration of the Magi."
+
+When all is said and done, it is its irresistible and inexpressible
+charm which makes Mer well-beloved, rather than any great wealth of
+artistic atmosphere of any nature.
+
+Away to the south, across the Loire to Muides, runs the route to
+Chambord, through the Sologne, where immediately the whole aspect of
+life changes from that on the borders of the rich grain-lands of the
+Orléannais and La Beauce.
+
+All the way from Beaugency to Blois the Loire threads its way through a
+lovely country, whose rolling slopes, back from the river, are
+surmounted here and there by windmills, a not very frequent adjunct to
+the landscape of France, except in the north.
+
+Near Mer is Menars, with its eighteenth-century château of La Pompadour;
+Suèvres, the site of an ancient Roman city; the lowlands lying before
+Chambord; St. Die; Montlivault; St. Claude, and a score of little
+villages which are entrancing in their old-world aspect even in these
+days of progress. This completes the panorama to Blois which, with the
+Blaisois, forms the borderland between the Orléannais and Touraine.
+
+Before reaching Blois, Menars, at any rate, commands attention. It
+fronts upon the Loire, but is practically upon the northern border of
+the Forêt de Blois, hence properly belongs to the Blaisois. Menars was
+made a rendezvous for the chase by the wily and pleasure-loving La
+Pompadour, who quartered herself at the château, which afterward passed
+to her brother, De Marigny.
+
+Before the Revolution, Menars was the seat of a marquisate, of which the
+land was bought by Louis XV. for his famous, or infamous, _maîtresse_.
+The property has frequently changed hands since that day, but its
+gardens and terraces, descending toward the river-bank, mark it as one
+of those _coquette_ establishments, with which France was dotted in the
+eighteenth century.
+
+These establishments possessed enough of luxurious appointments to be
+classed as fitting for the butterflies of the time, but in no way, so
+far as the architectural design or the artistic details were concerned,
+were any of them worthy to be classed with the great domestic châteaux
+of the early years of the Renaissance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE BLAISOIS AND THE SOLOGNE
+
+
+The Blésois or Blaisois was the ancient name given to the _petit pays_
+which made a part of the government of the Orléannais. It was, and is,
+the borderland between the Orléannais and Touraine, and, with its
+capital, Blois, the city of counts, was a powerful territory in its own
+right, in spite of the allegiance which it owed to the Crown. Twenty
+leagues in length by thirteen in width, it was bounded on the north by
+the Dunois and the Orléannais, on the east by Berry, on the south by
+Touraine, and on the west by Touraine and the Vendomois.
+
+Blois, its capital, was famed ever in the annals of the middle ages, and
+to-day no city in the Loire valley possesses more sentimental interest
+for the traveller than does Blois.
+
+To the eastward lay the sands of the Sologne, and southward the ample
+and fruitful Touraine, hence Blois's position was one of supreme
+importance, and there is no wonder that it proved to be the scene of so
+many momentous events of history.
+
+The present day Department of the Loir et Cher was carved out from the
+Blaisois, the Vendomois, and the Orléannais. The Baisois was, in olden
+time, one of the most important of the _petits gouvernements_ of all the
+kingdom, and gave to Blois a line of counts who rivalled in power and
+wealth the churchmen of Tours and the dukes of Brittany. Gregory of
+Tours is the first historian who makes mention of the ancient _Pagus
+Blensensis_.
+
+One must not tell the citizen of Blois that it is at Tours that one
+hears the best French spoken. Everybody knows this, but the inhabitant
+of the Blaisois will not admit it, and, in truth, to the stranger there
+is not much apparent difference. Throughout this whole region he
+understands and makes himself understood with much more facility than in
+any other part of France.
+
+For one thing, not usually recalled, Blois should be revered and
+glorified. It was the native place of Lenoir, who invented the
+instrument which made possible the definite determination of the metric
+system of measurement.
+
+One reads in Bernier's "Histoire de Blois" that the inhabitants are
+"honest, gallant, and polite in conversation, and of a delicate and
+diffident temperament." This was written nearly a century ago, but there
+is no excuse for one's changing the opinion to-day unless, as was the
+misfortune of the writer, he runs up against an unusually importunate
+vender of post-cards or an aggressive _garçon de café_.
+
+[Illustration: ARMS OF THE CITY OF BLOIS]
+
+Blois, among all the cities of the Loire, is the favourite with the
+tourist. Why this should be is an enigma. It is overburdened, at times,
+with droves of tourists, and this in itself is a detraction in the eyes
+of many.
+
+Perhaps it is because here one first meets a great château of state; and
+certainly the Château de Blois lives in one's memory more than any other
+château in France.
+
+[Illustration: _The Riverside at Blois_]
+
+Much has been written of Blois, its counts, its château, and its many
+and famous _hôtels_ of the nobility, by writers of all opinions and
+abilities, from those old chroniclers who wrote of the plots and
+intrigues of other days to those critics of art and architecture who
+have discovered--or think they have discovered--that Da Vinci designed
+the famous spiral staircase.
+
+From this one may well gather that Blois is the foremost château of all
+the Loire in popularity and theatrical effect. Truly this is so, but it
+is by no manner of means the most lovable; indeed, it is the least
+lovable of all that great galaxy which begins at Blois and ends at
+Nantes. It is a show-place and not much more, and partakes in every form
+and feature--as one sees it to-day--of the attributes of a museum, and
+such it really is. All of its former gorgeousness is still there, and
+all the banalities of the later period when Gaston of Orleans built his
+ugly wing, for the "personally conducted" to marvel at, and honeymoon
+couples to envy. The French are quite fond of visiting this shrine
+themselves, but usually it is the young people and their mammas, and
+detached couples of American and English birth that one most sees
+strolling about the courts and apartments were formerly lords and ladies
+and cavaliers moved and plotted.
+
+The great château of the Counts of Blois is built upon an inclined rock
+which rises above the roof-tops of the lower town quite in fairy-book
+fashion,--
+
+    "... Bâtie en pierre et d'ardoise converte,
+    Blanche et carrée au bas de la colline verte."
+
+Commonly referred to as the Château de Blois, it is really composed of
+four separate and distinct foundations; the original château of the
+counts; the later addition of Louis XII.; the palace of François I., and
+the most unsympathetically and dismally disposed _pavillon_ of Gaston of
+Orleans.
+
+[Illustration: _Signature of François Premier_]
+
+The artistic qualities of the greater part of the distinct edifices
+which go to make up the château as it stands to-day are superb, with the
+exception of that great wing of Gaston's, before mentioned, which is as
+cold and unfeeling as the overrated palace at Versailles.
+
+The Comtes de Chatillon built that portion just to the right of the
+present entrance; Louis XII., the edifice through which one enters the
+inner court and which extends far to the left, including also the chapel
+immediately to the rear; while François Premier, who here as elsewhere
+let his unbounded Italian proclivities have full sway, built the
+extended wing to the left of the inner court and fronting on the present
+Place du Château, formerly the Place Royale.
+
+Immediately to the left, in the Basse Cour de Château, are the Hôtel
+d'Amboise, the Hôtel d'Épernon, and farther away, in the Rue St. Honore,
+the Hôtel Sardini, the Hôtel d'Alluye, and a score of others belonging
+to the nobility of other days; all of them the scenes of many stirring
+and gallant events in Renaissance times.
+
+This is hardly the place for a discussion of the merits or demerits of
+any particular artistic style, but the frequently repeated expression of
+Buffon's "_Le style, c'est l'homme_" may well be paraphrased into
+"_L'art, c'est l'époque._" In fact one finds at all times imprinted upon
+the architectural style of any period the current mood bred of some
+historical event or a passing fancy.
+
+At Blois this is particularly noticeable. As an architectural monument
+the château is a picturesque assemblage of edifices belonging to many
+different epochs, and, as such, shows, as well as any other document of
+contemporary times, the varying ambitions and emotions of its builders,
+from the rude and rough manners of the earliest of feudal times through
+the highly refined Renaissance details of the imaginative brain of
+François, down to the base concoction of the elder Mansart, produced at
+the commands of Gaston of Orleans.
+
+[Illustration: CYPHER OF ANNE D'BRETANGE CHÂTEAU DE BLOIS]
+
+The whole gamut, from the gay and winsome to the sad and dismal, is
+found here.
+
+The escutcheons of the various occupants are plainly in evidence,--the
+swan pierced by an arrow of the first Counts of Blois; the ermine of
+Anne de Bretagne; the porcupine of the Ducs d'Orleans, and the
+salamander of François Premier.
+
+In the earliest structure were to be seen all the attributes of a feudal
+fortress, towers and walls pierced with narrow loopholes, and damp, dark
+dungeons hidden away in the thick walls. Then came a structure which was
+less of a fortress and more habitable, but still a stronghold, though
+having ample and decorative doorways and windows, with curious
+sculptures and rich framings. Then the pompous Renaissance with
+_escaliers_ and _balcons à jour_, balustrades crowning the walls,
+arabesques enriching the pilasters and walls, and elaborate cornices
+here, there, and everywhere,--all bespeaking the gallantry and taste of
+the _roi-chevalier_. Finally came the cold, classic features of the
+period of the brother of Louis XIII., decidedly the worst and most
+unlivable and unlovely architecture which France has ever produced. All
+these features are plain in the general scheme of the Château de Blois
+to-day, and doubtless it is this that makes the appeal; too much
+loveliness, as at Chenonceaux or Azay-le-Rideau, staggers the modern
+mortal by the sheer impossibility of its modern attainment.
+
+In plan the Château de Blois forms an irregular square situated at the
+apex of a promontory high above the surface of the Loire, and
+practically behind the town itself. The building has a most picturesque
+aspect, and, to those who know, gives practically a history of the
+château architecture of the time. Abandoned, mutilated, and dishonoured
+from time to time, the structure gradually took on new forms until the
+thick walls underlying the apartment known to-day as the Salle des
+États--probably the most ancient portion of all--were overshadowed by
+the great richness of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. One early
+fragment was entirely enveloped in the structure which was built by
+François Premier, the ancient Tour de Château Regnault, or De Moulins,
+or Des Oubliettes, as it was variously known, and from the outside this
+is no longer visible.
+
+From the platform one sees a magnificent panorama of the city and the
+far-reaching Loire, which unrolls itself southward and northward for
+many leagues, its banks covered by rich vineyards and crowned by thick
+forests.
+
+The building of Louis XII. presents its brick-faced exterior in black
+and red lozenge shapes, with sculptured window-frames, squarely upon the
+little tree-bordered _place_ of to-day, which in other times formed a
+part of that magnificent terrace which looked down upon the roof of the
+Église St. Nicolas, and the Jesuit Church of the Immaculate Conception,
+and the silvery belt of the Loire itself.
+
+[Illustration: ARMS OF LOIS XII]
+
+On the west façade of this vast conglomerate structure one sees the
+effigy of the porcupine, that weird symbol adopted by the family of
+Orleans.
+
+The choice of this ungainly animal--in spite of which it is most
+decorative in outline--was due to the first Louis, who was Duc
+d'Orleans. In the year 1393 Louis founded the order of the porcupine,
+in honour of the birth of Charles, his eldest son, who was born to him
+by Valentine de Milan. The legend which accompanied the adoption of the
+symbol--though often enough it was missing in the sculptured
+representations--was _Cominus et eminus_, which had its origin in the
+belief that the porcupine could defend himself in a near attack, but
+that when he himself attacked, he fought from afar by launching forth
+his spines.
+
+Naturalists will tell you that the porcupine does no such thing; but in
+those days it was evidently believed that he did, and in many, if not
+all, of the sculptured effigies that one sees of the beast there is a
+halo of detached spines forming a background as if they were really
+launching themselves forth in mid-air.
+
+Above this central doorway, or entrance to the courtyard, is a niche in
+which is a modern equestrian statue of Louis XII., replacing a more
+ancient one destroyed at the Revolution. This old statue, it is claimed,
+was an admirable work of art in its day, and the present statue is
+thought to be a replica of it.
+
+It originally bore the following inscription--a verse written by Fausto
+Andrelini, the king's favourite poet.
+
+[Illustration: _Central Doorway, Château de Blois_]
+
+   "Hic ubi natus erat dextro Lodoicus Olympo,
+      Sumpsit honorata Regia sceptra manu;
+    Felix quæ tanti fulfit lux nuntia Regis;
+      Gallia non alio Principe digna fuit.
+
+                  FAUSTUS 1498."
+
+According to an old French description this old statue was: "_très beau
+et très agréable ainsy que tous ses portraits l'ont représenté, comme
+celui qui est au grand portail de Bloys_."
+
+Above rises a balustrade with fantastic gargoyles with the pinnacles and
+fleurons of the window gables all very ornate, the whole topped off with
+a roofing of slate.
+
+Blois, in its general aspect, is fascinating; but it is not sympathetic,
+and this is not surprising when one remembers men and women who worked
+their deeds of bloody daring within its walls.
+
+The murders and other acts of violence and treason which took place here
+are interesting enough, but one cannot but feel, when he views the
+chimneypiece before which the Duc de Guise was standing when called to
+his death in the royal closet, that the men of whom the bloody tales of
+Blois are told quite deserved their fates.
+
+One comes away with the impression of it all stamped only upon the
+mind, not graven upon the heart. Political intrigue to-day, if quite as
+vulgar, is less sordid. Bigotry and ambition in those days allowed few
+of the finer feelings to come to the surface, except with regard to the
+luxuriance of surroundings. Of this last there can be no question, and
+Blois is as characteristically luxurious as any of the magnificent
+edifices which lodged the royalty and nobility of other days, throughout
+the valley of the Loire.
+
+A numismatic curiosity, connected with the history of the Château de
+Blois, is an ancient piece of money which one may see in the local
+museum. It is the oldest document in existence in which, or on which,
+the name of Blois is mentioned. On one side is a symbolical figure and
+the legend _Bleso Castro_, and on the other a _croix haussée_ and the
+name of the officer of the mint at Blois, _Pre Cistato, monetario_.
+
+The plan of the Château de Blois here given shows it not as it is
+to-day, but as it was at the death of Gaston d'Orleans in 1660. The
+constructions of the different epochs are noted on the plan as follows:
+
+     ERECTED BY THE COMTES DE CHATILLON
+
+     1. Tour de Donjon, Château-Regnault, Moulins, or des
+     Oubliettes.
+
+     2. Salle des États.
+
+     3. Tour du Foix or Observatory.
+
+
+     ERECTED BY THE DUCS D'ORLEANS
+
+     4. Portico and Galerie d'Orleans. (Destroyed in part by the
+     military.)
+
+     5. Galerie des Cerfs. (Built in part by Gaston, but made away
+     with by the city of Blois when the Jardins du Roi were built.)
+
+
+     ERECTED BY LOUIS XII.
+
+     6. Chapelle St. Calais. (Destroyed in part by the military.)
+
+     7. La Grande Vis, or Grand Escalier of Louis XI.
+
+     8. La Petite Vis, or Petit Escalier, in one chamber of which
+     the corpse of the Duc de Guise was burned.
+
+     9. Portico and Galerie de Louis XII.
+
+     10. Portico.
+
+     11. Salle des Gardes,--of the queen on the ground floor and of
+     the king on the first floor.
+
+     12. Bedchamber,--of the queen on the ground floor and of the
+     king on the first floor.
+
+     13. Corps de Garde.
+
+     14. Kitchen. (To-day Salle de Réception for visitors.)
+
+
+     ERECTED FROM THE TIME OF FRANÇOIS I. TO HENRI III.
+
+     15 and 16. Portico and Terrace Henri II. (In part built over by
+     Gaston.)
+
+     17. Grand Staircase.
+
+     18. Galerie de François I.
+
+     19. Staircase of the Salle des États. (Destroyed by the
+     military.)
+
+     20. First floor, Salle des Gardes of the queen; second floor,
+     Salle des Gardes of the king.
+
+     21. Staircase leading to the apartments of the queen mother.
+     Here also Henri III. had made the cells destined for the use
+     of the Capucins, and here were closeted "_pour s'assurer de
+     leur discretion_," the "_Quarante-Cinq_" who were to kill the
+     Duc de Guise.
+
+     22. Cabinet Neuf of Henri III. (Second floor.)
+
+     23. Gallery where was held the reunion of the Tiers Etats of
+     1576.
+
+     24. First floor, bedchamber of the king; second floor,
+     bedchamber of the queen.
+
+     25. Oratory.
+
+     26. Cabinet.
+
+     27. Passage to the Tour de Moulins.
+
+     28. Passage to the Cabinet Vieux, where the Duc de Guise was
+     struck down.
+
+     29. Cabinet Vieux.
+
+     30. Oratory, where the two chaplains of the king prayed during
+     the perpetration of the murder.
+
+     31. Garde-robe, where was first deposited the body of De Guise.
+
+
+     ERECTED BY GASTON D'ORLEANS
+
+     32. Peristyle. (Destroyed by the military.)
+
+     33. Dome.
+
+     34. Pavilion des Jardins.
+
+     35. Pavilion du Foix.
+
+     36. Petit Pavilion of the Méridionale façade. (Destroyed in
+     1825.)
+
+     37. Terraces.
+
+     38. Bastions du Foix and des Jardins.
+
+     39. L'Eperon.
+
+     40. Le Jardin Haut, or Jardin du Roi.
+
+[Illustration: _The_ CHÂTEAUX _of_ BLOIS (DIAGRAM)]
+
+The interior court is partly surrounded by a colonnade, quite
+cloister-like in effect. At the right centre of the François I. wing is
+that wonderful spiral staircase, concerning the invention of which so
+much speculation has been launched. Leonardo da Vinci, the protégé of
+François, has been given the honour, and a very considerable volume has
+been written to prove the claim.
+
+[Illustration: _Cypher of François Premier and Claude of France, at
+Blois_]
+
+Within this "_tour octagone"--"qui fait à ses huit pans hurler un
+gorgone_"--is built this marvellous openwork stairway,--an _escalier à
+jour_, as the French call it,--without an equal in all France, and for
+daring and decorative effect unexcelled by any of those Renaissance
+motives of Italy itself. Its ascent turns not, as do most _escaliers_,
+from left to right, but from right to left. It is the prototype of those
+supposedly unique outside staircases pointed out to country cousins in
+the abodes of Fifth Avenue millionaires.
+
+It is as impossible to catalogue the various apartments and their
+accessories here, as it is to include a chronology of the great events
+which have passed within their walls. One thing should be remembered,
+and that is, that the architect Duban restored the château throughout in
+recent years. In spite of this restoration one may readily enough
+reconstruct the scene of the murder of the Duc de Guise from the great
+fireplace on the second floor before which De Guise was standing when
+summoned by a page to the kingly presence, from the door through which
+he entered to his death, and from the wall where hung the tapestry
+behind which he was to pass. All this is real enough, and also the "Tour
+des Oubliettes," in which the duke's brother, the cardinal, suffered,
+and of which many horrible tales are still told by the attendants.
+
+Duban, the architect, came with his careful restorations and pictured
+with a most exact fidelity the decorations and the furnishings of the
+times of François, of Catherine, and of Henri III. The ornate
+chimneypieces have been furbished up anew, the walls and ceilings
+covered with new paint and gold; nothing could be more opulent or
+glorious, but it gives the impression of a city dwelling or a great
+hotel, "newly done up," as the house renovators express it.
+
+One contrasting emotion will be awakened by a contemplation of the two
+great Salles des Gardes and the apartments of Catherine de Medici; here,
+at least for the moment, is a relief from the intrigues, massacres, and
+assassinations which otherwise went on, for one recalls that, at one
+period, "_danses, ballets et jeux_" took place here continuously.
+
+In the apartments of Catherine there is much to remind one of "the base
+Florentine," as it has been the fashion of latter-day historians to
+describe the first of the Medici queens. Nothing could be more sumptuous
+than the Galerie de la Reine, her _Cabinet de Toilette_, or her _Chambre
+à Coucher_, with its secret panels, where she died on the 5th of
+January, 1589, "adored and revered," but soon forgotten, and of no more
+account than "_une chèvre mort_," says one old chronicler.
+
+The apartments of Catherine de Medici were directly beneath the
+guard-room where the Balafré was murdered, and that event, taking place
+at the very moment when the "queen-mother" was dying, cannot be said to
+have been conducive to a peaceful demise.
+
+Here, on the first floor of the François Premier wing, the _reine-mère_
+held her court, as did the king his. The great gallery overlooked the
+town on the side of the present Place du Château. It was, and is, a
+truly grand apartment, with diamond-paned windows, and rich, dark, wall
+decorations on which Catherine's device, a crowned C and her monogram in
+gold, frequently appears. There was, moreover, a great oval window,
+opposite which stood her altar, and a doorway, half concealed, led to
+her writing-closet, with its secret drawers and wall-panels which well
+served her purposes of intrigue and deceit. A hidden stairway led to the
+floor above, and there was a _chambre à coucher_, with a deep recess for
+the bed, the same to which she called her son Henri as she lay dying,
+admonishing him to give up the thought of murdering Guise. "What," said
+Henri, on this embarrassing occasion, "spare Guise, when he, triumphant
+in Paris, dared lay his hand on the hilt of his sword! Spare him who
+drove me a fugitive from the capital! Spare them who never spared me!
+No, mother, I will _not_."
+
+As the queen-mother drew near her end, and was lying ill at Blois,
+great events for France were culminating at the château. Henri III. had
+become King of France, and the Balafré, supported by Rome and Spain, was
+in open rebellion against the reigning house, and the word had gone
+forth that the Duc de Guise must die. The States General were to be
+immediately assembled, and De Guise, once the poetic lover of
+Marguerite, through his emissaries canvassed all France to ensure the
+triumph of the party of the Church against Henri de Navarre and his
+queen,--the Marguerite whom De Guise once professed to love,--who soon
+were to come to the throne of France.
+
+The uncomfortable Henri III. had been told that he would never be king
+in reality until De Guise had been made away with.
+
+The final act of the drama between the rival houses of Guise and Valois
+came when the king and his council came to Blois for the Assembly. The
+sunny city of Blois was indeed to be the scene of a momentous affair,
+and a truly sumptuous setting it was, the roof-tops of its houses
+sloping downward gently to the Loire, with the chief accessory, the
+coiffed and turreted château itself, high above all else.
+
+Details had been arranged with infinite pains, the guard doubled, and a
+company of Swiss posted around the courtyard and up and down the
+gorgeous staircase. Every nook and corner has its history in connection
+with this greatest event in the history of the Château of Blois.
+
+As Guise entered the council-chamber he was told that the king would see
+him in his closet, to reach which one had to pass through the guard-room
+below. The door was barred behind him that he might not return, when the
+trusty guards of the "Forty-fifth," under Dalahaide, already hidden
+behind the wall-tapestry, sprang upon the Balafré and forced him back
+upon the closed door through which he had just passed. Guise fell
+stabbed in the breast by Malines, and "lay long uncovered until an old
+carpet was found in which to wrap his corpse."
+
+Below, in her own apartments, lay the queen-mother, dying, but listening
+eagerly for the rush of footsteps overhead, hoping and praying that
+Henri--the hitherto effeminate Henri who played with his sword as he
+would with a battledore, and who painted himself like a woman, and put
+rings in his ears--would not prejudice himself at this time in the eyes
+of Rome by slaying the leader of the Church party.
+
+Guise died as Henri said he would die, with the words on his lips: "_A
+moi, mes amis!--trahison!--à moi, Guise,--je me meurs_," but the revenge
+of the Church party came when, at St. Cloud, the monk, Jacques Clément,
+poignarded the last of the Valois, and put the then heretical Henri de
+Navarre on the throne of France.
+
+Within the southernmost confines of the château is the Tour de Foix, so
+called for the old faubourg near by. The upper story and roof of this
+curious round tower was the work of Catherine de Medici, who installed
+there her astrologer and maker of philtres, Cosmo Ruggieri.
+
+Ruggieri was a most versatile person; he was astrologer, alchemist, and
+philosopher alike, besides being many other kinds of a rogue, all of
+which was very useful to the Medici now that she had come to power.
+
+Catherine built an outside stairway up to the platform of this tower,
+and a great, flat, stone table was placed there to form a foundation for
+Ruggieri's cabalistic instruments. Even this stone table itself was an
+uncanny affair, if we are to believe the old chronicles. It rang out in
+a clear sharp note whenever struck with some hard body, and on its
+surface was graven a line which led the eye directly toward the golden
+_fleur-de-lys_ on the cupola of Chambord's château, some three leagues
+distant on the other side of the Loire. What all this symbolism actually
+meant nobody except Catherine and her astrologer knew; at least, the
+details do not appear to have come down to enlighten posterity. Over the
+doorway of the observatory were graven the words, "_Vraniæ Sacrum_," _i.
+e._, consecrated to Uranius.
+
+Wherever Catherine chose to reside, whether in Touraine or at Paris, her
+astrologer and his "_observatoire_" formed a part of her train. She had
+brought Cosmo from Italy, and never for a moment did he leave her. He
+was a sort of a private demon on whom Catherine could shoulder her
+poisonings and her stabs, and, as before said, he was an exceedingly
+busy functionary of the court.
+
+That part of the structure built by Mansart for Gaston d'Orleans appears
+strange, solemn, and superfluous in connection with the sumptuousness of
+the earlier portions. With what poverty the architectural art of the
+seventeenth century expressed itself! What an inferiority came with the
+passing of the sixteenth century and the advent of the following! One
+finds a certain grandeur in the outlines of this last wing, with its
+majestic cupola over the entrance pavilion, but the general effect of
+the decorations is one of a great paucity of invention when compared to
+the more brilliant Renaissance forerunners on the opposite side of the
+courtyard.
+
+It was under the régime of Gaston d'Orleans that the gardens of the
+Château de Blois came to their greatest excellence and beauty. In 1653
+Abel Brunyer, the first physician of Gaston's suite, published a
+catalogue of the fruits and flowers to be found here in these gardens,
+of which he was also director. More than five hundred varieties were
+included, three-quarters of which belonged to the flora of France.
+
+Among the delicacies and novelties of the time to be found here was the
+Prunier de Reine Claude, from which those delicious green plums known to
+all the world to-day as "Reine Claudes" were propagated, also another
+variety which came from the Prunier de Monsieur, somewhat similar in
+taste but of a deep purple colour. The _pomme de terre_ was tenderly
+cared for and grown as a great novelty and delicacy long before its
+introduction to general cultivation by Parmentier. The tomato was
+imported from Mexico, and even tobacco was grown; from which it may be
+judged that Gaston did not intend to lack the good things of life.
+
+All these facts are recounted in Brunyer's "Hortus Regius Blesensis,"
+and, in addition, one Morrison, an expatriate Scotch doctor, who had
+attached himself to Gaston, also wrote a competing work which was
+published in London in 1669 under the title of "Preludia Botanica," and
+which dealt at great length with the already celebrated gardens of the
+Château de Blois.
+
+Morrison placed at the head of his work a Latin verse which came in time
+to be graven over the gateway of the gardens. This--as well as pretty
+much all record of it--has disappeared, but a repetition of the lines
+will serve to show with what admiration this paradise was held:
+
+   "Hinc, nulli biferi miranda rosaria Pesti,
+    Nec mala Hesperidum, vigili servata dracone.
+    Si paradisiacis quicquam (sine crimine) campis
+    Conferri possit, Blaesis mirabile specta.
+    Magnifici Gastonis opus! Qui terra capaci ...
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+        JACOBUS METELANUS SCOTUS."
+
+Not merely in history has the famous château at Blois played its part.
+Writers of fiction have more than once used it as an accessory or the
+principal scenic background of their sword and cloak novels; none more
+effectively than Dumas in the D'Artagnan series.
+
+The opening lines of "Le Vicomte de Bragelonne" are laid here. "It
+should have been a source of pride to the city of Blois," says Dumas,
+"that Gaston of Orleans had chosen it as his residence, and held his
+court in the ancient château of the States."
+
+Here, too, in the second volume of the D'Artagnan romances, is the scene
+of that most affecting meeting between his Majesty Charles II., King of
+England, and Louis XIV.
+
+Altogether one lives here in the very spirit of the pages of Dumas. Not
+only Blois, but Langeais, Chambord, Cheverny, Amboise, and many other
+châteaux figure in the novels with an astonishing frequency, and,
+whatever the critics may say of the author's slips of pen and memory,
+Dumas has given us a wonderfully faithful picture of the life of the
+times.
+
+In 1793 all the symbols and emblems of royalty were removed from the
+château and destroyed. The celebrated bust of Gaston, the chief artistic
+attribute of that part of the edifice built by him, was decapitated, and
+the statue of Louis XII. over the entrance gateway was overturned and
+broken up. Afterward the château became the property of the "domaine"
+and was turned into a mere barracks. The Pavilion of Queen Anne became a
+"_magasin des subsistances militaires_," the Tour de l'Observatoire, a
+powder-magazine, and all the indignities imaginable were heaped upon the
+château.
+
+In 1814 Blois became the last capital of Napoleon's empire, and the
+château walls sheltered the prisoners captured by the imperial army.
+
+Blois's most luxurious church edifice was the old abbey church of St.
+Sauveur, which was built from 1138 to 1210. It lost the royal favour in
+1697, when Louis XIV. made Blois a city of bishops as well as of counts,
+and transferred the chapter of St. Sauveur's to the bastard Gothic
+edifice first known as St. Solenne, but which soon took on the name of
+St. Louis. In spite of the claims of the old church, this cold,
+unfeeling, and ugly mixture of tomblike Renaissance became, and still
+remains, the bishop's church of Blois.
+
+One must not neglect or forget the magnificent bridge which crosses the
+Loire at Blois. A work of 1717-24, it bears the Rue Denis Papin across
+its eleven solidly built masonry piers. Above the central arch is
+erected a memorial pyramid and tablet which states the fact that it was
+one of the first works of the reign of Louis XV.
+
+Blois altogether, then, offers a multitudinous array of attractions for
+the tourist who makes his first entrance to the châteaux country through
+its doors. The town itself has not the appeal of Tours, of Angers, or of
+Nantes; but, for all that, its abundance of historic lore, the admirable
+preservation of its chief monument, and the general picturesqueness of
+its site and the country round about make up for many other qualities
+that may be lacking.
+
+The Sologne, lying between Blois, Vierzon, and Châteauneuf-sur-Loire, is
+a great region of lakelets, sandy soil, and replanted Corsican pines,
+which to-day has taken on a new lease of life and a prosperity which was
+unknown in the days when the Comtes de Blois first erected that _maison
+de plaisance_, on its western border which was afterward to aggrandize
+itself into the later Château de Chambord. The soil has been drained and
+the vine planted to a hitherto undreamed of extent, until to-day, if the
+land does not exactly blossom like the rose, it at least somewhat
+approaches it.
+
+The _chaumières_ of the Sologne have disappeared to a large extent, and
+their mud walls and thatched roofs are not as frequent a detail of the
+landscape as formerly, but even now there is a distinct individuality
+awaiting the artist who will go down among these vineyard workers of the
+Sologne and paint them and their surroundings as other parts have been
+painted and popularized. It will be hot work in the summer months, and
+lonesome work at all times, but there is a new note to be sounded if one
+but has the ear for it, and it is to be heard right here in this tract
+directly on the beaten track from north to south, and yet so little
+known.
+
+The peasant of the Sologne formerly ate his _soupe au poireau_ and a
+morsel of _fromage maigre_ and was as content and happy as if his were a
+more luxurious board, as it in reality became when a stranger demanded
+hospitality. Then out from the _armoire_--that ever present adjunct of a
+French peasant's home, whether it be in Normandy, Touraine, or the
+Midi--came a bottle of _vin blanc_, bought in the wine-shops of
+Romorantin or Vierzon on some of his periodical trips to town.
+
+To-day all is changing, and the peasant of the Sologne nourishes himself
+better and trims his beard and wears a round white collar on fête-days.
+He is proud of his well-kept appearance, but his neighbours to the
+north and the south will tell you that all this hides a deep malice,
+which is hard to believe, in spite of the well recognized saying, "_Sot
+comme un Solognat_." The women have a physiognomy more passive; when
+young they are fresh and lip-lively, but as they grow older their charms
+pass quickly.
+
+The Sologne in most respects has changed greatly since the days of
+Arthur Young. Then this classic land was reviled and vehement
+imprecations were launched upon the proprietors of its soil,--"those
+brilliant and ambitious gentlemen" who figure so largely in the
+ceremonies of Versailles. To-day all is changed, and the gentleman
+farmer is something more than a _bourgeois parisien_ who hunts and rides
+and apes "_le sport_" of the English country squire.
+
+The jack-rabbit and the hare are the pests of the Sologne now that its
+sandy soil has been conquered, but they are quite successfully kept down
+in numbers, and the insects which formerly ravaged the vines are
+likewise less offensive than they used to be, so the Sologne may truly
+be said to have been transformed.
+
+To-day, as in the days of the royal hunt, when Chambord was but a
+shooting-box of the Counts of Blois, the Sologne is rife with small
+game, and even deer and an occasional _sanglier_.
+
+"_La chasse_" in France is no mean thing to-day, and the Sologne, La
+Beauce, and the great national forests of Lyons and Rambouillet draw--on
+the opening of the season, somewhere between the 28th of August and the
+2d of September of each year--their hundreds of thousands of Nimrods and
+disciples of St. Hubert. The bearer of the gun in France is indeed a
+most ardent sportsman, and in no European country can one buy in the
+open market a greater variety of small game,--all the product of those
+who pay their twenty francs for the privilege of bagging rabbits, hares,
+partridges, and the like. The hunters of France enjoy one superstition,
+however, and that is that to accidentally bag a crow on the first shot
+means a certain and sudden death before the day is over.
+
+La Motte-Beuvron is celebrated in the annals of the Sologne; it is, in
+fact, the metropolis of the region, and the centre from which radiated
+the influences which conquered the soil and made of it a prosperous
+land, where formerly it was but a sandy, arid desert. La Motte-Beuvron
+is a long-drawn-out _bourgade_, like some of the populous centres of the
+great plain of Hungary, and there is no great prosperity or
+"up-to-dateness" to be observed, in spite of its constantly increasing
+importance, for La Motte-Beuvron and the country round about is one of
+the localities of France which is apparently not falling off in its
+population.
+
+La Motte has a most imposing Hôtel de Ville, a heavy edifice of brick
+built by Napoleon III.--who has never been accused of having had the
+artistic appreciation of his greater ancestor--after the model of the
+Arsenal at Venice.
+
+This is all La Motte has to warrant remark unless one is led to
+investigate the successful agricultural experiment which is still being
+carried out hereabouts. La Motte's hôtels and cafés are but ordinary,
+and there is no counter attraction of boulevard or park to place the
+town among those lovable places which travellers occasionally come upon
+unawares.
+
+To realize the Sologne at its best and in its most changed aspect, one
+should follow the roadway from La Motte to Blois. He may either go by
+tramway _à vapeur_, or by his own means of communication. In either case
+he will then know why the prosperity of the Sologne and the contentment
+of the Solognat is assured.
+
+Romorantin, still characteristic of the Sologne and its historic
+capital, is famous for its asparagus and its paternal château of
+François Premier, where that prince received the scar upon his face, at
+a tourney, which compelled him ever after to wear a beard.
+
+To-day the Sous-Préfecture, the Courts and their prisoners, the
+Gendarmerie, and the Theatre are housed under the walls that once formed
+the château royal of Jean d'Angoulême; within whose apartments the
+gallant François was brought up.
+
+[Illustration: _Native Types in the Sologne_]
+
+The Sologne, like most of the other of the _petits pays_ of France, is
+prolific in superstitions and traditionary customs, and here for some
+reason they deal largely of the marriage state. When the _paysan
+solognais_ marries, he takes good care to press the marriage-ring well
+up to the third joint of his spouse's finger, "else she will be the
+master of the house," which is about as well as the thing can be
+expressed in English. It seems a simple precaution, and any one so
+minded might well do the same under similar circumstances, provided he
+thinks the proceeding efficacious.
+
+Again, during the marriage ceremony itself, each of the parties most
+interested bears a lighted wax taper, with the belief that whichever
+first burns out, so will its bearer die first. It's a gruesome thought,
+perhaps, but it gives one an inkling of who stands the best chance of
+inheriting the other's goods, which is what matches are sometimes made
+for.
+
+The marriage ceremony in the Sologne is a great and very public
+function. Intimates, friends, acquaintances, and any of the neighbouring
+populace who may not otherwise be occupied, attend, and eat, drink, and
+ultimately get merry. But they have a sort of process of each paying his
+or her own way; at least a collection is taken up to pay for the
+entertainment, for the Sologne peasant would otherwise start his married
+life in a state of bankruptcy from which it would take him a long time
+to recover.
+
+The collection is made with considerable _éclat_ and has all the
+elements of picturesqueness that one usually associates with the wedding
+processions that one sees on the comic-opera stage. A sort of nuptial
+bouquet--a great bunch of field flowers--is handed round from one guest
+to another, and for a sniff of their fragrance and a participation in
+the collation which is to come, they make an offering, dropping much or
+little into a golden (not gold) goblet which is passed around by the
+bride herself.
+
+In the Sologne there is (or was, for the writer has never seen it)
+another singular custom of the marriage service--not really a part of
+the churchly office, but a sort of practical indorsement of the
+actuality of it all.
+
+The bride and groom are both pricked with a needle until the blood runs,
+to demonstrate that neither the man nor the woman is insensible or
+dreaming as to the purport of the ceremony about to take place.
+
+As every French marriage is at the Mairie, as well as being held in
+church, this double ceremony (and the blood-letting as well) must make a
+very hard and fast agreement. Perhaps it might be tried elsewhere with
+advantage.
+
+Montrichard, on the Cher, is on the borderland between the Blaisois and
+Touraine. Its donjon announces itself from afar as a magnificent feudal
+ruin. The town is moreover most curious and original, the great
+rectangular donjon rising high into the sky above a series of
+cliff-dwellers' chalk-cut homes, in truly weird fashion.
+
+There is nothing so very remarkable about cliff-dwellers in the Loire
+country, and their aspect, manners, and customs do not differ greatly
+from those of their neighbours, who live below them.
+
+Curiously enough these rock-cut dwellings appear dry and healthful, and
+are not in the least insalubrious, though where a _cave_ has been
+devoted only to the storage of wine in vats, barrels, and bottles the
+case is somewhat different.
+
+Montrichard itself, outside of these scores of homes burrowed out of the
+cliff, is most picturesque, with stone-pignoned gables and
+dormer-windows and window-frames cut or worked in wood or stone into a
+thousand amusing shapes.
+
+Montrichard, with Chinon, takes the lead in interesting old houses in
+these parts; in fact, they quite rival the ruinous lean-to houses of
+Rouen and Lisieux in Normandy, which is saying a good deal for their
+picturesque qualities.
+
+[Illustration: _Donjon of Montrichard_]
+
+One-third of Montrichard's population live underground or in houses
+built up against the hillsides. Even the lovely old parish church backs
+against the rock.
+
+Everywhere are stairways and _petits chemins_ leading upward or
+downward, with little façades, windows, or doorways coming upon one in
+most unexpected and mysterious fashion at every turn.
+
+The magnificent donjon is a relic of the work of that great
+fortress-builder, Foulques Nerra, Comte d'Anjou, who dotted the land
+wherever he trod with these masterpieces of their kind, most of them
+great rectangular structures like the donjons of Britain, but quite
+unlike the structures of their class mostly seen in France.
+
+Richard Coeur de Lion occupied the fortress in 1108, but was obliged to
+succumb to his rival in power, Philippe-Auguste, who in time made a
+breach in its walls and captured it. Thereafter it became an outpost of
+his own, from whence he could menace the Comte d'Anjou.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+CHAMBORD
+
+
+Chambord is four leagues from Blois, from which point it is usually
+approached. To reach it one crosses the Sologne, not the arid waste it
+has been pictured, but a desert which has been made to blossom as the
+rose.
+
+A glance of the eye, given anywhere along the road from Blois to
+Chambord, will show a vineyard of a thousand, two thousand, or even more
+acres, where, from out of a soil that was once supposed to be the
+poorest in all wine-growing France, may be garnered a crop equalling a
+hundred dozen of bottles of good rich wine to the acre.
+
+This wine of the Sologne is not one of the famous wines of France, to be
+sure, but what one gets in these parts is pure and astonishingly
+palatable; moreover, one can drink large portions of it--as do the
+natives--without being affected in either his head or his pocket-book.
+
+From late September to early December there is a constant harvest going
+on in the vineyards, whose labourers, if not as picturesque and joyous
+as we are wont to see them on the comic-opera stage, are at least
+wonderfully clever and industrious, for they make a good wine crop out
+of a soil which previously gave a living only to charcoal-burners and
+goat-keepers.
+
+François was indeed a rare devotee of the building mania when he laid
+out the wood which surrounds Chambord and which ultimately grew to some
+splendour. The nineteenth century saw this great wood cut and sold in
+huge quantities, so that to-day it is rather a scanty copse through
+which one drives on the way from Blois.
+
+The country round about is by no means impoverished,--far from it. It is
+simply unworked to its fullest extent as yet. As it is plentifully
+surrounded by water it makes an ideal land for the growing of asparagus,
+strawberries, and grapes, and so it has come to be one of the most
+prosperous and contented regions in all the Loire valley.
+
+The great white Château de Chambord, with its turrets and its
+magnificent lantern, looms large from whatever direction it is
+approached, though mostly it is framed by the somewhat stunted pines
+which make up the pleasant forest. The vistas which one sees when coming
+toward Chambord, through the drives and alleys of its park, with the
+château itself brilliant in the distance, are charming and fairy-like
+indeed. Straight as an arrow these roadways run, and he who traverses
+one of those centring at the château will see a tiny white fleck in the
+sunlight a half a dozen kilometres away, which, when it finally is
+reached, will be admitted to be the greatest triumph of the art-loving
+monarch.
+
+François Premier was foremost in every artistic expression in France,
+and the court, as may be expected, were only too eager to follow the
+expensive tastes of their monarch,--when they could get the means, and
+when they could not, often enough François supplied the wherewithal.
+
+François himself dressed in the richest of Italian velvets, the more
+brilliant the better, with a preponderant tendency toward pink and sky
+blue.
+
+A dozen years after François came to the throne, a dozen years after the
+pleasant life of Amboise, when mother, daughter, and son lived together
+on the banks of the Loire in that "Trinity of love," the monarch and
+his wife, Queen Claude of France, the daughter of Louis XII. and Anne of
+Brittany, came to live at Chambord on the edge of the sandy Sologne
+waste.
+
+Here, too, came Marguerite d'Alençon, the ever faithful and devoted
+sister of François, the duke, her husband, and all the gay members of
+the court. The hunt was the order of the day, for the forest tract of
+the Sologne, scanty though it was in growth, abounded in small game.
+
+Chambord at this time had not risen to the grand and ornate proportions
+which we see to-day, but set snugly on the low, swampy banks of the tiny
+river Cosson, a dull, gloomy mediæval fortress, whose only aspect of
+gaiety was that brought by the pleasure-loving court when it assembled
+there. In size it was ample to accommodate the court, but François's
+artistic temperament already anticipated many and great changes. The
+Loire was to be turned from its course and the future pompous palace was
+to have its feet bathed in the limpid Loire water rather than in the
+stagnant pools of the morass which then surrounded it.
+
+As a triumph of the royal château-builder's art, Chambord is far and
+away ahead of Fontainebleau or Versailles, both of which were built in
+a reign which ended two hundred years later than that which began with
+the erection of Chambord. As an example of the arts of François I. and
+his time compared with those of Louis XIV. and his, Chambord stands
+forth with glorious significance.
+
+On the low banks of the Cosson, François achieved perhaps the greatest
+triumph that Renaissance architecture had yet known.
+
+It was either Chambord, or the reconstruction by François of the edifice
+belonging to the Counts of Blois, which resulted in the refinement of
+the Renaissance style less than a quarter of a century after its
+introduction into France by Charles VIII.,--if he really was responsible
+for its importation from Italy. François lacked nothing of daring, and
+built and embellished a structure which to-day, in spite of numerous
+shortcomings, stands as the supreme type of a great Renaissance domestic
+edifice of state. Every device of decoration and erratic suggestion
+seems to have been carried out, not only structurally, as in the great
+double spiral of its central stairway, but in its interpolated details
+and symbolism as well.
+
+It was at this time, too, that François began to introduce the famous
+salamander into his devices and ciphers; that most significant emblem
+which one may yet see on wall and ceiling of Chambord surrounded by the
+motto: "_Je me nourris et je meurs dans le feu._"
+
+[Illustration: _Arms of François Premier, at Chambord_]
+
+Chambord, first of all, gives one a very high opinion of François
+Premier, and of the splendours with which he was wont to surround
+himself. The apartments are large and numerous and are admirably planned
+and decorated, though, almost without exception, bare to-day of
+furniture or furnishings.
+
+To quote the opinion of Blondel, the celebrated French architect: "The
+Château de Chambord, built under François I. and Henri II., from the
+designs of Primatice, was never achieved according to the original plan.
+Louis XIII. and Louis XIV. contributed a certain completeness, but the
+work was really pursued afterward according to the notions of one
+Sertio."
+
+The masterpiece of its constructive elements is its wonderful doubly
+spiralled central staircase, which permits one to ascend or descend
+without passing another proceeding in the opposite direction at the same
+time. Whatever may have been the real significance of this great double
+spiral, it has been said that it played its not unimportant part in the
+intrigue and scandal of the time. It certainly is a wonder of its kind,
+more marvellous even than that spiral at Blois, attributed, with some
+doubt perhaps, to Leonardo da Vinci, and certainly far more beautiful
+than the clumsy round tower up which horses and carriages were once
+driven at Amboise.
+
+At all events, it probably meant something more than mere constructive
+ability, and a staircase which allows one individual to mount and
+another to descend without knowing of the presence of the other may
+assuredly be classed with those other mediæval accessories, sliding
+panels, hidden doorways, and secret cabinets.
+
+Beneath the dome which terminates the staircase in the Orleans wing are
+three caryatides representing--it is doubtfully stated--François
+Premier, La Duchesse d'Étampes, and Madame la Comtesse de
+Châteaubriand,--a trinity of boon companions in intrigue.
+
+In reality Chambord presents the curiously contrived arrangement of one
+edifice within another, as a glance of the eye at the plan will show.
+
+The fosse, the usual attribute of a great mediæval château--it may be a
+dry one or a wet one, in this case it was a wet one--has disappeared,
+though Brantôme writes that he saw great iron rings let into the walls
+to which were attached "_barques et grands bateaux_," which had made
+their way from the Loire via the dribbling Cosson.
+
+The Cosson still dribbles its life away to-day, its moisture having, to
+a great part, gone to irrigate the sandy Sologne, but formerly it was
+doubtless a much more ample stream.
+
+From the park the ornate gables and dormer-windows loom high above the
+green-swarded banks of the Cosson. It was so in François's time, and it
+is so to-day; nothing has been added to break the spread of lawn, except
+an iron-framed wash-house with red tiles and a sheet-iron chimney-pot
+beside the little river, and a tin-roofed garage for automobiles
+connected with the little inn outside the gates.
+
+The rest is as it was of yore, at least, the same as the old engravings
+of a couple of hundreds of years ago picture it, hence it is a great
+shame, since the needs of the tiny village could not have demanded it,
+that the foreground could not have been left as it originally was.
+
+The town, or rather village, or even hamlet, of Chambord is about the
+most abbreviated thing of its kind existent. There is practically no
+village; there are a score or two of houses, an inn of the frankly
+tourist kind, which evidently does not cater to the natives, the
+aforesaid wash-house by the river bank, the dwellings of the
+gamekeepers, gardeners, and workmen on the estate, and a diminutive
+church rising above the trees not far away. These accessories
+practically complete the make-up of the little settlement of Chambord,
+on the borders of the Blaisois and Touraine.
+
+Chambord has been called top-heavy, but it is hardly that. Probably the
+effect is caused by its low-lying situation, for, as has been intimated
+before, this most imposing of all of the Loire châteaux has the least
+desirable situation of any. There is a certain vagueness and foreignness
+about the sky-line that is almost Eastern, though we recognize it as
+pure Renaissance. Perhaps it is the magnitude and lonesomeness of it all
+that makes it seem so strange, an effect that is heightened when one
+steps out upon its roof, with the turrets, towers, and cupolas still
+rising high above.
+
+[Illustration: _PLAN OF CHAMBORD_]
+
+The ground-plan is equally magnificent, flanked at every corner by a
+great round tower, with another quartette of them at the angles of the
+interior court.
+
+Most of the stonework of the fabric is brilliant and smooth, as if it
+were put up but yesterday, and, beyond the occasional falling of a tile
+from the wonderful array of chimney-pots, but little evidences are seen
+exteriorly of its having decayed in the least. On the tower which flanks
+the little door where one meets the _concierge_ and enters, there are
+unmistakable marks of bullets and balls, which a revolutionary or some
+other fury left as mementoes of its passage.
+
+Considering that Chambord was not a product of feudal times, these
+disfigurements seem out of place; still its peaceful motives could
+hardly have been expected to have lasted always.
+
+The southern façade is not excelled by the elevation of any residential
+structure of any age, and its outlines are varied and pleasing enough to
+satisfy the most critical; if one pardons the little pepper-boxes on the
+north and south towers, and perforce one has to pardon them when he
+recalls the magnificence of the general disposition and sky-line of this
+marvellously imposing château of the Renaissance.
+
+François Premier made Chambord his favourite residence, and in fact
+endowed Pierre Nepveu--who for this work alone will be considered one of
+the foremost architects of the French Renaissance--with the
+inspiration for its erection in 1526.
+
+[Illustration: _Château de Chambord_]
+
+A prodigious amount of sculpture by Jean Cousin, Pierre Bontemps, Jean
+Goujon, and Germain Pilon was interpolated above the doorways and
+windows, in the framing thereof, and above the great fireplaces. Inside
+and out, above and below, were vast areas to be covered, and François
+allowed his taste to have full sway.
+
+The presumptuous François made much of this noble residence, perhaps
+because of his love of _la chasse_, for game abounded hereabouts, or
+perhaps because of his regard for the Comtesse Thoury, who occupied a
+neighbouring château.
+
+For some time before his death, François still lingered on at Chambord.
+Marguerite and her brother, both now considerably aged since the happier
+times of their childhood in Touraine, always had an indissoluble
+fondness for Chambord. Marguerite had now become Queen of Navarre, but
+her beauty had been dimmed with the march of time, and she no longer was
+able to comfort and amuse her kingly brother as of yore. His old
+pleasures and topics of conversation irritated him, and he had even
+tired of poetry, art, and political affairs.
+
+Above all, he shamefully and shamelessly abused women, at once the prop
+and the undermining influence of his kingly power in days gone by. There
+is an existing record to the effect that he wrote some "window-pane"
+verse on the window of his private apartment to the following effect:
+
+         "Souvent femme varie;
+          Mal habile quis'y fie!"
+
+If this be not apocryphal, the incident must have taken place long years
+before that celebrated "window-pane" verse of Shenstone's, and François
+is proven again a forerunner, as he was in many other things.
+
+Without doubt the Revolution did away with this square of glass,
+which--according to Piganiol de la Force--existed in the middle of the
+eighteenth century. Perhaps François's own jealous humour prompted him
+to write these cynical lines, and then again perhaps it is merely one of
+those fables which breathe the breath of life in some unaccountable
+manner, no one having been present at its birth, and hearsay and
+tradition accounting for it all.
+
+François, truly, was failing, and he and his sister discussed but
+sorrowful subjects: the death of his favourite son, Charles, the
+inheritor of the throne, at Abbeville, where he became infected with the
+plague, and also the death of him whom he called "his old friend," Henry
+VIII. of England, a monarch whose amours were as numerous and celebrated
+as his own.
+
+Henri II. preferred the attractions of Anet to Chambord, while Catherine
+de Medici and Charles IX. cared more for Blois, Chaumont, and
+Chenonceaux. Louis XIII. and Louis XIV. only considered it as a
+rendezvous for the chase, and the latter's successor, Louis XV., gave it
+to the illustrious Maurice de Saxe, the victor of Fontenoy, who spent
+his old age here, amid fêtes, pleasures, and military parades. Near by
+are the barracks, built for the accommodation of the regiment of horse
+formed by the maréchal and devoted to his special guardianship and
+pleasure, and paid for by the king, who in turn repaid himself--with
+interest--from the public treasury. The exercising of this "little army"
+was one of the chief amusements of the illustrious old soldier.
+
+                                "A de feints combats
+    Lui-même en se jouant conduit les vieux soldats"--
+
+wrote the Abbé de Lille in contemporary times.
+
+King Stanislas of Poland lived here from 1725 to 1733, and later it was
+given to Maréchal Berthier, by whose widow it was sold in 1821.
+
+It was bought by national subscription for a million and a half of
+francs and given to the Duc de Bordeaux, who immediately commenced its
+restoration, for it had been horribly mutilated by Maréchal de Saxe, and
+the surrounding wood had been practically denuded under the Berthier
+occupancy.
+
+The Duc de Bordeaux died in 1883, and his heirs, the Duc de Parme and
+the Comte de Bardi, are now said to spend a quarter of a million
+annually in the maintenance of the estate, the income of which
+approximates only half that sum.
+
+There are thirteen great staircases in the edifice, and a room for every
+day in the year. On the ground floor is the Salle des Gardes, from which
+one mounts by the great spiral to another similar apartment with a
+barrel-vaulted roof, which in a former day was converted into a theatre,
+where in 1669-70 were held the first representations of "Pourceaugnac"
+and "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme," and where Molière himself frequently
+appeared.
+
+The second floor is known as the "_grandes terrasses_" and surrounds the
+base of the great central lantern so admired from the exterior. On this
+floor, to the eastward, were the apartments of François Premier. The
+chapel was constructed by Henri II., but the tribune is of the era of
+Louis XIV. This tribune is decorated with a fine tapestry, made by
+Madame Royale while imprisoned in the Temple. At the base of the altar
+is also a tapestry made and presented to the Comte de Chambord by the
+women of the Limousin.
+
+The apartments of Louis XIV. contain portraits of Madame de Maintenon
+and Madame de Lafayette, a great painting of the "Bataille de Fontenoy,"
+and another of the Comte de Chambord on horseback.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+CHEVERNY, BEAUREGARD, AND CHAUMONT
+
+
+From Chambord and its overpowering massiveness one makes his way to
+Chaumont, on the banks of the Loire below Blois, by easy stages across
+the plain of the Sologne.
+
+One leaves the precincts of Chambord by the back entrance, as one might
+call it, through six kilometres of forest road, like that by which one
+enters, and soon passes the little townlet of Bracieux.
+
+One gets glimpses of more or less modern residential châteaux once and
+again off the main road, but no remarkably interesting structures of any
+sort are met with until one reaches Cheverny. Just before Cheverny one
+passes Cour-Cheverny, with a curious old church and a quaint-looking
+little inn beside it.
+
+[Illustration: _Château de Cheverny_]
+
+Cheverny itself is, however, the real attraction, two kilometres away.
+Here the château is opened by its private owners from April to
+October of each year, and, while not such a grand establishment as many
+of its contemporaries round about, it is in every way a perfect
+residential edifice of the seventeenth century, when the flowery and
+ornate Renaissance had given way to something more severely classical,
+and, truth to tell, far less pleasing in an artistic sense.
+
+Cheverny belongs to-day to the Marquis de Vibraye, one of those undying
+titles of the French nobility which thrive even in republican France and
+uphold the best traditions of the _noblesse_ of other days.
+
+The château was built much later than most of the neighbouring châteaux,
+in 1634, by the Comte de Cheverny, Philippe Hurault. It sits
+green-swarded in the midst of a beautifully wooded park, and the great
+avenue which faces the principal entrance extends for seven kilometres,
+a distance not excelled, if equalled, by any private roadway elsewhere.
+
+In its constructive features the château is more or less of rectangular
+outlines. The pavilions at each corner have their openings _à la
+impériale_, with the domes, or lanterns, so customary during the height
+of the style under Louis XIV. An architect, Boyer by name, who came from
+Blois, where surely he had the opportunity of having been well
+acquainted with a more beautiful style, was responsible for the design
+of the edifice at Cheverny.
+
+The interior decorations in Cordovan leather, the fine chimneypieces,
+and the many elaborate historical pictures and wall paintings, by
+Mosnier, Clouet, and Mignard, are all of the best of their period; while
+the apartments themselves are exceedingly ample, notably the Appartement
+du Roi, furnished as it was in the days of "Vert Galant," the Salle des
+Gardes, the library and an elaborately traceried staircase. In the
+chapel is an altar-table which came from the Église St. Calais, in the
+château at Blois.
+
+Just outside the gates is a remarkable crotchety old stone church, with
+a dwindling, toppling spire. It is poor and impoverished when compared
+with most French churches, and has a most astonishing timbered veranda,
+with a straining, creaking roof running around its two unobstructed
+walls. The open rafters are filled with all sorts of rubbish, and the
+local fire brigade keeps its hose and ladders there. A most suitable old
+rookery it is in which to start a first-class conflagration.
+
+[Illustration: _Cheverny-sur-Loire_]
+
+Within are a few funeral marbles of the Hurault family, and the daily
+offices are conducted with a pomp most unexpected. Altogether it
+forms, as to its fabric and its functions, as strong a contrast of
+activity and decay as one is likely to see in a long journey.
+
+The town itself is a sleepy, unprogressive place, where automobilists
+may not even buy _essence à pétrole_, and, though boasting--if the
+indolent old town really does boast--a couple of thousand souls, one
+still has to journey to Cour-Cheverny to send a telegraphic despatch or
+buy a daily paper.
+
+Between Cheverny and Blois is the Forêt de Russy, which will awaken
+memories of the boar-hunts of François I., which, along with art in all
+its enlightening aspects, appears to have been one of the chief
+pleasures of that monarch. Perhaps one ought to include also the love of
+fair women, but with them he was not so constant.
+
+On the road to Blois, also, one passes the Château de Beauregard; that
+is, one usually passes it, but he shouldn't. It is built, practically,
+within the forest, on the banks of the little river Beauvron. An iron
+_grille_ gives entrance to a beautiful park, and within is the château,
+its very name indicating the favour with which it was held by
+its royal owner. It was in 1520 that François I. established it
+as a _rendezvous de chasse_. Under his son, Henri II., it was
+reconstructed, in part; entirely remodelled in the seventeenth century;
+and "modernized"--whatever that may mean--in 1809, and again, more
+lately, restored by the Duc de Dino. It belongs to-day to the Comte de
+Cholet, who has tried his hand at "restoration" as well.
+
+The history of this old château is thus seen to have been most varied,
+and it is pretty sure to have lost a good deal of its original character
+in the transforming process.
+
+The interior is more attractive than is the exterior. There is a grand
+gallery of portraits of historical celebrities, more than 350, executed
+between 1617 and 1638 by Paul Ardier, Counsellor of State, who thus
+combined the accomplishment of the artist with the sagacity of the
+statesman.
+
+The ceilings of the great rooms are mostly elaborate works in enamel and
+carved oak, and there is a tiled floor (_carrelage_) in the portrait
+gallery, in blue faïence, representing an army in the order of battle,
+which must have delighted the hearts of the youthful progeny who may
+have been brought up within the walls of the château. This pavement is
+moreover an excellent example of the craftsmanship of tile-making.
+
+One gains admission to the château freely from the _concierge_, who in
+due course expects her _pourboire_, and sees that she gets it. But what
+would you, inquisitive traveller? You have come here to see the sights,
+and Beauregard is well worth the price of admission, which is anything
+you like to give, certainly not less than a franc.
+
+One may return to Blois through the forest, or may continue his way down
+the river to Chaumont on the left bank.
+
+At Chaumont the Loire broadens to nearly double the width at Blois, its
+pebbles and sandbars breaking the mirror-like surface into innumerable
+pools and _étangs_. There is a bridge which connects Chaumont with the
+railway at Onzain and the great national highway from Tours to Blois.
+The bridge, however, is so hideous a thing that one had rather go miles
+out of his way than accept its hospitality. It is simply one of those
+unsympathetic wire-rope affairs with which the face of the globe is
+being covered, as engineering skill progresses and the art instinct dies
+out.
+
+[Illustration: _Chaumont_]
+
+The Château de Chaumont is charmingly situated, albeit it is not very
+accessible to strangers after one gets there, as it is open to the
+public only on Thursdays, from July to December. It is exactly what one
+expects to find,--a fine riverside establishment of its epoch, and in
+architectural style combining the well-recognized features of late
+Gothic and the early Renaissance. It is not moss-grown or decrepit in
+any way, which fact, considering its years, is perhaps remarkable.
+
+The park of the château is only of moderate extent, but the structure
+itself is, comparatively, of much larger proportions. The ideal view of
+the structure is obtained from midway on that ungainly bridge which
+spans the Loire at this point. Here, in the gold and purple of an autumn
+evening, with the placid and far-reaching Loire, its pools and its bars
+of sand and pebble before one, it is a scene which is as near idyllic as
+one is likely to see.
+
+The town itself is not attractive; one long, narrow lane-like street,
+lined on each side by habitations neither imposing nor of a tumble-down
+picturesqueness, borders the Loire. There is nothing very picturesque,
+either, about the homes of the vineyard workers round about. Below and
+above the town the great highroad runs flat and straight between Tours
+and Blois on either side of the river, and automobilists and cyclists
+now roll along where the state carriages of the court used to roll when
+François Premier and his sons journeyed from one gay country house to
+another.
+
+It is to be inferred that the aspect of things at Chaumont has not
+changed much since that day,--always saving that spider-net wire bridge.
+The population of the town has doubtless grown somewhat, even though
+small towns in France sometimes do not increase their population in
+centuries; but the topographical aspect of the long-drawn-out village,
+backed by green hills on one side and the Loire on the other, is much as
+it always has been.
+
+[Illustration: _Signature of Diane de Poitiers_]
+
+The château at Chaumont had its origin as far back as the tenth century,
+and its proprietors were successively local seigneurs, Counts of Blois,
+the family of Amboise, and Diane de Poitiers, who received it from
+Catherine in exchange for Chenonceaux. This was not a fair exchange, and
+Diane was, to some extent, justified in her complaints.
+
+Chaumont was for a time in the possession of Scipion Sardini, one of
+the Italian partisans of the Medici, "whose arms bore _trois sardines
+d'argent_," and who had married Isabelle de la Tour, "_la Demoiselle de
+Limieul_" of unsavoury reputation.
+
+The "_Demoiselle de Limieul_" was related, too, to Catherine, and was
+celebrated in the gallantries of the time in no enviable fashion. She
+was a member of that band of demoiselles whose business it was--by one
+fascination or another--to worm political secrets from the nobles of the
+court. One horrible scandal connected the unfortunate lady with the
+Prince de Condé, but it need not be repeated here. The Huguenots
+ridiculed it in those memorable verses beginning thus:
+
+         "Puella illa nobilis
+          Quæ erat tam amabilis."
+
+After the reign of Sardini and of his direct successors, the house of
+Bullion, Chaumont passed through many hands. Madame de Staël arrived at
+the château in the early years of the nineteenth century, when she had
+received the order to separate herself from Paris, "by at least forty
+leagues." She had made the circle of the outlying towns, hovering about
+Paris as a moth about a candle-flame; Rouen, Auxerre, Blois, Saumur, all
+had entertained her, but now she came to establish herself in this
+Loire citadel. As the story goes, journeying from Saumur to Tours, by
+post-chaise, on the opposite side of the river, she saw the imposing
+mass of Chaumont rising high above the river-bed, and by her good graces
+and winning ways installed herself in the affections of the then
+proprietor, M. Leray, and continued her residence "and made her court
+here for many years."
+
+Chaumont is to-day the property of the Princesse de Broglie, who has
+sought to restore it, where needful, even to reëstablishing the ancient
+fosse or moat. This last, perhaps, is not needful; still, a moated
+château, or even a moated grange has a fascination for the sentimentally
+inclined.
+
+At the drawbridge, as one enters Chaumont to-day, one sees the graven
+initials of Louis XII. and Anne de Bretagne, the arms of Georges
+d'Amboise, surmounted by his cardinal's hat, and those of Charles de
+Chaumont, as well as other cabalistic signs: one a representation of a
+mountain (apparently) with a crater-like summit from which flames are
+breaking forth, while hovering about, back to back, are two C's: [IMAGE
+OF TWO JOINED LETTER 'C' POSITIONED LIKE THIS: )(]. The Renaissance
+artists greatly affected the rebus, and this perhaps has some reference
+to the etymology of the name Chaumont, which has been variously given
+as coming from _Chaud Mont_, _Calvus Mont_, and _Chauve Mont_.
+
+Georges d'Amboise, the first of the name, was born at Chaumont in 1460,
+the eighth son of a family of seventeen children. It was a far cry, as
+distances went in those days, from the shores of the shallow, limpid
+Loire to those of the forceful, turgent Seine at Rouen, where in the
+great Cathedral of Notre Dame, this first Georges of Amboise, having
+become an archbishop and a cardinal, was laid to rest beneath that
+magnificent canopied tomb before which visitors to the Norman capital
+stand in wonder. The mausoleum bears this epitaph, which in some small
+measure describes the activities of the man.
+
+   "Pastor eram cleri, populi pater; aurea sese
+      Lilia subdebant, quercus et ipsa mihi.
+
+   "Martuus en jaceo, morte extinguunter honores,
+      Et virtus, mortis nescia, mort viret."
+
+His was not by any means a life of placidity and optimism, and he had
+the air and reputation of doing things. There is a saying, still current
+in Touraine: "_Laissez faire à Georges._"
+
+The second of the same name, also an Archbishop of Rouen and a
+cardinal, succeeded his uncle in the see. He also is buried beneath the
+same canopy as his predecessor at Rouen.
+
+The main portal of the château leads to a fine quadrilateral court with
+an open gallery overlooking the Loire, which must have been a
+magnificent playground for the nobility of a former day. The interior
+embellishments are fine, some of the more noteworthy features being a
+grand staircase of the style of Louis XII.; the Salle des Gardes, with a
+painted ceiling showing the arms of Chaumont and Amboise; the Salle du
+Conseil, with some fine tapestries and a remarkable tiled floor,
+depicting scenes of the chase; the Chambre de Catherine de Medici (she
+possessed Chaumont for nine years), containing some of the gifts
+presented to her upon her wedding with Henri II.; and the curious
+Chambre de Ruggieri, the astrologer whom Catherine brought from her
+Italian home, and who was always near her, and kept her supplied with
+charms and omens, good and bad, and also her poisons.
+
+Ruggieri's observatory was above his apartment. It was at Chaumont that
+the astrologer overstepped himself, and would have used his magic
+against Charles IX. He did go so far as to make an image and inflict
+certain indignities upon it, with the belief that the same would befall
+the monarch himself. Ruggieri went to the galleys for this, but the
+scheming Catherine soon had him out again, and at work with his poisons
+and philtres.
+
+Finally there is the Chambre de Diane de Poitiers, Catherine's more than
+successful rival, with a bed (modern, it is said) and a series of
+sixteenth-century tapestries, with various other pieces of contemporary
+furniture. A portrait of Diane which decorates the apartment is supposed
+to be one of the three authentic portraits of the fair huntress. The
+chapel has a fine tiled pavement and some excellent glass.
+
+Chaumont is eighteen kilometres from Blois and the same distance from
+Amboise. It has not the splendour of Chambord, but it has a greater
+antiquity, and an incomparably finer situation, which displays its
+coiffed towers and their _mâchicoulis_ and cornices in a manner not
+otherwise possible. It is one of those picture châteaux which tell a
+silent story quite independent of guide-book or historical narrative.
+
+It was M. Donatien Le Ray de Chaumont, the superintendent of the forests
+of Berry and the Blaisois, under Louis XVI., who gave hospitality to
+Benjamin Franklin, and turned over to the first American ambassador to
+France the occupancy of his house at Passy, where Franklin lived for
+nine consecutive years.
+
+Of this same M. de Chaumont Americans cannot have too high a regard, for
+his timely and judicious hospitality has associated his name, only less
+permanently than Franklin's, with the early fortunes of the American
+republic.
+
+Besides his other offices, M. de Chaumont was the intendant of the Hôtel
+des Invalides, at Paris, holding confidential relations with the
+ministry of the young king, and was in the immediate enjoyment of a
+fortune which amounted to two and a half million of francs, besides
+owning, in addition to Chaumont on the Loire, another château in the
+Blaisois. This château he afterward tendered to John Adams, who declined
+the offer in a letter, written at Passy-sur-Seine, February 25, 1779, in
+the following words: "... To a mind as much addicted to retirement as
+mine, the situation you propose would be delicious indeed, provided my
+country were at peace and my family with me; but, separated from my
+family and with a heart bleeding with the wounds of its country, I
+should be the most miserable being on earth...."
+
+The potteries, which now form the stables of the château at Chaumont,
+are somewhat reminiscent of Franklin. M. de Chaumont had established a
+pottery here, where he had found a clay which had encouraged him to hope
+that he could compete with the English manufacturers of the time. Here
+the Italian Nini, who was invited to Chaumont, made medallions much
+sought for by collectors, among others one of Franklin, which was so
+much admired as a work of art, and became so much in demand that in
+later years replicas were made and are well known to amateurs.
+
+The family of Le Ray de Chaumont were extensively known in America,
+where they became large landholders in New York State in the early
+nineteenth century, and the head of the family seems to have been an
+amiable and popular landlord. The towns of Rayville and Chaumont in New
+York State still perpetuate his name.
+
+The two male members of the family secured American wives; Le Ray
+himself married a Miss Coxe, and their son a Miss Jahel, both of New
+York.
+
+From an anonymous letter to the New York _Evening Post_ of November 19,
+1885, one quotes the following:
+
+"It was in Blois that I first rummaged among these shops, whose
+attractions are almost a rival to those of the castle, though this is
+certainly one of the most interesting in France. The traveller will
+remember the long flight of stone steps which climbs the steep hill in
+the centre of the town. Near the foot of this hill there is a
+well-furnished book-shop; its windows display old editions and rich
+bindings, and tempt one to enter and inquire for antiquities. Here I
+found a quantity of old notarial documents and diplomas of college or
+university, all more or less recently cleared out from some town hall,
+or unearthed from neighbouring castle, and sold by a careless owner, as
+no longer valuable to him. This was the case with most of the parchments
+I found at Blois; they had been acquired within a few years from the
+castle of Madon, and from a former proprietor of the neighbouring castle
+of Chaumont (the _calvus mons_ of mediæval time), and most of them
+pertained to the affairs of the _seigneurie de Chaumont_. Contracts,
+executions, sales of vineyards and houses, legal decisions, _actes de
+vente_, loans on mortgages, the marriage contract of a M. Lubin,--these
+were the chief documents that I found and purchased."
+
+The traveller may not expect to come upon duplicates of these treasures
+again, but the incident only points to the fact that much documentary
+history still lies more or less deeply buried.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+TOURAINE: THE GARDEN SPOT OF FRANCE
+
+   "C'est une grande dame, une princesse altière,
+    Chacun de ses châteaux, marqué du sceau royal,
+    Lui fait une toilette en dentelle de pierre
+    Et son splendide fleuve un miroir de cristal."
+
+
+It is difficult to write appreciatively of Touraine without echoing the
+words of some one who has gone before, and it is likely that those who
+come after will find the task no easier.
+
+Truly, as a seventeenth-century geographer has said: "Here is the most
+delicious and the most agreeable province of the kingdom. It has been
+named the garden of France because of the softness of its climate, the
+affability of its people, and the ease of its life."
+
+The poets who have sung the praises of Touraine are many, Ronsard, Remy
+Belleau, Du Bellay, and for prose authors we have at the head, Rabelais,
+La Fontaine, Balzac, and Alfred de Vigny. Merely to enumerate them all
+would be impossible, but they furnish a fund of quotable material for
+the traveller when he is writing home, and are equally useful to the
+maker of guide-books.
+
+One false note on Touraine, only, has ever rung out in the world of
+literature, and that was from Stendahl, who said: "_La Belle Touraine
+n'existe pas!_" The pages of Alfred de Vigny and Balzac answer this
+emphatically, and to the contrary, and every returning traveller
+apparently sides with them and not with Stendahl.
+
+How can one not love its prairies, gently sloping to the caressing
+Loire, its rolling hills and dainty ravines? The broad blue Loire is
+always vague and tranquil here, at least one seems always to see it so,
+but the beauty of Touraine is, after all, a quiet beauty which must be
+seen to be appreciated, and lived with to be loved.
+
+It is a land of most singular attractions, neither too hot nor too cold,
+too dry nor too damp, with a sufficiency of rain, and an abundance of
+sunshine. Its market-gardens are prolific in their product, its orchards
+overflowing with plenitude, and its vineyards generous in their harvest.
+
+Touraine is truly the region where one may read history without books,
+with the very pages of nature punctuated and adorned with the marvels of
+the French Renaissance. Louis XI. gave the first impetus to the alliance
+of the great domestic edifice--which we have come to distinguish as the
+residential château--with the throne, and the idea was amplified by
+Charles VIII. and glorified by François Premier.
+
+In the brilliant, if dissolute, times of the early sixteenth century
+François Premier and his court travelled down through this same Touraine
+to Loches and to Amboise, where François's late gaoler, Charles Quint,
+was to be received and entertained. It was after François had returned
+from his involuntary exile in Spain, and while he was still in residence
+at the Louvre, that the plans for the journey were made. To the Duchesse
+d'Étampes François said,--the duchess who was already more than a rival
+of both Diane and the Comtesse de Châteaubriant,--"I must tear myself
+away from you to-morrow. I shall await my brother Charles at Amboise on
+the Loire."
+
+"Shall you not revenge yourself upon him, for his cruel treatment of
+you?" said the wily favourite of the time. "If he, like a fool, comes
+to Touraine, will you not make him revoke the treaty of Madrid or shut
+him up in one of Louis XI.'s oubliettes?"
+
+"I will persuade him, if possible," said François, "but I shall never
+force him."
+
+In due time François did receive his brother king at Amboise and it was
+amid great ceremony and splendour. His guest could not, or would not,
+mount steps, so that great inclined plane, up which a state coach and
+its horses might go, was built. Probably there was a good reason for the
+emperor's peculiarity, for that worthy or unworthy monarch finally died
+of gout in the monastery of San Juste.
+
+The meeting here at Amboise was a grand and ceremonious affair and the
+Spanish monarch soon came to recognize a possible enemy in the royal
+favourite, Anne de Pisselieu. The emperor's eyes, however, melted with
+admiration, and he told her that only in France could one see such a
+perfection of elegance and beauty, with the result that--as is popularly
+adduced--the susceptible, ambitious, and unfaithful duchess betrayed
+François more than once in the affairs attendant upon the subsequent
+wars between France, England, and Spain.
+
+From Touraine, in the sixteenth century, spread that influence which
+left its impress even on the capital of the kingdom itself, not only in
+respect to architectural art, but in manners and customs as well.
+
+Whatever may be the real value of the Renaissance as an artistic
+expression, the discussion of it shall have no place here, beyond the
+qualifying statement that what we have come to know as the French
+Renaissance--which undeniably grew up from a transplanted Italian
+germ--proved highly tempting to the mediæval builder for all manner of
+edifices, whereas it were better if it had been confined to civic and
+domestic establishments and left the church pure in its full-blown
+Gothic forms.
+
+Curiously enough, here in Touraine, this is just what did happen. The
+Renaissance influence crept into church-building here and there--and it
+is but a short step from the "_gothique rayonnant_" to what are
+recognized as well-defined Renaissance features; but it is more
+particularly in respect to the great châteaux, and even smaller
+dwellings, that the superimposed Italian details were used. A notable
+illustration of this is seen in the Cathedral of St. Gatien at Tours. It
+is very beautiful and has some admirable Gothic features, but there are
+occasional constructive details, as well as those for decorative effect
+alone, which are decidedly not good Gothic; but, as they are, likewise,
+not Renaissance, they hence cannot be laid to its door, but rather to
+the architect's eccentricity.
+
+In the smaller wayside churches, such as one sees at Cormery, at
+Cheverny, and at Cour-Cheverny, there is scarcely a sign of Renaissance,
+while their neighbouring châteaux are nothing else, both in construction
+and in decoration.
+
+The Château de Langeais is, for the most part, excellent Gothic, and so
+is the church near by. Loches has distinct and pure Gothic details both
+in its church and its château, quite apart from the Hôtel de Ville and
+that portion of the château now used as the Sous-Préfecture, which are
+manifestly Renaissance; hence here in Touraine steps were apparently
+taken to keep the style strictly non-ecclesiastical.
+
+A glance of the eye at the topography of this fair province stamps it at
+once as something quite different from any other traversed by the Loire.
+Two of the great "routes nationales" cross it, the one via Orleans,
+leading to Nantes, and the other via Chartres, going to Bordeaux. It is
+crossed and recrossed by innumerable "routes secondaires,"
+"départementales," "vicinales" and "particulières," second to none of
+their respective classes in other countries, for assuredly the roads of
+France are the best in the world. Many of these great ways of
+communication replaced the ancient Roman roads, which were the pioneers
+of the magnificent roadways of the France of to-day.
+
+Almost invariably Touraine is flat or rolling, its highest elevation
+above the sea being but a hundred and forty-six metres, scarce four
+hundred and fifty feet, a fact which accounts also for the gentle flow
+of the Loire through these parts.
+
+All the fruits of the southland are found here, the olive alone
+excepted. Mortality, it is said, and proved by figures, is lower than in
+any other part of France, and for this reason many dwellers in the large
+cities, if they may not all have a mediæval château, have at least a
+villa, far away from "the madding crowd," and yet within four hours'
+travel of the capital itself.
+
+[Illustration: THE LOIRE IN TOURAINE]
+
+Touraine, properly speaking, has no natural frontiers, as it is not
+enclosed by rivers or mountains. It is, however, divided by the Loire
+into two distinct regions, the Méridionale and the Septentrionale; but
+the dress, the physiognomy, the language, and the predilections of
+the people are everywhere the same, though the two sections differ
+somewhat in temperament. In the south, the Tourangeau is timid and
+obliging, but more or less engrossed in his affairs; in the north, he is
+proud, egotistical, and a little arrogant, but, above all, he likes his
+ease and comfort, something after the manner of "mynheer" of Holland.
+
+These are the characteristics which are enumerated by Stanislas
+Bellanger of Tours, in "La Touraine Ancienne et Moderne," and they are
+traceable to-day, in every particular, to one who knows well the
+by-paths of the region.
+
+Formerly the peasant was, in his own words, "_sous la main de M. le
+comte_," but, with the coming of the eighteenth century, all this was
+changed, and the conditions which, in England, succeeded feudalism, are
+unknown in Touraine, as indeed throughout France.
+
+The two great divisions which nature had made of Touraine were further
+cut up into five _petits pays_; les Varennes, le Veron, la Champeigne,
+la Brenne, and les Gâtines; names which exist on some maps to-day, but
+which have lost, in a great measure, their former distinction.
+
+There is a good deal to be said in favour of the physical and moral
+characteristics of the inhabitants of Touraine. Just as the descendants
+of the Phoceans, the original settlers of Marseilles, differ from the
+natives of other parts of France, so, too, do the Tourangeaux differ
+from the inhabitants of other provinces. The people of Touraine are a
+mixture of Romans, Visigoths, Saracens, Alains, Normans and Bretons,
+Anglais and Gaulois; but all have gradually been influenced by local
+conditions, so that the native of Touraine has become a distinct variety
+all by himself. The deliciousness of the "garden of France" has altered
+him so that he stands to-day as more distinctly French than the citizen
+of Paris itself.
+
+Touraine, too, has the reputation of being that part of France where is
+spoken the purest French. This, perhaps, is as true of the Blaisois, for
+the local bookseller at Blois will tell one with the most dulcet and
+understandable enunciation that it is at Blois that one hears the best
+accent. At any rate, it is something found within a charmed circle, of
+perhaps a hundred miles in diameter, that does not find its exact
+counterpart elsewhere. As Seville stands for the Spanish tongue,
+Florence for the Italian, and Dresden for the German, so Tours stands
+for the French.
+
+The history of the Loire in Touraine, as is the case at Le Puy, at
+Nevers, at Sancerre, or at Orleans, is abundant and vivid, and the
+monuments which line its banks are numerous and varied, from the
+fortress-château of Amboise to the Cathedral of St. Gatien at Tours with
+its magnificent bejewelled façade. The ruined towers of the castle of
+Cinq-Mars, with its still more ancient Roman "pile," and the feudal
+châteaux of the countryside are all eloquent, even to-day, in their
+appeal to all lovers of history and romance.
+
+There are some verses, little known, in praise of the Loire, as it comes
+through Touraine, written by Houdon des Landes, who lived near Tours in
+the eighteenth century. The following selection expresses their quality
+well and is certainly worthy to rank with the best that Balzac wrote in
+praise of his beloved Touraine.
+
+   "La Loire enorgueillit ses antiques cités,
+    Et courounne ses bords de coteaux enchantés;
+    Dans ses vallons heureux, sur ses rives aimées,
+    Les prés ont déployé leurs robes parfumées;
+    Le saule humide et souple y lance ses rameaux.
+    Ses coteaux sont peuplés, et le rocher docile
+    A l'homme qui le creuse offre un champêtre asile.
+    De notre vieille Gaule, ô fleuve paternel!
+    Fleuve des doux climats! la Vallière et Sorel
+    Sur tes bords fortunés naquirent, et la gloire
+    A l'une dût l'amour, à l'autre la victoire."
+
+Again and again Balzac's words echo in one's ears from his "Scène de la
+Vie de Province." The following quotations are typical of the whole:
+
+"The softness of the air, the beauty of the climate, all tend to a
+certain ease of existence and simplicity of manner which encourages an
+appreciation of the arts."
+
+"Touraine is a land to foster the ambition of a Napoleon and the
+sentiment of a Byron."
+
+Another writer, A. Beaufort, a publicist of the nineteenth century,
+wrote:
+
+"The Tourangeaux resemble the good Adam in the garden of Eden. They
+drink, they eat, they sleep and dream, and care not what their neighbour
+may be doing."
+
+Touraine was indeed, at one time, a veritable Eden, though guarded by
+fortresses, _hallebardes_, and arquebuses, but not the less an Eden for
+all that. In addition it was a land where, in the middle ages, the
+seigneurs made history, almost without a parallel in France or
+elsewhere.
+
+Touraine, truly enough, was the centre of the old French monarchy in
+the perfection of its pomp and state; but it is also true that Touraine
+knew little of the serious affairs of kings, though some all-important
+results came from events happening within its borders.
+
+Paris was the law-making centre in the sixteenth century, and Touraine
+knew only the domestic life and pleasures of royalty. Etiquette, form,
+and ceremony were all relaxed, or at least greatly modified, and the
+court spent in the country what it had levied in the capital.
+
+Curiously enough, the monarchs were omnipotent and influential here,
+though immediately they quartered themselves in Paris their powers waned
+considerably; indeed, they seemed to lose their influence upon ministers
+and vassals alike.
+
+Louis XIII., it is true, tried to believe that Paris was France,--like
+the Anglo-Saxon tourists who descend upon it in such great numbers
+to-day,--and built Versailles; but there was never much real glory about
+its cold and pompous walls.
+
+The fortunes of the old châteaux of Touraine have been most varied.
+Chambord is vast and bare, elegant and pompous; Blois, just across the
+border, is a tourist sight of the first rank whose salamanders and
+porcupines have been well cared for by the paternal French government.
+Chaumont, Chenonceaux, Langeais, Azay-le-Rideau, and half a dozen others
+are still inhabited, and are gay with the life of twentieth-century
+luxury; Amboise is a possession of the Orleans family; Loches is, in
+part, given over to the uses of a sous-préfecture; and Chinon's châteaux
+are but half-demolished ruins. Besides these there are numerous smaller
+residential châteaux of the nobility scattered here and there in the
+Loire watershed.
+
+There have been writers who have sought to commiserate with "the poor
+peasant of Touraine," as they have been pleased to think of him, and
+have deplored the fact that his sole possession was a small piece of
+ground which he and his household cultivated, and that he lived in a
+little whitewashed house, built with his own hands, or those of his
+ancestors. Though the peasant of Touraine, as well as of other parts of
+the countryside, works for an absurdly small sum, and for considerably
+less than his brother nearer Paris, he sells his produce at the nearest
+market-town for a fair price, and preserves a spirit of independence
+which is as valuable as are some of the things which are thrust upon him
+in some other lands under the guise of benevolent charity, really
+patronage of a most demeaning and un-moral sort. At night the Touraine
+peasant returns to his own hearthstone conscious that he is a man like
+all of his fellows, and is not a mere atom ground between the upper and
+nether millstones of the landlord and the squire. He cooks his
+"_bouillie_" over three small sticks and retires to rest with the fond
+hope that on the next market-day following the prices of eggs, chickens,
+cauliflowers, or tomatoes may be higher. He is the stuff that successful
+citizens are made of, and is not to be pitied in the least, even though
+it is only the hundredth man of his community who ever does rise to more
+wealth than a mere competency.
+
+Touraine, rightly enough, has been called the garden of France, but it
+is more than that, much more; it is a warm, soft land where all products
+of the soil take on almost a subtropical luxuriance. Besides the great
+valley of the Loire, there are the valleys of the tributaries which run
+into it, in Touraine and the immediate neighbourhood, all of which are
+fertile as only a river-bottom can be. It is true that there are
+numerous formerly arid and sandy plateaux, quite unlike the abundant
+plains of La Beauce, though to-day, by care and skill, they have been
+made to rival the rest of the region in productiveness.
+
+The Département d'Indre et Loire is the richest agricultural region in
+all France so far as the variety and abundance of its product goes,
+rivalling in every way the opulence of the Burgundian hillsides. Above
+all, Touraine stands at the head of the vine-culture of all the Loire
+valley, the _territoire vinicole_ lapping over into Anjou, where are
+produced the celebrated _vins blancs_ of Saumur.
+
+The vineyard workers of Touraine, in the neighbourhood of Loches, have
+clung closely to ancient customs, almost, one may say, to the
+destruction of the industry, though of late new methods have set in,
+and, since the blight now some years gone by, a new prosperity has come.
+
+The day worker, who cares for the vines and superintends the picking of
+the grapes by the womenfolk and the children, works for two francs fifty
+centimes per day; but he invariably carries with him to the scene of his
+labours a couple of cutlets from a young and juicy _brebis_, or even a
+_poulet rôti_, so one may judge from this that his pay is ample for his
+needs in this land of plenty.
+
+[Illustration: _The Vintage in Touraine_]
+
+In the morning he takes his bowl of soup and a cup of white wine, and of
+course huge hunks of bread, and finally coffee, and on each Sunday he
+has his _rôti à la maison_. All this demonstrates the fact that the
+French peasant is more of a meat eater in these parts than he is
+commonly thought to be.
+
+Touraine has no peculiar beauties to offer the visitor; there is nothing
+_outré_ about it to interest one; but, rather, it wins by sheer charm
+alone, or perhaps a combination of charms and excellencies makes it so
+truly a delectable land.
+
+The Tourangeaux themselves will tell you, when speaking of Rabelais and
+Balzac, that it is the land of "_haute graisse, féconde et
+spirituelle_." It is all this, and, besides its spirituelle components,
+it will supply some very real and substantial comforts. It is the Eden
+of the gourmandiser of such delicacies as _truffes_, _rilettes_, and
+above all, _pruneaux_, which you get in one form or another at nearly
+every meal. Most of the good things of life await one here in abundance,
+with kitchen-gardens and vineyards at every one's back door. Truly
+Touraine is a land of good living.
+
+Life runs its course in Touraine, "_facile et bonne_," without any
+extremes of joy or sorrow, without chimerical desires or infinite
+despair, and the agreeable sensations of life predominate,--the first
+essential to real happiness.
+
+Some one has said, and certainly not without reason, that every
+Frenchman has a touch of Rabelais and of Voltaire in his make-up. This
+is probably true, for France has never been swept by a wave of
+puritanism such as has been manifest in most other countries, and _le
+gros rire_ is still the national philosophy.
+
+In a former day a hearty laugh, or at least an amused cynicism, diverted
+the mind of the martyr from threatened torture and even violent death.
+Brinvilliers laughed at those who were to torture her to death, and De
+la Barre and Danton cracked jokes and improvised puns upon the very edge
+of their untimely graves.
+
+Touraine has the reputation of being a wonderfully productive field for
+the book collector, though with books, like many other treasures of a
+past time, the day has passed when one may "pick up" for two sous a MS.
+worth as many thousands of francs; but still bargains are even now
+found, and if one wants great calf-covered tomes, filled with fine old
+engravings, bearing on the local history of the _pays_, he can generally
+find them at all prices here in old Touraine.
+
+There was a more or less apocryphal story told us and the landlady of
+our inn concerning a find which a guest had come upon in a little
+roadside hamlet at which he chanced to stop. He was one of those
+omnipresent _commis voyageurs_ who thread the French provinces up and
+down, as no other country in the world is "travelled" or "drummed." He
+was the representative for a brandy shipper, one of those substantial
+houses of the cognac region whose product is mostly sold only in France;
+but this fact need not necessarily put the individual very far down in
+the social scale. Indeed, he was a most amiable and cultivated person.
+
+Our fellow traveller had come to a village where all the available
+accommodations of the solitary inn were already engaged; therefore he
+was obliged to put up with a room in the town, which the landlord hunted
+out for him. Repairing to his room without any thought save that of
+sleep, the traveller woke the next morning to find the sun streaming
+through the opaqueness of a brilliantly coloured window. Not stained
+glass here, surely, thought the stranger, for his lodging was a most
+humble one. It proved to be not glass at all; merely four great vellum
+leaves, taken from some ancient tome and stuck into the window-framing
+where the glass ought to have been. Daylight was filtering dimly through
+the rich colouring, and it took but a moment to become convinced that
+the sheets were something rare and valuable. He learned that the pages
+were from an old Latin MS., and that the occupant of the little dwelling
+had used "_the paper_" in the place of the glass which had long since
+disappeared. The vellum and its illuminations had stood the weather
+well, though somewhat dimmed in comparison with the brilliancy of the
+remaining folios, which were found below-stairs. There were in all some
+eighty pages, which were purchased for a modest forty sous, and
+everybody satisfied.
+
+The volume had originally been found by the father of the old dame who
+then had possession of it in an old château in revolutionary times.
+Whether her honoured parent was a pillager or a protector did not come
+out, but for all these years the possession of this fine work meant no
+more to this Tourangelle than a supply of "paper" for stopping up broken
+window-panes.
+
+"She parted readily enough with the remaining leaves," said our
+Frenchman, "but nothing would induce her to remove those which filled
+the window." "No, we have no more glass, and these have answered quite
+well for a long time now," she said. And such is the simplicity of the
+French provincial, even to-day--_sometimes_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+AMBOISE
+
+
+As one approaches Amboise, he leaves the comparatively insalubrious
+plain of the Sologne and the Blaisois and enters Touraine.
+
+Amboise! What history has been made there; what a wealth of action its
+memories recall, and what splendour, gaiety, and sadness its walls have
+held! An entire book might be written about the scenes which took place
+under its roof.
+
+To-day most travellers are content to rush over its apartments, gaze at
+its great round tower, view the Loire, which is here quite at its best,
+from the battlements, and, after a brief admiration of the wonderfully
+sculptured portal of its chapel, make their way to Chenonceaux, or to
+the gay little metropolis of Tours.
+
+[Illustration: _Château d'Amboise_]
+
+No matter whither one turns his steps from Amboise, he will not soon
+forget this great fortress-château and the memories of the _petite
+bande_ of blondes and brunettes who followed in the wake of François
+Premier.
+
+Here, and at Blois, the recollections of this little band are strong in
+the minds of students of romance and history. Some one has said that
+along the corridors of Amboise one still may meet the wraiths of those
+who in former days went airily from one pleasure to another, but this of
+course depends upon the mood and sentiment of the visitor.
+
+Amboise has a very good imitation of the climate of the south, and the
+glitter of the Loire at midday in June is about as torrid a picture as
+one can paint in a northern clime. It is not that it is so very hot in
+degree, but that the lack of shade-trees along its quays gives Amboise a
+shimmering resemblance to a much warmer place than it really is. The
+Loire is none too ample here, and frets its way, as it does through most
+of its lower course, through banks of sand and pebbles in a more or less
+vain effort to look cool.
+
+Amboise is old, for, under the name of Ambatia, it existed in the fourth
+century, at which epoch St. Martin, the patron of Tours, threw down a
+pagan pyramidal temple here and established Christianity; and Clovis and
+Alaric held their celebrated meeting on the Ile St. Jean in 496. It was
+not long after this, according to the ancient writers, that some sort
+of a fortified château took form here. Louis-le-Bègue gave Amboise to
+the Counts of Anjou, and Hughes united the two independent seigneuries
+of the château and the bourg. After the Counts of Anjou succeeded the
+Counts of Berry, Charles VII., by appropriation, confiscation, seizure,
+or whatever you please to call it,--history is vague as to the real
+motive,--united Amboise to the possessions of the Crown in 1434. Louis
+XI. lived for a time at this strong fortress-château, before he turned
+his affections so devotedly to Plessis-les-Tours. Charles VIII. was born
+and died here, and it was he who added the Renaissance details, or at
+least the first of them, upon his return from Italy. Indeed, it is to
+him and to the nobles who followed in his train during his Italian
+travels that the introduction of the Renaissance into France is commonly
+attributed.
+
+It was at Amboise that Charles VIII., forgetful of the miseries of his
+Italian campaign, set about affairs of state with a renewed will and
+vigour. He was personally superintending some alterations in the old
+castle walls, and instructing the workmen whom he brought from Italy
+with him as to just how far they might introduce those details which the
+world has come to know as Renaissance, when, in passing beneath a low
+overhanging beam, he struck his head so violently that he expired almost
+immediately (April 17, 1498).
+
+Louis XII., the superstitious, lived here for some time, and here
+occurred some of the most important events in the life of the great
+François, the real popularizer of the new architectural Renaissance.
+
+It was in the old castle of Amboise, the early home of Louis XII., that
+his appointed successor, his son-in-law and second cousin, François, was
+brought up. Here he was educated by his mother, Louise de Savoie,
+Duchesse d'Angoulême, together with that bright and shining light, that
+Marguerite who was known as the "Pearl of the Valois," poetess, artist,
+and court intriguer. Here the household formed what in the early days
+François himself was pleased to call a "trinity of love."
+
+Throughout the structure may yet be seen the suggestions of François's
+artistic instincts, traced in the window-framings of the façade, in the
+interior decorations of the long gallery, and on the terrace hanging
+high above the Loire.
+
+In the park and in the surrounding forest François and his sister
+Marguerite passed many happy days of their childhood. Marguerite, who
+had already become known as the "tenth muse," had already thought out
+her "Heptameron," whilst François tried his prentice hand at
+love-rhyming, an expression of sentiment which at a later period took
+the form of avowals in person to his favourites.
+
+One recalls those stanzas to the memory of Agnes Sorel, beginning:
+
+        "Gentille Agnès plus de loz tu mérite,
+         La cause était de France recouvrir;
+         Que ce que peut dedans un cloître ouvrir
+         Close nonnaine? ou bien dévot hermite?"
+
+François was more than a lover of the beautiful. His appreciation of
+architectural art amounted almost to a passion, and one might well claim
+him as a member of the architectural guild, although, in truth, he was
+nothing more than a generous patron of the craftsmen of his day.
+
+François was the real father of the French Renaissance, the more
+splendid flower which grew from the Italian stalk. He had no liking for
+the Van Eycks and Holbeins of the Dutch school, reserving his favour for
+the frankly languid masters from the south. He brought from Italy
+Cellini, Primaticcio, and the great Leonardo, who it is said had a hand
+in that wonderful shell-like spiral stairway in the château at Blois.
+
+By just what means Da Vinci was inveigled from Italy will probably never
+be known. The art-loving François visited Milan, and among its
+curiosities was shown the even then celebrated "Last Supper" of
+Leonardo. The next we know is that, "_François repasse les Alpes ayant
+avec lui Mon Sieur Lyonard, son peintre_." Leonardo was given a pension
+of seven _ecus de France_ per year and a residence near Amboise. Vasari
+recounts very precisely how Leonardo expired in the arms of his kingly
+patron at Amboise, but on the other hand, the court chronicles have said
+that François was at St. Germain on that day. Be this as it may, the
+intimacy was a close one, and we may be sure that François felt keenly
+the demise of this most celebrated painter of his court.
+
+It was during those early idyllic days at Amboise that the character of
+François was formed, and the marvel is that the noble and endearing
+qualities did not exceed the baser ones. To be sure his after lot was
+hard, and his real and fancied troubles many, and they were not made the
+less easy to bear because of his numerous female advisers.
+
+In his youth at Amboise his passions still slumbered, but when they did
+awaken, they burst forth with an unquenchable fury. Meantime he was
+working off any excess of imagination by boar-hunts and falconry in the
+neighbouring forest of Chanteloup, and had more than one hand-to-hand
+affray with resentful citizens of the town, when he encroached upon what
+they considered their traditional preserves. So he grew to man's estate,
+but the life that he lived in his youth under the kingly roof of the
+château at Amboise gave him the benefits of all the loyalty which his
+fellows knew, and it helped him carry out the ideas which were
+bequeathed to him by his uncle.
+
+It was at a sitting of the court at Amboise, when François was still
+under his mother's wing,--at the age of twenty only,--that the Bourbon
+affair finally came to its head. Many notables were mixed up in it as
+partisans of the ungrateful and ambitious Bourbon, Charles de
+Montpensier, Connétable de France. It was an office only next in power
+to that of the sovereign himself, and one which had been allowed to die
+out in the reign of Louis XI. The final outcome of it all was that
+François became a prisoner at Pavia, through the treachery of the
+Connétable and his followers, who went over _en masse_ to François's
+rival, Charles V., who, as Charles II., was King of Spain.
+
+Of the subsequent meeting with the Emperor Charles on French soil,
+François said to the Duchesse d'Étampes: "It is with regret that I leave
+you to meet the emperor at Amboise on the Loire." And he added: "You
+will follow me with the queen." His queen at this time was poor Eleanor
+of Portugal, herself a Spanish princess, Claude of France, his first
+wife, having died. "These two," says Brantôme, "were the only virtuous
+women of his household."
+
+The Emperor Charles was visibly affected by the meeting, though, it is
+true, he had no love for his old enemy, François. Perhaps it was on
+account of the duchess, for whom François had put aside Diane. At any
+rate, the emperor was gallant enough to say to her: "It is only in
+France that I have seen such a perfection of elegance and beauty. My
+brother, your king, should be the envy of all the sovereigns of Europe.
+Had I such a captive at my palace in Madrid, there were no ransom that I
+would accept for her."
+
+François cared not for the lonely Spanish princess whom he had made his
+queen; but he was somewhat susceptible to the charms of his
+daughter-in-law, Catherine de Medici, the wife of his son Henri, who,
+when at Amboise, was his ever ready companion in the chase.
+
+François was inordinately fond of the hunt, and made of it a most
+strenuous pastime, full of danger and of hard riding in search of the
+boar and the wolf, which abounded in the thick underwood in the
+neighbourhood. One wonders where they, or, rather, their descendants,
+have disappeared, since nought in these days but a frightened hare, a
+partridge, or perhaps a timid deer ever crosses one's path, as he makes
+his way by the smooth roads which cross and recross the forest behind
+Amboise.
+
+When François II. was sixteen he became the nominal king of France. To
+Amboise he and his young bride came, having been brought thither from
+Blois, for fear of the Huguenot rising. The court settled itself
+forthwith at Amboise, where the majestic feudal castle piled itself high
+up above the broad, limpid Loire, feeling comparatively secure within
+the protection of its walls. Here the Loire had widened to the
+pretensions of a lake, the river being spanned by a bridge, which
+crossed it by the help of the island, as it does to-day.
+
+Over this old stone bridge the court approached the castle, the retinue
+brilliant with all the trappings of a luxurious age, archers, pages,
+and men-at-arms. The king and his new-found bride, the winsome Mary
+Stuart, rode well in the van. In their train were Catherine, the
+"queen-mother" of three kings, the Cardinal de Lorraine, the Duc de
+Guise, the Duc de Nemours, and a vast multitude of gay retainers, who
+were moved about from place to place like pawns upon the chess-board,
+and with about as much consideration.
+
+The gentle Mary Stuart, born in 1542, at Linlithgow, in stern Caledonia,
+of a French mother,--Marie de Lorraine,--was doomed to misfortune, for
+her father, the noble James V., prophesied upon his death-bed that the
+dynasty would end with his daughter.
+
+At the tender age of five Mary was sent to France and placed in a
+convent. Her education was afterward continued at court under the
+direction of her uncle, the Cardinal de Lorraine. By ten she had become
+well versed in French, Latin, and Italian, and at one time, according to
+Brantôme, she gave a discourse on literature and the liberal arts--so
+flourishing at the time--before the king and his court. Ronsard was her
+tutor in versification, which became one of her favourite pursuits.
+
+Mary Stuart's charms were many. She was tall and finely formed, with
+auburn hair shining like an aureole above her intellectual forehead, and
+with a skin of such dazzling whiteness--a trite saying, but one which is
+used by Brantôme--"that it outrivalled the whiteness of her veil."
+
+In the spring of 1558, when she was but sixteen, Mary Stuart was married
+to the Dauphin, the weak, sickly François II., himself but a youth. He
+was, however, sincerely and deeply fond of his young wife.
+
+Unexpectedly, through the death of Henri II. at the hands of Montgomery
+at that ever debatable tournament, François II. ascended the throne of
+France, and Mary Stuart saw herself exalted to the dizzy height which
+she had not so soon expected. She became the queen of two kingdoms, and,
+had the future been more propitious, the whole map of Europe might have
+been changed.
+
+Disease had marked the unstable François for its own, and within a year
+he passed from the throne to the grave, leaving his young queen a widow
+and an orphan.
+
+Shortly afterward "_la reine blanche_" returned to her native Scotland,
+bidding France that long, last, sad adieu so often quoted:
+
+        "Farewell, beloved France, to thee!
+           Best native land,
+           The cherished strand
+         That nursed my tender infancy!
+         Farewell my childhood's happy day!
+         The bark, which bears me thus away,
+           Bears but the poorer moiety hence,
+         The nobler half remains with thee,
+           I leave it to thy confidence,
+         But to remind thee still of me!"
+
+The young sovereigns had had a most stately suite of apartments prepared
+for them at Amboise, the lofty windows reaching from floor to ceiling
+and overlooking the river and the vast terrace where was so soon to be
+enacted that bloody drama to which they were to be made unwilling
+witnesses.
+
+This gallery was wainscoted with old oak and hung with rich leathers,
+and the lofty ceiling was emblazoned with heraldic emblems and
+monograms, as was the fashion of the day. Brocades and tapestries, set
+in great gold frames, lined the walls, and, in a boudoir or
+retiring-room beyond, still definitely to be recognized, was a
+remarkable series of embroidered wall decorations, a tapestry of flowers
+and fruits with an arabesque border of white and gold, truly a queenly
+apartment, and one that well became the luxurious and dainty Mary, who
+came from Scotland to marry the youthful François.
+
+Mary Stuart knew little at the time as to why they had so suddenly
+removed from Blois, but François soon told her, something after this
+wise: "Our mother," said he, "is deeply concerned with affairs of state.
+There is some conspiracy against her and your uncles, the Guises."
+
+"Tell me," she demanded, "concerning this dreadful conspiracy."
+
+"Were you not suspicious," he asked, querulously, "when we left for
+Amboise so suddenly?"
+
+"_Ah, non, mon François_, methought that we came here to hold a jousting
+tourney and to hunt in the forest...."
+
+"Well, at any rate, we are secure here from Turk, or Jew, or Huguenot,
+my queen," replied the king.
+
+Within a short space a council was called in the great hall of Amboise,
+which the Huguenot chiefs, Condé, Coligny, the Cardinal de
+Chatillon,--who appears to have been a sort of a religious
+renegade,--were requested to attend. A conciliatory edict was to be
+prepared, and signed by the king, as a measure for gaining time and
+learning further the plans of the conspirators.
+
+This edict ultimately was signed, but it was in force but a short time
+and was a subterfuge which the youthful king deep in his heart--and he
+publicly avowed the fact--deeply resented. Furthermore it did
+practically nothing toward quelling the conspiracy.
+
+Through the plains of Touraine and over the hills from Anjou the
+conspirators came in straggling bands, to rendezvous for a great _coup
+de main_ at Amboise. They halted at farms and hid in vineyards, but the
+royalists were on the watch and one after another the wandering bands
+were captured and held for a bloody public massacre when the time should
+become ripe. In all, two thousand or more were captured, including Jean
+Barri de la Renaudie. This man was the leader, but he was merely a bold
+adventurer, seeking his own advantage, and caring little what cause
+employed his peculiar talents. This was his last affair, however, for
+his corpse soon hung in chains from Amboise's bridge. Condé, Coligny,
+and the other Calvinists soon learned that the edict was not worth the
+paper on which it was written.
+
+After the two thousand had been dispersed or captured the
+"queen-mother" threw off the mask. She led the trembling child-king and
+queen toward the southern terrace, where, close beneath the windows of
+the château, was built a scaffold, covered with black cloth, before
+which stood the executioner clothed in scarlet. The prisoners were
+ranged by hundreds along the outer rampart, guarded by archers and
+musketeers. The windows of the royal apartment were open and here the
+company placed themselves to witness the butchery to follow.
+
+Speechless with horror sat the young king and queen, until finally, as
+another batch of mutilated corpses were thrown into the river below, the
+young queen swooned.
+
+"My mother," said François, "I, too, am overcome by this horrible sight.
+I crave your Highness's permission to retire; the blood of my subjects,
+even of my enemies, is too horrible to contemplate."
+
+"My son," said the bloodthirsty Catherine, "I command you to stay. Duc
+de Guise, support your niece, the Queen of France. Teach her her duty as
+a sovereign. She must learn how to govern those hardy Scots of hers."
+
+It was on the very terraced platform on which one walks to-day that,
+between two ranks of _hallebardiers_ and arquebusiers, moved that long
+line of bareheaded and bowed men whose prayers went up to heaven while
+they awaited the fate of the gallows.
+
+Either the cord or the sword-blade quickly accounted for the lives of
+this multitude, and their blood flowed in rivulets, while above in the
+gallery the willing and unwilling onlookers were gay with laughter or
+dumb with sadness.
+
+When all this horrible murdering was over the Loire was literally a
+reeking mass of corpses, if we are to believe the records of the time.
+The chief conspirators were hung in chains from the castle walls, or
+from the bridge, and the balustrades which overhang the street, which
+to-day flanks the Loire beneath the castle walls, were filled with a
+ribald crew of jeering partisans who knew little and cared less for
+religion of any sort.
+
+Some days after the execution of the Calvinists the "Protestant poet"
+and historian passed through the royal city with his _précepteur_ and
+his father, and was shown the rows of heads planted upon pikes, which
+decorated the castle walls, and thereupon vowed, if not to avenge, at
+least to perpetuate the infamy in prose and verse, and this he did most
+effectually.
+
+An odorous garden of roses, lilacs, honeysuckle, and hawthorn framed the
+joyous architecture of the château, then as now, in adorable fashion;
+but it could not purify the malodorous reputation which it had received
+until the domain was ceded by Louis XIV. to the Duc de Penthièvre and
+made a _duché-pairie_.
+
+It would be possible to say much more, but this should suffice to stamp
+indelibly the fact that Touraine, in general, and the château of
+Amboise, in particular, cradled as much of the thought and action of the
+monarchy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as did the capital
+itself. At any rate the memory of it all is so vivid, and the tangible
+monuments of the splendour and intrigue of the court of those days are
+so very numerous and magnificent, that one could not forget the parts
+they played--once having seen them--if he would.
+
+After the assassination of the Duc de Guise at Blois, Amboise became a
+prison of state, where were confined the Cardinal de Bourbon and César
+de Vendôme (the sons of Henri IV. and Gabrielle d'Estrées), also Fouquet
+and Lauzun. In 1762 the château was given by Louis XV. to the Duc de
+Choiseul, and the great Napoleon turned it over to his ancient
+colleague, Roger Ducos, who apparently cared little for its beauties
+or associations, for he mutilated it outrageously.
+
+[Illustration: _Sculpture from the Chapelle de St. Hubert_]
+
+In later times the history of the château and its dependencies has been
+more prosaic. The Emir Abd-el-Kader was imprisoned here in 1852, and
+Louis Napoleon stayed for a time within its walls upon his return from
+the south. To-day it belongs to the family of Orleans, to whom it was
+given by the National Assembly in 1872, and has become a house of
+retreat for military veterans. This is due to the generosity of the Duc
+d'Aumale into whose hands it has since passed. The restoration which has
+been carried on has made of Amboise an ideal reproduction of what it
+once was, and in every way it is one of the most splendid and famous
+châteaux of its kind, though by no means as lovable as the residential
+châteaux of Chenonceaux or Langeais.
+
+The Chapelle de St. Hubert, which was restored by Louis Philippe, is the
+chief artistic attraction of Amboise; a bijou of full-blown Gothic. It
+is a veritable architectural joy of the period of Charles VIII., to whom
+its erection was due. Its portal has an adorable bas-relief,
+representing "La Chasse de St. Hubert," and showing St. Hubert, St.
+Christopher, and St. Anthony, while above, in the tympanum, are
+effigies of the Virgin, of Charles VIII., and of Anne de Bretagne. The
+sculpture is, however, comparatively modern, but it embellishes a shrine
+worthy in every way, for there repose the bones of Leonardo da Vinci.
+Formerly Da Vinci's remains had rested in the chapel of the château
+itself, dedicated to St. Florentin.
+
+Often the Chapelle de St. Hubert has been confounded with that described
+by Scott in "Quentin Durward," but it is manifestly not the same, as
+that was located in Tours or near there, and his very words describe the
+architecture as "of the rudest and meanest kind," which this is not.
+Over the arched doorway of the chapel at Tours there was, however, a
+"statue of St. Hubert with a bugle-horn around his neck and a leash of
+greyhounds at his feet," which may have been an early suggestion of the
+later work which was undertaken at Amboise.
+
+All vocations came to have their protecting saints in the middle ages,
+and, since "_la chasse_" was the great recreation of so many,
+distinction was bestowed upon Hubert as being one of the most devout.
+The legend is sufficiently familiar not to need recounting here, and,
+anyway, the story is plainly told in this sculptured panel over the
+portal of the chapel at Amboise.
+
+In this Chapel of St. Hubert was formerly held "that which was called a
+hunting-mass. The office was only used before the noble and powerful,
+who, while assisting at the solemnity, were usually impatient to
+commence their favourite sport."
+
+The ancient Salle des Gardes of the château, with the windows giving on
+the balcony overlooking the river, became later the Logis du Roi. From
+this great chamber one passes on to the terrace near the foot of the
+Grosse Tour, called the Tour des Minimes. It is this tower which
+contains the "_escalier des voitures_." The entrance is through an
+elegant portico leading to the upper stories. Above another portico,
+leading from the terrace to the garden, is to be seen the emblem of
+Louis XII., the porcupine, so common at Blois.
+
+In the fosse, which still remains on the garden side, was the
+universally installed _jeu-de-paume_, a favourite amusement throughout
+the courts of Europe in the middle ages.
+
+At the base of the château are clustered numerous old houses of the
+sixteenth century, but on the river-front these have been replaced with
+pretentious houses, cafés, automobile garages, and other modern
+buildings.
+
+Near the Quai des Violettes are a series of subterranean chambers known
+as the Greniers de César, dating from the sixteenth century.
+
+[Illustration: _Cipher of Anne de Bretagne, Hôtel de Ville, Amboise_]
+
+Even at this late day one can almost picture the great characters in the
+drama of other times who stalked majestically through the apartments,
+and over the very flagstones of the courts and terraces which one treads
+to-day; Catherine de Medici with her ruffs and velvets; Henri de Guise
+with all his wiles; Condé the proud; the second François, youthful but
+wise; his girl queen, loving and sad; and myriads more of all ranks and
+of all shades of morality,--all resplendent in the velvets and gold of
+the costume of their time.
+
+Near the château is the Clos Luce, a Gothic habitation in whose oratory
+died Leonardo da Vinci, on May 2, 1519.
+
+Immediately back of the château is the Forêt d'Amboise, the scene of
+many gay hunting parties when the court was here or at Chenonceaux,
+which one reaches by traversing the forest route. On the edge of this
+forest is Chanteloup, remembered by most folk on account of its
+atrocious Chinese-like pagoda, built of the débris of the Château de la
+Bourdaisière, by the Duc de Choiseul, in memory of the attentions he
+received from the nobles and bourgeois of the ville upon the fall of his
+ministry and his disgrace at the hands of Louis XV. and La Du Barry. It
+is a curious form to be chosen when one had such beautiful examples of
+architectural art near by, only equalled, perhaps, in atrociousness by
+the "Royal Pavilion" of England's George IV.
+
+La Bourdaisière, near Amboise, of which only the site remains, if not
+one of the chief tourist attractions of the château country, has at
+least a sentimental interest of abounding importance for all who recall
+the details of the life of "La Belle Gabrielle."
+
+Here in Touraine Gabrielle d'Estrées was born in 1565. She was
+twenty-six years old when Henri IV. first saw her in the château of her
+father at Coeuvres. So charmed was he with her graces that he made her
+his _maîtresse_ forthwith, though the old court-life chronicles of the
+day state that she already possessed something more than the admiration
+of Sebastian Zamet, the celebrated financier.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+CHENONCEAUX
+
+"The castle of Chenonceaux is a fine place on the river Cher, in a fine
+and pleasant country."
+
+                                             FRANÇOIS PREMIER.
+
+"The castle of Chenonceaux is one of the best and most beautiful of our
+kingdom."
+
+                                                      HENRI II.
+
+
+The average visitor will come prepared to worship and admire a château
+so praised by two luxury-loving Kings of France.
+
+Chenonceaux is noted chiefly for its château, but the little village
+itself is charming. The houses of the village are not very new, nor very
+old, but the one long street is most attractive throughout its length,
+and the whole atmosphere of the place, from September to December, is
+odorous with the perfume of red-purple grapes. The vintage is not the
+equal of that of the Bordeaux region, perhaps, nor of Chinon, nor
+Saumur; but the _vin du pays_ of the Cher and the Loire, around Tours,
+is not to be despised.
+
+Most tourists come to Chenonceaux by train from Tours; others drive over
+from Amboise, and yet others come by bicycle or automobile. They are not
+as yet so numerous as might be expected, and accordingly here, as
+elsewhere in Touraine, every facility is given for visiting the château
+and its park.
+
+If you do not hurry off at once to worship at the abode of the
+fascinating Diane, one of the brightest ornaments of the court of
+François Premier and his son Henri, you will enjoy your dinner at the
+Hôtel du Bon Laboureur, though most likely it will be a solitary one,
+and you will be put to bed in a great chamber overlooking the park,
+through which peep, in the moonlight, the turrets of the château, and
+you may hear the purling of the waters of the Cher as it flows below the
+walls.
+
+Jean Jacques Rousseau, like François I., called Chenonceaux a beautiful
+place, and he was right; it is all of that and more. Here one comes into
+direct contact with an atmosphere which, if not feudal, or even
+mediæval, is at least that of several hundred years ago.
+
+Chenonceaux is moored like a ship in the middle of the rapidly running
+Cher, a dozen miles or more above where that stream enters the Loire.
+As a matter of fact, the château practically bridges the river, which
+flows under its foundations and beneath its drawbridge on either side,
+besides filling the moat with water. The general effect is as if the
+building were set in the midst of the stream and formed a sort of island
+château. Round about is a gentle meadow and a great park, which give to
+this turreted architectural gem of Touraine a setting which is equalled
+by no other château.
+
+What the château was in former days we can readily imagine, for nothing
+is changed as to the general disposition. Boats came to the water-gate,
+as they still might do if such boats still existed, in true, pictorial
+legendary fashion. To-day, the present occupant has placed a curiosity
+on the ornamental waters in the shape of a gondola. It is out of keeping
+with the grand fabric of the château, and it is a pity that it does not
+cast itself adrift some night. What has become of the gondolier, who was
+imported to keep the craft company, nobody seems to know. He is
+certainly not in evidence, or, if he is, has transformed himself into a
+groom or a _chauffeur_.
+
+The Château of Chenonceaux is not a very ample structure; not so ample
+as most photographs would make it appear. It is not tiny, but still it
+has not the magnificent proportions of Blois, of Chambord, or even of
+Langeais. It was more a habitation than it was a fortress, a _maison de
+campagne_, as indeed it virtually became when the Connétable de
+Montmorency took possession of the structure in the name of the king,
+when its builder, Thomas Bohier, the none too astute minister of
+finances in Normandy, came to grief in his affairs.
+
+François I. came frequently here for "_la chasse_," and his memory is
+still kept alive by the Chambre François Premier. François held
+possession till his death, when his son made it over to the "admired of
+two generations," Diane de Poitiers.
+
+Diane's memory will never leave Chenonceaux. To-day it is perpetuated in
+the Chambre de Diane de Poitiers; but the portrait by Leonardo da Vinci,
+which was supposed to best show her charms, has now disappeared from the
+"long gallery" at the château. This portrait was painted at the command
+of François, before Diane transferred her affections to his son.
+
+No one knows when or how Diane de Poitiers first came to fascinate
+François, or how or why her power waned. At any rate, at the time
+François pardoned her father, the witless Comte de St. Vallier, for the
+treacherous part he played in the Bourbon conspiracy, he really believed
+her to be the "brightest ornament of a beauty-loving court."
+
+Certainly, Diane was a powerful factor in the politics of her time,
+though François himself soon tired of her. Undaunted by this, she
+forthwith set her cap for his son Henri, the Duc d'Orleans, and won him,
+too. Of her beauty the present generation is able to judge for itself by
+reason of the three well-known and excellent portraits of contemporary
+times.
+
+Diane's influence over the young Henri was absolute. At his death her
+power was, of course, at an end, and Chenonceaux, and all else possible,
+was taken from her by the orders of Catherine, the long-suffering wife,
+who had been put aside for the fascinations of the charming huntress.
+
+It must have been some satisfaction, however, to Diane, to know that, in
+his fatal joust with Montgomery, Henri really broke his lance and met
+his death in her honour, for the records tell that he bore her colours
+on his lance, besides her initials set in gold and gems on his shield.
+
+Catherine's eagerness to drive Diane from the court was so great, that
+no sooner had her spouse fallen--even though he did not actually die for
+some days--than she sent word to Diane, "who sat weeping alone," to
+instantly quit the court; to give up the crown jewels--which Henri had
+somewhat inconsiderately given her; and to "give up Chenonceaux in
+Touraine," Catherine's Naboth's vineyard, which she had so long admired
+and coveted. She had known it as a girl, when she often visited it in
+company with her father-in-law, the appreciative but dissolute François,
+and had ever longed to possess it for her own, before even her husband,
+now dead, had given it to "that old hag Diane de Poitiers, Duchesse de
+Valentinois."
+
+Diane paid no heed to Catherine's command. She simply asked: "Is the
+king yet dead?"
+
+"No, madame," said the messenger, "but his wound is mortal; he cannot
+live the day."
+
+"Tell the queen, then," replied Diane, "that her reign is not yet come;
+that I am mistress still over her and the kingdom as long as the king
+breathes the breath of life."
+
+Henri was more or less an equivocal character, devoted to Diane, and
+likewise fondone says it with caution--of his wife. He caused to be
+fashioned a monogram (seen at Chenonceaux) after this wise: [MONOGRAM
+DEPICTING TWO CAPITAL LETTERS "D", THE SECOND OF WHICH IS INVERTED; THE
+LETTERS ARE INTERWOVEN IN THEIR "(" AND ")" PARTS, AND THERE IS A
+HORIZONTAL BAR CROSSING THEM IN THE MIDDLE] supposedly indicating his
+attachment for Diane and his wife alike. The various initials of the
+cipher are in no way involved. Diane returned the compliment by
+decorating an apartment for the king, at her Château of Anet, with the
+black and white of the Medici arms.
+
+The Château of Chenonceaux, so greatly coveted by Catherine when she
+first came to France, and when it was in the possession of Diane, still
+remains in all the regal splendour of its past. It lies in the lovely
+valley of the Cher, far from the rush and turmoil of cities and even the
+continuous traffic of great thoroughfares, for it is on the road to
+nowhere unless one is journeying cross-country from the lower to the
+upper Loire. This very isolation resulted in its being one of the few
+monuments spared from the furies of the Revolution, and, "half-palace
+and half-château," it glistens with the purity of its former glory, as
+picturesque as ever, with turrets, spires, and roof-tops all mellowed
+with the ages in a most entrancing manner.
+
+Even to-day one enters the precincts of the château proper over a
+drawbridge which spans an arm of the Loire, or rather, a moat which
+leads directly from the parent stream. On the opposite side are the
+bridge piers supporting five arches, the work of Diane when she was the
+fair chatelaine of the domain. This ingenious thought proved to be a
+most useful and artistic addition to the château. It formed a flagged
+promenade, lovely in itself, and led to the southern bank of the Cher,
+whence one got charming vistas of the turrets and roof-tops of the
+château through the trees and the leafy avenues which converged upon the
+structure.
+
+[Illustration: CHÂTEAU DE CHENONCEAUX]
+
+When Catherine came she did not disdain to make the best use of Diane's
+innovation that suggested itself to her, which was simply to build the
+"Long Gallery" over the arches of this lovely bridge, and so make of it
+a veritable house over the water. A covering was made quite as beautiful
+as the rest of the structure, and thus the bridge formed a spacious wing
+of two stories. The first floor--known as the "Long Gallery"--was
+intended as a banqueting-hall, and possessed four great full-length
+windows on either side looking up and down stream, from which was
+seen--and is to-day--an outlook as magnificently idyllic as is possible
+to conceive. Jean Goujon had designed for the ceiling one of those
+wonder-works for which he was famous, but if the complete plan was ever
+carried out, it has disappeared, for only a tiny sketch of the whole
+scheme remains to-day.
+
+[Illustration: _Château of CHENONCEAUX_ (DIAGRAM)]
+
+Catherine came in the early summer to take possession of her
+long-coveted domain. Being a skilful horsewoman, she came on horseback,
+accompanied by a "_petite bande_" of feminine charmers destined to
+wheedle political secrets from friends and enemies alike,--a real
+"_escadron volant de la reine_," as it was called by a contemporary.
+
+It was a gallant company that assembled here at this time,--the young
+King Charles IX., the Duc de Guise, and "two cardinals mounted on
+mules,"--Lorraine, a true Guise, and D'Este, newly arrived from Italy,
+and accompanied by the poet Tasso, wearing a "gabardine and a hood of
+satin." Catherine showed the Italian great favour, as was due a
+countryman, but there was another poet among them as well, Ronsard, the
+poet laureate of the time. The Duc de Guise had followed in the wake of
+Marguerite, unbeknownst to Catherine, who frowned down any possibility
+of an alliance between the houses of Valois and Lorraine.
+
+A great fête and water-masque had been arranged by Catherine to take
+place on the Cher, with a banquet to follow in the Long Gallery in
+honour of her arrival at Chenonceaux.
+
+When twilight had fallen, torches were ignited and myriads of lights
+blazed forth from the boats on the river and from the windows of the
+château. Music and song went forth into the night, and all was as gay
+and lovely as a Venetian night's entertainment. The hunting-horns echoed
+through the wooded banks, and through the arches above which the château
+was built passed great highly coloured barges, including a fleet of
+gondolas to remind the queen-mother of her Italian days,--the ancestors
+perhaps of the solitary gondola which to-day floats idly by the
+river-bank just before the grand entrance to the château. From
+_parterre_ and _balustrade_, and from the clipped yews of the ornamental
+garden, fairy lamps burned forth and dwindled away into dim infinity, as
+the long lines of soft light gradually lost themselves in the forest. It
+was a grand affair and idyllic in its unworldliness. One may not see its
+like to-day, for electric lights and "rag-time" music, which mostly
+comprise the attractions of such _al fresco_ pleasures, will hardly
+produce the same effect.
+
+Among the great fêtes at Chenonceaux will always be recalled that given
+by the court upon the coming of the youthful François II. and Mary
+Stuart, after the horrible massacres at Amboise.
+
+All the Renaissance skill of the time was employed in the erection of
+pompous accessories, triumphal arches, columns, obelisks, and altars.
+There were innumerable tablets also, bearing inscriptions in Latin and
+Greek,--which nobody read,--and a fountain which bore the following:
+
+        "Au saint bal des dryades,
+         A Phoebus, ce grand dieu,
+         Aux humides nyades,
+         J'ai consacré ce lieu."
+
+Of Chenonceaux and its glories what more can be said than to quote the
+following lines of the middle ages, which in their quaint old French
+apply to-day as much as ever they did:
+
+         "Basti si magnifiquement
+         II est debout, comme un géant,
+         Dedans le lit de la rivière,
+         C'est-à-dire dessus un pont
+         Qui porte cent toises de long."
+
+The part of the edifice which Bohier erected in 1515 is that through
+which the visitor makes his entrance, and is built upon the piers of an
+old mill which was destroyed at that time.
+
+Catherine bequeathed Chenonceaux to the wife of Henri III., Louise de
+Vaudémont, who died here in 1601. For a hundred years it still belonged
+to royalty, but in 1730 it was sold to M. Dupin, who, with his wife,
+enriched and repaired the fabric. They gathered around them a company so
+famous as to be memorable in the annals of art and literature. This is
+best shown by the citing of such names as Fontenelle, Montesquieu,
+Buffon, Bolingbroke, Voltaire, and Rousseau, all of whom were
+frequenters of the establishment, the latter being charged with the
+education of the only son of M. and Madame Dupin.
+
+Considering Rousseau's once proud position among his contemporaries, and
+the favour with which he was received by the nobility, it is somewhat
+surprising that his struggle for life was so hard. The Marquise de
+Créquy wrote in her "Souvenirs:" "Rousseau left behind him his
+_Mémoires_, which I think for the sake of his memory and fame ought to
+be much curtailed." And undoubtedly she was right. Rousseau wrote in his
+"Confessions:" "In 1747 we went to spend the autumn in Touraine, at the
+Château of Chenonceaux, a royal residence upon the Cher, built by Henri
+II. for Diane de Poitiers, whose initials are still to be seen there....
+We amused ourselves greatly in this fine spot; the living was of the
+best, and I became fat as a monk. We made a great deal of music and
+acted comedies."
+
+One might imagine, from a stroll through the magnificent halls and
+galleries of Chenonceaux, that Rousseau's experiences might be repeated
+to-day if one were fortunate enough to be asked to sojourn there for a
+time. The nearest that one can get, however, to becoming personally
+identified with the château and its life is to sign his name in the
+great vellum quarto which ultimately will rest in the archives of the
+château.
+
+It is doubtless very wrong to be covetous; but Chenonceaux is such a
+beautiful place and comes so near the ideal habitation of our
+imagination that the desire to possess it for one's own is but human.
+
+In the "Galerie Louis XIV." were given the first representations of many
+of Rousseau's pieces.
+
+One gathers from these accounts of the happenings in the Long Gallery
+that it formed no bridge of sighs, and most certainly it did not. Its
+walls resounded almost continually with music and laughter. Here in
+these rooms Henri II. danced and made love and intrigued, while
+Catherine, his queen, was left at Blois with her astrologer and his
+poisons, to eat out her soul in comparative neglect.
+
+Before the time of the dwelling built by Bohier for himself and family
+on the foundations of the old mill, there was yet a manorhouse
+belonging to the ancient family of Marques, from whom the Norman
+financier bought the site. The tower, seen to-day at the right of the
+entrance to the château proper,--an expressive relic of feudal
+times,--was a part of the earlier establishment. To-day it is turned
+into a sort of _kiosque_ for the sale of photographs, post-cards, and an
+admirable illustrated guide to the château.
+
+The interior of the château to-day presents the following remarkable
+features: The dining-room of to-day, formerly the Salle des Gardes, has
+a ceiling in which the cipher of Catherine de Medici is interwoven with
+an arabesque. To the left of this apartment is the entrance to the
+chapel, which to-day seems a bit incongruously placed, leading as it
+does from the dining-room. It is but a tiny chapel, but it is as gay and
+brilliant as if it were still the adjunct of a luxury-loving court, and
+it has some glass dating from 1521, which, if not remarkable for design
+or colouring, is quite choice enough to rank as an art treasure of real
+value.
+
+According to Viollet-le-Duc each feudal seigneur had attached to his
+château a chapel, often served by a private chaplain, and in some
+instances by an entire chapter of prelates. These chapels were not
+simple oratories surrounded by the domestic apartments, but were
+architectural monuments in themselves, and either entirely isolated, as
+at Amboise, or semi-detached, as at Chenonceaux.
+
+Below, in the sub-basement, at Chenonceaux, are the original foundations
+upon which Bohier laid his first stones. Here, too, are various
+chambers, known respectively as the prison, the Bains de la Reine, the
+_boulangerie_, etc.
+
+Chenonceaux to-day is no whited sepulchre. It is a real living and
+livable thing, and, moreover, when one visits it, he observes that the
+family burn great logs in their fireplaces, have luxurious bouquets of
+flowers on their dining-table, and use great wax candles instead of the
+more prosaic oil-lamps, or worse--acetylene gas. Chenonceaux evidently
+has no thoughts of descending to steam heat and electricity.
+
+All this is as it should be, for when one visits a shrine like this he
+prefers to find it with as much as possible of the old-time atmosphere
+remaining. Chambord is bare and suggestive of the tomb, in spite of the
+splendour of its outline and proportions; Pierrefonds, in the north, is
+more so, and so would be Blois except for its restored or imitation
+decorations; but here at Chenonceaux all is different, and breathes the
+spirit of other days as well as that of to-day. It is, perhaps, not
+exactly as Diane left it, or as Rousseau knew it under the régime of the
+Dupins, since, after many changings of hands, it became the property of
+the _Crédit Foncier_, by whom it was sold in 1891 to Mr. Terry, an
+American.
+
+Chenonceaux has two other architectural monuments which are often
+overlooked under the spell of the more magnificent château. In the
+village is a small Renaissance church--in which the Renaissance never
+rose to any very great heights--which is here far more effective and
+beautiful than usually are Renaissance churches of any magnitude. There
+is also a sixteenth-century stone house in the same style and even more
+successful as an expression of the art of the time. It is readily found
+by inquiry, and is known as the "Maison des Pages de François I."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+LOCHES
+
+
+Much may be written of Loches, of its storied past, of its present-day
+quaintness, and of its wealth of architectural monuments. Its church is
+certainly the most curious religious edifice in all France, judging from
+a cross-section of the vaults and walls. More than all else, however,
+Loches is associated in our minds with the memory of Agnes Sorel.
+
+Within the walls of the old collegiate church the lovely mistress of
+Charles VII. was buried in 1450; but later her remains and tomb were
+removed to one of the towers of the ancient castle of Loches, where they
+now are. She had amply endowed the church, but they would no longer give
+shelter to her remains, so her bones were removed five hundred years
+later. The statue which surmounts her tomb, as seen to-day, represents
+the "gentille Agnes" in all her loveliness, with folded hands on breast,
+a kneeling angel at her head and a couchant lamb at her feet,--a
+reminder of her innocence, said Henry James, but surely he nodded when
+he said it. Lovely she was, and good in her way, but innocent she was
+not, as we have come to know the word.
+
+[Illustration: _Loches_]
+
+It is fitting to recall that Charles VII. was not the only monarch who
+sang her praises, for it was François I. who, many years later, wrote
+those lines beginning:
+
+"Gentille Agnes, plus de loz tu mérites."
+
+Whether one comes to Loches by road or by rail, the first impression is
+the same; he enters at once into a sleepy, old-world town which has
+practically nothing of modernity about it except the electric lights.
+
+There is but one way to realize the immense wealth of architectural
+monuments centred at Loches, and that is to see the city for the first
+time, as, perhaps, François Premier saw it when he journeyed from
+Amboise, and came upon it from the heights of the forest of Loches. The
+city has not grown much since that day. Then it had three thousand eight
+hundred souls, and now it has five thousand.
+
+Here, in the Forêt de Loches, Henry II. of England built a
+monastery,--yet to be seen,--known as the Chartreuse du Liget, in
+repentance, or, perhaps, as a penance for the murder of Becket. Over the
+doorway of this monastery was graven:
+
+                  ANGLORUM HENRICUS REX
+                   THOMÆ COEDE CRUENTUS,
+             LIGETICOS FUNDAT CARTUSIA MONAKOS.
+
+To-day the monastery is the property of a M. de Marsay, and therefore
+not open to the public; but the Chapelle du Liget, near by, is a fine
+contemporary church of the thirteenth century, well worth the admiration
+too infrequently bestowed upon it.
+
+The first view of Loches must really be much as it was in François's
+time, except, perhaps, that the roadway down from the forest has
+improved, as roads have all over France, and fruit-trees and vineyards
+planted out, which, however, in no way change the aspect when the town
+is first seen in the dim haze of an early November morning.
+
+It is the sky-line _ensemble_ of the châteaux of the Renaissance period
+which is their most varied feature. No two are alike, and yet they are
+all wonderfully similar in that they cut the sky with turret, tower, and
+chimney in a way which suggests nothing as much as the architecture of
+fairy-land.
+
+The artists who illustrated the old fairy-tale books and drew castles
+wherein dwelt beautiful maidens could nowhere have found more real
+inspiration than among the châteaux of the Loire, the Cher, and the
+Indre.
+
+Loches is a veritable mediæval town, and it is even more than that, for
+its history dates back into the earliest years of feudal times. Loches
+is one of those _soi-disant_ French towns not great enough to be a
+metropolis, and yet quite indifferent to the affairs of the outside
+world.
+
+The only false notes are those sounded by the various hawkers and
+cadgers for the visitor's money, who have hired various old mediæval
+structures, within the walls, and assure one that in the basement of
+their establishment there are fragments "recently discovered,"--this in
+English,--quite worth the price of admission which they charge you to
+peer about in a gloomy hole of a cellar, littered with empty
+wine-bottles and rubbish of all sorts.
+
+All this is delightful enough to the simon-pure antiquarian; but even he
+likes to dig things out for himself, and the householders can't all
+expect to find _cachots_ in their sub-cellars or iron cages in their
+garrets unless they manufacture them.
+
+The old town, in spite of its lack of modernity, is full of surprises
+and contrasts that must make it very livable to one who cares to spend a
+winter within its walls. He may walk about on the ramparts on sunny
+days; may fish in the Indre, below the mill; and, if he is an artist, he
+will find, within a comparatively small area, much more that is
+exceedingly "paintable" than is usually found in the fishing-villages of
+Brittany or on the sand-dunes of the Pas de Calais, "artist's
+sketching-grounds" which have been pretty well worked of late.
+
+[Illustration: _Loches and Its Church_]
+
+The history of Loches is so varied and vivid that it is easy to account
+for the many remains of feudal and Renaissance days now existing. The
+derivation of its name is in some doubt. Loches was unquestionably the
+Luccæ of the Romans, but the Armorican Celts had the word _loc'h_,
+meaning much the same thing,--_un marais_,--which is also wonderfully
+like the _loch_ known to-day in the place-names of Scotland and the
+_lough_ of Ireland. Partisans may take their choice.
+
+In the fifth century a monastery was founded here by St. Ours, which
+ultimately gave its name to the collegiate church which exists to-day. A
+château, or more probably a fortress, appeared in the sixth century. The
+city was occupied by the Franks in the seventh century, but by 630 it
+had become united with Aquitaine. Pepin sacked it in 742, and Charles le
+Chauve made it a seat of a hereditary government which, by alliance,
+passed to the house of Anjou in 886, to whom it belonged up to 1205.
+Jean-sans-Terre gave it to France in 1193. Richard Coeur de Lion
+apparently resented this, for he retook it in the year following. In
+1204, Philippe-Auguste besieged Chinon and Loches simultaneously, and
+took the latter after a year, when he made it a fief, and gave it to
+Dreux de Mello, Constable of France, who in turn sold it to St. Louis.
+
+The château of Loches became first a fortress, guarding the ancient
+Roman highway from the Blaisois to Aquitaine, then a prison, and then a
+royal residence, to which Charles VII. frequently repaired with Agnes
+Sorel, which calls up again the strangely contrasting influences of the
+two women whose names have gone down in history linked with that of
+Charles VII.
+
+"Louis XI. aggrandized the château," says a French authority, "and
+perfected the prisons," whatever that may mean. He did, we know, build
+those terrible dungeons far down below the surface of the ground, where
+daylight never penetrated. They were perfect enough in all conscience as
+originally built, at least as perfect as the celebrated iron cage in
+which he imprisoned Cardinal Balue. The cage is not in its wonted place
+to-day, and only a ring in the wall indicates where it was once made
+fast.
+
+Charles VIII. added the great round tower; but it was not completed
+until the reign of Louis XII. François I., in a not too friendly
+meeting, received Charles Quint here in 1539, just previous to his visit
+to Amboise. Marie de Medici, on escaping from Blois, stopped at the
+château at the invitation of the governor, the Duc d'Epernon, who sped
+her on her way, as joyfully as possible, to Angoulême.
+
+The château itself is the chief attraction of interest, just as it is
+the chief feature of the landscape when viewed from afar. Of course it
+is understood that, when one speaks of the château at Loches, he refers
+to the collective châteaux which, in more or less fragmentary form, go
+to make up the edifice as it is to-day.
+
+Whether we admire most the structure of Geoffrey Grise-Gonelle, the
+elegant edifice of the fifteenth century, or the additions of Charles
+VII., Louis XI., Charles VIII., Louis XII., or Henri III., we must
+conclude that to know this conglomerate structure intimately one must
+actually live with it. Nowhere in France--perhaps in no country--is
+there a château that suggests so stupendously the story of its past.
+
+The chief and most remarkable features are undoubtedly the great
+rectangular keep or donjon, and the Tour Neuf or Tour Ronde. The first,
+in its immensity, quite rivals the best examples of the kind elsewhere,
+if it does not actually excel them in dimensions. It is, moreover,
+according to De Caumont, the most beautiful of all the donjons of
+France. As a state prison it confined Jean, Duc d'Alençon, Pierre de
+Brézé, and Philippe de Savoie.
+
+The Tour Ronde is a great cylinder flanked with dependencies which give
+it a more or less irregular form. It encloses the prison where were
+formerly kept the famous cages, the invention of Cardinal Balue, who
+himself became their first victim. The Tour Ronde is reminiscent of two
+great female figures in the mediæval portrait gallery,--Agnes Sorel and
+Anne de Bretagne. The tomb of Agnes Sorel is here, and the Duchesse Anne
+made an oratory in this grim tower, from which she sent up her prayer
+for the success and unity of the political plans which inspired her
+marriage into the royal family of France. It is a daintily decorated
+chamber, with the queen's family device, the ermine with its twisted
+necklet, prominently displayed.
+
+In the passage which conducts to the dungeons of this great round tower,
+one reads this ironical invitation: "_Entrés, messieurs, ches le Roy
+Nostre Mestre_" (_O.F._).
+
+That portion of the collective châteaux facing to the north is now
+occupied by the Sous-Préfecture, and is more after the manner of the
+residential châteaux of the Loire than of a fortress-stronghold or
+prison. Before this portion stands the famous chestnut-tree, planted, it
+is said, by François I., "and large enough to shelter the whole
+population of Loches beneath its foliage," says the same doubtful
+authority.
+
+Under a fifteenth-century structure, called the Martelet, are the true
+dungeons of Loches. Here one is shown the cell occupied for nine years
+by the poor Ludovic Sforza, who died in 1510, from the mere joy of being
+liberated. More deeply hidden still is the famous Prison des Évêques of
+the era of François I. and the dungeon of Comte de St. Vallier, the
+father of the fascinating Diane, who herself was the means of securing
+his liberation by "fascinating the king," as one French writer puts it.
+This may be so. St. Vallier _was_ liberated, we know, and the
+susceptible François _was_ fascinated, though he soon tired of Diane and
+her charms. She had the perspicacity, however, to transfer her
+affections to his son, and so kept up a sort of family relationship.
+
+Like the historic "prisoner of Gisors," the occupants of the dungeons at
+Loches whiled away their lonely hours by inscribing their sentiments
+upon the walls. Only one remains to-day, though fragmentary stone-carved
+letters and characters are to be seen here and there. He who wrote the
+following was certainly as cheerful as circumstances would allow:
+
+        "Malgré les ennuis d'une longue souffrance,
+         Et le cruel destin dont je subis la loy,
+         Il est encort des biens pour moy,
+         Le tendre amour et la douce espérance."
+
+Most of these formidable dungeons of Loches were prisons of state until
+well into the sixteenth century.
+
+[Illustration: _Sketch Plan of Loches_]
+
+Beneath, or rather beside, the very walls of the château is the bizarre
+collegiate church of St. Ours. One says bizarre, simply because it is
+curious, and not because it is unchurchly in any sense of the word, for
+it is not. Its low nave is surmounted by an enormous tower with a stone
+spire, while there are two other pyramidal erections over the roof of
+the choir which make the whole look, not like an elephant, as a cynical
+Frenchman once wrote, but rather like a camel with two humps. This
+strange architectural anomaly is, in parts, almost pagan; certainly its
+font, a fragment of an ancient altar on which once burned a sacred fire,
+_is_ pagan.
+
+[Illustration: _St. Ours, Loches_]
+
+There is a Romanesque porch of vast dimensions which is the real
+artistic expression of the fabric, dressed with extraordinary primitive
+sculptures of saints, demons, stryges, gnomes, and all manner of outré
+things. All these details, however, are chiselled with a masterly
+conception.
+
+Behind this exterior vestibule the first bays of the nave form another,
+a sort of an inner vestibule, which carries out still further the unique
+arrangement of the whole edifice. This portion of the structure dates
+from a consecration of the year 965, which therefore classes it as of
+very early date,--indeed, few are earlier. Most of the church, however,
+is of the twelfth century, including another great pyramid which rises
+above the nave and the two smaller ones just behind the spire. The
+side-aisles of the nave were added between the twelfth and fifteenth
+centuries, while only the stalls and the tabernacle are as recent as the
+sixteenth. The eastern end is triapsed, an unusual feature in France.
+From this one realizes, quite to the fullest extent possible, the
+antiquity and individuality of the Église de St. Ours at Loches.
+
+The quaint Renaissance Hôtel-de-Ville was built by the architect Jean
+Beaudoin (1535-1543), from sums raised, under letters patent from
+François I., by certain _octroi_ taxes. From the fact that through its
+lower story passes one of the old city entrances, it has come to be
+known also as the Porte Picoys. In every way it is a worthy example of
+Renaissance civic architecture.
+
+In the Rue de Château is a remarkable Renaissance house, known as the
+Chancellerie, which dates from the reign of Henri II. It has most
+curious sculptures on its façade interspersed with the devices of
+royalty and the inscription:
+
+     IVSTITIA REGNO, PRUDENTIA NUTRISCO.
+
+The Tour St. Antoine serves to-day as the city's belfry. It is all that
+remains of a church, demolished long since, which was built in 1519-30,
+in imitation of St. Gatien's of Tours. Doubtless it was base in many of
+its details, as is its more famous compeer at Tours; but, if the old
+tower which remains is any indication, it must have been an elaborate
+and imposing work of the late Gothic and early Renaissance era.
+
+As a literary note, lovers of Dumas's romances will be interested in the
+fact that in the Hôtel de la Couroirie at Loches a body of Protestants
+captured the celebrated Chicot, the jester of Henri III. and Henri IV.
+
+Loches has a near neighbour in Beaulieu, which formerly possessed an
+ardent hatred for its more progressive and successful contemporary,
+Loches. Its very name has been perverted by local historians as coming
+from Bellilocus, "the place of war," and not "_le lieu d'un bel
+aspect_."
+
+The abbey church at Beaulieu was built by the warlike Foulques Nerra (in
+1008-12), who usually built fortresses and left church-building to monks
+and bishops. It is a remarkable Romanesque example, though, since the
+fifteenth century, it has been mostly in ruins. Foulques Nerra himself,
+whose countenance had "_la majesté de celui d'un ange_," found his last
+resting-place within its walls, which also sheltered much rich ornament,
+to-day greatly defaced, though that of the nave, which is still intact,
+is an evidence of its former worth.
+
+The abbatial residence, still existent, has a curious exterior pulpit
+built into the wall, examples of which are not too frequent in France.
+
+Agnes Sorel, the belle of belles, lived here for a time in a house near
+the Porte de Guigné, which bears a great stone _panonceau_, from which
+the armorial bearings have to-day disappeared. It is another notable
+monument to "the most graceful woman of her times," and without doubt
+has as much historic value as many another more popular shrine of
+history.
+
+In connection with Agnes Sorel, who was so closely identified with
+Loches and Beaulieu, it is to be recalled that she was known to the
+chroniclers of her time as "_la dame de Beauté-sur-Marne_,"--a place
+which does not appear in the books of the modern geographers. It may be
+noted, too, that it was the encouragement of the "_belle des belles_" of
+Charles VII. that, in a way, contributed to that monarch's success in
+politics and arms, for her sway only began with Jeanne d'Arc's
+supplication at Gien and Chinon. Tradition has it, indeed, that it was
+the "gentille Agnes" who put the sword of victory in his hands when he
+set out on his campaign of reconquest. Thus does the Jeanne d'Arc legend
+receive a damaging blow.
+
+[Illustration: _Tours_]
+
+The château of Sausac, an elegant edifice of the sixteenth century,
+completely restored in later days, is near by.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+TOURS AND ABOUT THERE
+
+
+Tours, above all other of the ancient capitals of the French provinces,
+remains to-day a _ville de luxe_, the elegant capital of a land balmy
+and delicious; a land of which Dante sung:
+
+         "Terra molle, e dolce e dilettosa...."
+
+It is not a very grand town as the secondary cities of France go; not
+like Rouen or Lyons, Bordeaux or Marseilles; but it is as typical a
+reflection of the surrounding country as any, and therein lies its
+charm.
+
+One never comes within the influence of its luxurious, or, at least,
+easy and comfortable appointments, its distinctly modern and up-to-date
+railway station, its truly magnificent modern Hôtel de Ville, its
+well-appointed hotels and cafés and its luxurious shops, but that he
+realizes all this to a far greater extent than in any other city of
+France.
+
+And again, referring to the material things of life, everything is most
+comfortable, and the restaurants and hotels most attractive in their
+fare. Tours is truly one provincial capital where the _cuisine
+bourgeoise_ still lives.
+
+Touraine, and Tours in particular, besides many other things, is noted
+for its hotels. Their praises have been sung often and loudly, not
+forgetting Henry James's praise of the Hôtel de l'Univers, which is all
+one expects to find it and more. The same may be said of the Hôtel du
+Croissant, with the added opinion that it serves the most bountiful and
+excellent _déjeuner_ to be had in all provincial France. It is difficult
+to say just what actually causes all this excellence and abundance,
+except that the catering there is an easy and pleasurable occupation.
+
+The Rue Nationale--"_toujours et vraiment royale_"--is the great artery
+of Tours running riverwards. On it circulates all the life of the city.
+
+To the right is the Quartier de la Cathédrale, where are assembled the
+great houses of the nobility--or such of them as are left--and of the
+old _bourgeoisie tourangelle_.
+
+To the left are the streets of the workers, a silk-mill or two, and the
+printing-offices. Tours is and always has been celebrated for the
+number and size of its _imprimeries_, with which, in olden times, the
+name of the great Christopher Plantin, the master printer of Antwerp,
+was connected. To-day, Tours's greatest establishment is that of Alfred
+Mame et Fils, known throughout the Roman Catholic world.
+
+[Illustration: ARMS OF THE PRINTERS, _AVOCATS_, AND INNKEEPERS, TOURS]
+
+The printers and booksellers of the middle ages were favoured persons,
+and their rank was high. In the days of solemn processions the
+booksellers led the way, followed by the paper-makers, the
+parchment-makers, the scribes,--who had not wholly died out,--the
+binders and the illuminators. In these days the printers were granted an
+emblazoned arms, which was characteristic and distinguished. The same
+was true of the _avocats_, who bore upon their escutcheon a gowned
+figure, with something very like a halo surrounding its head. The
+innkeepers went one better, and had a bishop with an undeniable halo.
+This is curious and inexplicable in the light of our modern conception
+of similar things, but it's better than a shield with quarterings
+representing half a canal-boat and half a locomotive, which was recently
+adopted by an enterprising watering-place which shall be nameless.
+
+In the same ancient quarter are the old towers of Charlemagne and St.
+Martin. This part of the town is the nucleus of the old foundation, the
+site of the _oppidum_ of the _Turones_, the _Cæsarodunum gallo-romain_,
+and of the life which centred around the old abbey of St. Martin, so
+venerated and so powerful in the middle ages.
+
+To the inviolable refuge of this old abbey came multitudes of Christian
+pilgrims from the world over; the Merovingians to undergo the penances
+imposed upon them by the bishops and clerics in expiation of their
+crimes. Under Charlemagne, the Abbé Alcuin founded great schools of
+languages, history, astronomy, and music, from which founts of learning
+went forth innumerable and illustrious religious teachers.
+
+All but the two towers of this old religious foundation are gone. The
+years of the Revolution saw the fall of the abbey; a street was cut
+through the nave of its church, and the two dismembered parts stand
+to-day as monuments to the sacrilege of modern times.
+
+To-day a banal faubourg has sprung up around the site of the abbey, with
+here and there old tumble-down houses either of wood and stone, such as
+one reads of in the pages of Balzac, or sees in the designs of Doré, or
+with their sides covered with overlapping slates.
+
+Amid all these is an occasional treasure of architectural art, such as
+the graceful Fountain of Beaune, the work of Michel Colombe, and some
+remains of early Renaissance houses of somewhat more splendid
+appointments than their fellows, particularly the Maison de Tristan
+l'Hermite, the Hôtel Xaincoings, and many exquisite fragments now made
+over into an _auberge_ or a _cabaret_, which make one dream of Rabelais
+and his Gargantua.
+
+It is uncertain whether Michel Colombe, who designed this fountain and
+also that masterwork, the tomb of the Duc François II. and Marguerite de
+Foix, at Nantes, was a Tourangeau or a Breton, but Tours claims him for
+her own, and settles once for all the spelling of his name by producing
+a "_papier des affaires_" signed plainly "Colombe." The proof lies in
+this document, signed in a notary's office at Tours, concerning payments
+which were made to him on behalf of the magnificent sepulchre which he
+executed for the church of St. Sauveur at La Rochelle. In his
+time--fifteenth century--Colombe had no rivals in the art of monumental
+sculpture in France, and with reason he has been called the Michel Ange
+of France.
+
+The cathedral quarter has for its chief attraction that gorgeously
+florid St. Gatien, whose ornate façade was likened by a certain monarch
+to a magnificently bejewelled casket. It is an interesting and lovable
+Gothic-Renaissance church which, if not quite of the first rank among
+the masterpieces of its kind, is a marvel of splendour, and an example
+of the "_caprices d'une guipure d'art_," as the French call it.
+
+Bordering the Loire at Tours is a series of tree-lined quays and
+promenades which are the scenes, throughout the spring and summer
+months, of fêtes and fairs of many sorts. Here, too, at the extremity of
+the Rue Nationale, are statues of Descartes and Balzac.
+
+The Tour de Guise on the river-bank recalls the domination of the
+Plantagenet kings of England, who were Counts of Anjou since it formed a
+part of the twelfth-century château built here by Henry II. of England.
+
+[Illustration: SCENE IN THE QUARTIER DE LA CATHÉDRALE, TOURS]
+
+At the opposite extremity of the city is another other tower, the Tour
+de Foubert, which protected the feudal domain of the old abbey of St.
+Martin. The history of days gone by at Tours was more churchly than
+political.
+
+Once only--during the reign of Louis XII.--did the States General meet
+at Tours (in 1506). Then the deputies of the _bourgeoisie_ met alone for
+their deliberations, the chief outcome of which was to bestow upon the
+king the eminently fitting title of "Père du Peuple." One may question
+the righteousness of Louis XII. in throwing over his wife, Jeanne de
+France, in order to serve political ends by acquiring the estates of
+Anne of Brittany for the Crown of France for ever, but there is no doubt
+but that he did it for the "_good of his people_."
+
+The principal literary shrine at Tours is the house, in the Rue
+Nationale, where was born Honoré de Balzac.
+
+One could not do better than to visit Tours during the "_été de St.
+Martin_," since it was the soldier-priest of Tours who gave his name to
+that warm, bright prolongation of summer which in France (and in
+England) is known as "St. Martin's summer," and which finds its
+counterpart in America's "Indian summer."
+
+The legend tells us that somewhere in the dark ages lived a soldier
+named Martin. He was always of a charitable disposition, and none asked
+alms of him in vain. One November day, when the wind blew briskly and
+the snow fell fast, a beggar asked for food and clothing. Martin had but
+his own cloak, and this he forthwith tore in half and gave one portion
+to the beggar. Later on the same night there came a knocking at Martin's
+door; the snow had ceased falling and the stars shone brightly, and one
+of goodly presence stood with the cloak on his arm, saying, "I was naked
+and ye clothed me." Martin straightway became a priest of the church,
+and died an honoured bishop of Tours, and for ever after the anniversary
+of his conversion is celebrated by sunny skies.
+
+We owe a double debt to St. Martin. We have to thank him for the saying,
+"_All my eye_" and the words "_chapel_" and "_chaplain_." The full form
+of the phrase, "_All my eye and Betty Martin_," which we all of us have
+often heard, is an obvious corruption of "_O mihi beate Martine_," the
+beginning of an invocation to the saint. The cloak he divided with a
+naked beggar, which, by the way, took place at Amiens, not at Tours, was
+treasured as a relic by the Frankish kings, borne before them in battle,
+and brought forth when solemn oaths were to be taken. The guardians of
+this cloak or cape were known as "_cappellani_," whence "_chaplain_,"
+while its sanctuary or "_cappella_" has become "_chapel_."
+
+For their descriptions of Plessis-les-Tours modern English travellers
+have invariably turned to the pages of Sir Walter Scott. This is all
+very well in its way, but it is also well to remember that Scott drew
+his picture from definite information, and it is not merely the product
+of his imaginary architectural skill. In this respect Scott was
+certainly far ahead of Carlyle in his estimates of French matters.
+
+"Even in those days" (writing of "Quentin Durward"), said Scott, "when
+the great found themselves obliged to reside in places of fortified
+strength, it" (Plessis-les-Tours) "was distinguished for the extreme and
+jealous care with which it was watched and defended." All this is
+substantiated and corroborated by authorities, and, while it may have
+been chosen by Scott merely as a suitable accessory for the details of
+his story, Plessis-les-Tours unquestionably was a royal stronghold of
+such proportions as to be but meanly suggested by the scanty remains of
+the present day.
+
+Louis XI. dreamed fondly of Plessis-les-Tours (Plessis being from the
+Latin _Plexitium_, a name borne by many suburban villages of France),
+and he sought to make it a royal residence where he should be safe from
+every outward harm. It had four great towers, crenelated and
+machicolated, after the best Gothic fortresses of the time. At the four
+angles of the protecting walls were the principal logis, and between the
+lines of its ramparts or fosses was an advance-guard of buildings
+presumably intended for the vassals in time of danger.
+
+This was the castle as Louis first knew it, when it was the property of
+the chamberlain of the Duchy of Luynes, from whom the king bought it for
+five thousand and five hundred _écus d'or_,--the value of fifty thousand
+francs of to-day.
+
+Its former appellation, Montilz-les-Tours, was changed (1463) to
+Plessis. All the chief features have disappeared, and to-day it is but a
+scrappy collection of tumble-down buildings devoted to all manner of
+purposes. A few fragmentary low-roofed vaults are left, and a brick and
+stone building, flanked by an octagonal tower, containing a stairway;
+but this is about all of the former edifice, which, if not as splendid
+as some other royal residences, was quite as effectively defended and as
+suitable to its purposes as any.
+
+[Illustration: _PLESSIS-Les-TOURS. In the time of Louis XI_]
+
+It had, too, within its walls a tiny chapel dedicated to Our Lady of
+Cléry, before whose altar the superstitious Louis made his inconstant
+devotions.
+
+Once a great forest surrounded the château, and was, as Scott says,
+"rendered dangerous and well-nigh impracticable by snares and traps
+armed with scythe-blades, which shred off the unwary traveller's limbs
+... and calthrops that would pierce your foot through, and pitfalls deep
+enough to bury you in them for ever." To-day the forest has disappeared,
+"lost in the night of time," as a French historian has it.
+
+The detailed description in "Quentin Durward" is, however, as good as
+any, and, if one has no reference works in French by him, he may well
+read the dozen or more pages which Sir Walter devotes to the further
+description of the castle.
+
+Perhaps, after all, it is fitting that a Scot should have written so
+enthusiastically of it, for the castle itself was guarded by the
+Scottish archers, "to the number of three hundred gentlemen of the best
+blood of Scotland."
+
+An anonymous poet has written of the ancient glory of this retreat of
+Louis's as follows:
+
+        "Un imposant château se présente à la vue,
+         Par des portes de fer l'entrée est défendue;
+         Les murs en sont épais et les fossés profonds;
+         On y voit des créneaux, des tours, des bastions,
+         Et des soldats armés veillent sur ses murailles."
+
+Frame this with such details as the surrounding country supplies, the
+Cher on one side, the Loire on the other, and the fertile hills of St.
+Cyr, of Ballon, and of Joué, and one has a picture worthy of the
+greatest painter of any time.
+
+Louis XI. died at Plessis, after having lived there many years. Louis
+XII. made of it a _rendezvous de chasse_, but François II. confided its
+care to a governor and would never live in it. Louis XIV. gave the
+governorship as a hereditary perquisite to the widow of the Seigneur de
+Sausac.
+
+In 1778 it was used as a sort of retreat for the indigent, though
+happily enough Touraine was never overburdened with this class of
+humanity. Under Louis XV. a Mademoiselle Deneux, a momentary rival of La
+Pompadour and Du Barry, found a retreat here. Later it became a _maison
+de correction_, and finally a _dépôt militaire_. At the time of the
+Revolution it was declared to be national property, and on the
+_nineteenth Nivoise, Year IV._, Citizen Cormeri, justice of the peace at
+Tours, fixed its value at one hundred and thirty-one thousand francs.
+
+To-day it is as bare and uncouth as a mere barracks or as a disused
+flour-mill, and its ruins are visited partly because of their former
+historical glories, as recalled by students of French history, and
+partly because of the glamour which was shed over it, for English
+readers, by Scott.
+
+Sixty years ago a French writer deplored the fact that, on leaving these
+scanty remains of a so long gone past, he observed a notice nailed to a
+pillar of the _porte-cochère_ reading:
+
+                       LA FERME DU PLESSIS
+         O LOUER OU A VENDRE
+
+To-day some sort of a division and rearrangement of the property has
+been made, but the result is no less mournful and sad, and thus a
+glorious page of the annals of France has become blurred.
+
+It is interesting to recall what manner of persons composed the
+household of Louis XI. when he resided at Plessis-les-Tours. Commines,
+his historian, has said that habitually it consisted of a chancellor, a
+_juge de l'hôtel_, a private secretary, and a treasurer, each having
+under him various employees. In addition there was a master of the
+pantry, a cupbearer, a _chef de bouche_ and a _chef de cuisine_, a
+_fruitier_, a master of the horse, a quartermaster or master-at-arms,
+and, in immediate control of these domestic servants, a _seneschal_ or
+_grand maître_. In many respects the household was not luxuriously
+conducted, for the parsimonious Louis lived fully up to the false maxim:
+"_Qui peu donne, beaucoup recueille._"
+
+Louis himself was fond of doing what the modern housewife would call
+"messing about in the kitchen." He did not dabble at cookery as a
+pastime, or that sort of thing; but rather he kept an eagle eye on the
+whole conduct of the affairs of the household.
+
+One day, coming to the kitchen _en négligé_, he saw a small boy turning
+a spit before the fire.
+
+"And what might you be called?" said he, patting the lad on the
+shoulder.
+
+"Etienne," replied the _marmiton_.
+
+"Thy _pays_, my lad?"
+
+"Le Berry."
+
+"Thy age?"
+
+"Fifteen, come St. Martin's."
+
+"Thy wish?"
+
+"To be as great as the king" (he had not recognized his royal master).
+
+"And what wishes the king?"
+
+"His expenses to become less."
+
+The reply brought good fortune for the lad, for Louis made him his
+_valet de chambre_, and took him afterward into his most intimate
+confidence.
+
+Louis was fond of _la chasse_, and Scott does not overlook this fact in
+"Quentin Durward." When affairs of state did not press, it was the
+king's greatest pleasure. For the royal hunt no pains or expense were
+spared. The carriages were without an equal elsewhere in the courts of
+Europe, and the hunting establishment was equipped with _chiens
+courants_ from Spain, _levriers_ from Bretagne, _bassets_ from Valence,
+mules from Sicily, and horses from Naples.
+
+The attractions of the environs of Tours are many and interesting: St.
+Symphorien, Varennes, the Grottoes of Ste. Radegonde, and the site of
+that most famous abbey of Marmoutier, also a foundation of St. Martin.
+Here, under the name Martinus Monasterium, grew up an immense and superb
+establishment. From an old seventeenth-century print one quotes the
+following couplet:
+
+        "De quel côté que le vent vente
+         Marmoutier a cens et rente."
+
+From this one infers that the abbey's original functions are performed
+no more.
+
+[Illustration: _ENVIRONS OF TOURS_]
+
+In the middle ages (thirteenth century) it was one of the most powerful
+institutions of its class, and its church one of the most beautiful in
+Touraine. The tower and donjon are the only substantial remains of this
+early edifice.
+
+A curious chapel, called the "Chapelle des Sept Dormants," is here cut
+in the form of a cross into the rock of the hillside, where are buried
+the remains of the Seven Sleepers, the disciples of St. Martin, who, as
+the holy man had predicted, all died on the same day.
+
+Beyond Marmoutier, a stairway of 122 steps, cut also in the rock, leads
+to the plateau on which stands the gaunt and ugly Lanterne de
+Rochecorbon, a fourteenth-century construction with a crenelated summit,
+an unlovely companion of that even more enigmatic erection known as "La
+Pile," a few miles down the Loire at Cinq-Mars.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+LUYNES AND LANGEAIS
+
+
+Below Tours, and before reaching Saumur, are a succession of panoramic
+surprises which are only to be likened to those of our imagination, but
+they are very real nevertheless.
+
+As one leaves Tours by the road which skirts the right bank of the
+Loire, he is once more impressed by the fact that the _cailloux de
+Loire_ are the river's chief product, though fried fish, of a similar
+variety to those found in the Seine, are found on the menus of all
+roadside taverns and restaurants.
+
+Still, the effect of the uncovered bed of the Loire, with its variegated
+pebbles and mirror-like pools, is infinitely more picturesque than if it
+were mud flats, and its tree-bordered banks are for ever opening great
+alleyed vistas such as are only known in France.
+
+The hills on either bank are not of the stupendous and magnificently
+scenic order of those of the Seine above and below Rouen; but, such as
+they are, they are of much the same composition, a soft talcy formation
+which here serves admirably the purposes of cliff-dwellings for the
+vineyard and wine-press workers, who form practically the sole
+population of the Loire villages from Vouvray, just above Tours, to
+Saumur far below.
+
+On the hillsides are the vineyards themselves, growing out of the thin
+layer of soil in shades of red and brown and golden, which no artist has
+ever been able to copy, for no one has painted the rich colouring of a
+vineyard in a manner at all approaching the original.
+
+Not far below Tours, on the right bank, rise the towers and turrets of
+the Château de Luynes, hanging perilously high above the lowland which
+borders upon the river. An unpleasant tooting tram gives communication a
+dozen times a day with Tours, but few, apparently, patronize it except
+peasants with market-baskets, and vineyard workers going into town for a
+jollification. It is perhaps just as well, for the fine little town of
+Luynes, which takes its name from the château which has been the
+residence of a Comte de Luynes since the days of Louis XIII., would be
+quite spoiled if it were on the beaten track.
+
+[Illustration: A VINEYARD OF VOUVRAY]
+
+The brusque façade of the Château de Luynes makes a charming interior,
+judging from the descriptions and drawings which are to be met with in
+an elaborately prepared volume devoted to its history.
+
+The stranger is allowed to enter within the gates of the courtyard,
+beneath the grim coiffed towers; but he may visit only certain
+apartments. He will, however, see enough to indicate that the edifice
+was something more than a mere _maison de campagne_. All the attributes
+of an important fortress are here, great, round, thickly built towers,
+with but few exterior windows, and those high up from the ground. There
+is nothing of luxurious elegance about it, and its aspect is forbidding,
+though imposing.
+
+The château belies its looks somewhat, for it was built only in the
+fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when, in most of its neighbours, the
+more or less florid Renaissance was in vogue. A Renaissance structure in
+stone and brick forms a part of that which faces on the interior court,
+and is flanked by a fine octagonal "_tour d'escalier_."
+
+From the terrace of the courtyard one gets an impressive view of the
+Loire, which glides by two or more kilometres away, and of the towers
+and roof-tops of Tours, and the vine-carpeted hills which stretch away
+along the river's bank in either direction.
+
+The château of Luynes is still in the possession of a Duc de Luynes,
+through whose courtesy one may visit such of the apartments as his
+servants are allowed to show. It is not so great an exhibition, nor so
+good a one, as is to be had at Langeais; but it is satisfactory as far
+as it goes, and, when it is supplemented by the walks and views which
+are to be had on the plateau, upon which the grim-towered château sits,
+the memory of it all becomes most pleasurable.
+
+The former Ducs de Luynes were continually appearing in the historic
+events of the later Renaissance period, but it was only with Louis
+XIII., he who would have put France under the protection of the Virgin,
+that the chatelain of Luynes came to a position of real power. Louis
+made Albert, the Gascon, both Duc de Luynes and Connétable de France,
+and thereby gave birth to a tyrant whom he hated and feared, as he did
+his mother, his wife, and his minister, Richelieu.
+
+[Illustration: _Mediæval Stairway and the Château de Luynes_]
+
+The site occupied by the château of Luynes is truly marvellous, though,
+as a matter of fact, there is no great magnificence about the
+proportions of the château itself. It is piled gracefully on the top
+of a table-land which rises abruptly from the Loire and has a charmingly
+quaint old town nestled confidingly below it, as if for protection.
+
+One reaches the château by any one of a half-dozen methods, by the
+highroad which bends around in hairpin curves until it reaches the
+plateau above, by various paths across or around the vineyards of the
+hillside, or by a quaintly cut mediæval stairway, levelled and terraced
+in the gravelly soil until it ends just beneath the frowning walls of
+the château itself. From this point one gets quite the most imposing
+aspect of the château to be had, its towers and turrets piercing the sky
+high above the head, and carrying the mind back to the days when
+civilization meant something more--or less--than it does to-day, with
+the toot of a steam-tram down below on the river's bank and the midday
+whistles of the factories of Tours rending one's ears the moment he
+forgets the past and recalls the present.
+
+To-day the Château de Luynes is modern, at least to the extent that it
+is lived in, and has all the refinements of a modern civilization; but
+one does not realize all this from an exterior contemplation, and only
+as one strolls through the apartments publicly shown, and gets glimpses
+of electrical conveniences and modern arrangements, does he wonder how
+far different it may have been before all this came to pass.
+
+Built in early Renaissance times, the château has all the peculiarities
+of the feudal period, when window-openings were few and far between, and
+high up above the level of the pavement. In feudal and warlike times
+this often proved an admirable feature; but one would have thought that,
+with the beginning of the Renaissance, a more ample provision would have
+been made for the admission of sunshine.
+
+The _chef-d'oeuvre_ of this really great architectural monument is
+undoubtedly the façade of the beautiful fifteenth-century courtyard.
+There is nothing even remotely feudal here, but a purely decorative
+effect which is as charming in its way as is the exterior façade of
+Azay-le-Rideau. "A poem," it has been called, "in weather-worn timber
+and stone," and the simile could hardly be improved upon.
+
+The town, too, or such of it as immediately adjoins the château, is
+likewise charming and quaint, and sleepily indolent as far as any great
+activity is concerned.
+
+Luynes was the seat of a seigneurie until 1619, when it became a
+possession of the Comte de Maillé. Finally it came to Charles d'Albert,
+known as "D'Albert de Luynes," a former page to Henri IV., who afterward
+became the favourite and the Guardian of the Seals of Louis XIV.; and
+thus the earlier foundation of Maillé became known as Luynes.
+
+Except for its old houses of wood and stone, its old wooden
+market-house, and its tortuous streets of stairs, there are few features
+here, except the château, which take rank as architectural monuments of
+worth. The church is a modern structure, built after the Romanesque
+manner and wholly without warmth and feeling.
+
+From the height on which stands the château of Luynes one sees, as his
+eye follows the course of the Loire to the southwestward, the gaunt,
+unbeautiful "Pile" of Cinq-Mars. The origin of this singular square
+tower, looking for all the world like a factory chimney or some great
+ventilating-shaft, is lost far back in Carlovingian, or perhaps Roman,
+times. It is a mystery to archæologists and antiquarians, some claiming
+it to be a military monument, others a beacon by land, and yet others
+believing it to be of some religious significance.
+
+At all events, all the explanations ignore the four _pyramidions_ of
+its topmost course, and these, be it remarked, are quite the most
+curious feature of the whole fabric.
+
+To many the name of the little town of Cinq-Mars will suggest that of
+the Marquis de Cinq-Mars, a court favourite of Louis XIII. It was the
+ambitious but unhappy career at court of this young gallant which
+ultimately resulted in his death on the scaffold, and in the razing, by
+Richelieu, of his ancestral residence, the castle of Cinq-Mars, "to the
+heights of infamy." The expression is a curious one, but history so
+records it. All that is left to-day to remind one of the stronghold of
+the D'Effiats of Cinq-Mars are its two crumbling gate-towers with an
+arch between and a few fragmentary foundation walls which follow the
+summit of the cliff behind "La Pile."
+
+The little town of not more than a couple of thousand inhabitants
+nestles in a bend of the Loire, where there is so great a breadth that
+it looks like a long-drawn-out lake. The low hills, so characteristic of
+these parts, stretch themselves on either bank, unbroken except where
+some little streamlet forces its way by a gentle ravine through the
+scrubby undergrowth. Oaks and firs and huge limestone cliffs jut out
+from the top of the hillside on the right bank and shelter the town
+which lies below.
+
+[Illustration: _Ruins of Cinq-Mars_]
+
+Cinq-Mars is a miniature metropolis, though not a very progressive one
+at first sight; indeed, beyond its long main street and its houses,
+which cluster about its grim, though beautiful, tenth and twelfth
+century church, there are few signs of even provincial importance.
+
+In reality Cinq-Mars is the centre of a large and important wine
+industry, where you may hear discussed, at the _table d'hôte_ of its not
+very readily found little inn, the poor prices which the usually
+abundant crop always brings. The native even bewails the fact that he is
+not blessed with a poor season or two and then he would be able to sell
+his fine vintages for something more than three sous a litre. By the
+time it reaches Paris this _vin de Touraine_ of commerce has aggrandized
+itself so that it commands two francs fifty centimes on the Boulevards,
+and a franc fifty in the University quarter.
+
+The fall of Henri Cinq-Mars was most pathetic, though no doubt moralists
+will claim that because of his covetous ambitions he deserved nothing
+better.
+
+He went up to Paris from Touraine, a boy of twenty, and was presented to
+the king, who was immediately impressed by his distinguished manners.
+From infancy Cinq-Mars had been a lover of life in the open. He had
+hunted the forests of Touraine, and had angled the waters of the Loire,
+and thus he came to give a new zest to the already sad life of Louis
+XIII. Honour after honour was piled upon him until he was made Grand
+Seneschal of France and Master of the King's Horse, at which time he
+dropped his natal patronymic and became known as "Monsieur le Grand."
+
+Cinq-Mars fell madly in love with Marion Delorme and wished to make her
+"Madame la Grande," but the dowager Marquise de Cinq-Mars would not hear
+of it: Mlle. Marion Delorme, the Aspasia of her day, would be no honour
+to the ancestral tree of the Effiats of Cinq-Mars.
+
+Headstrong and wilful, one early morning, Monsieur le Grand and his
+beloved, then only thirty, took coach from her hotel in the Rue des
+Tournelles at Paris for the old family castle in Touraine, sitting high
+on the hills above the feudal village which bore the name of Cinq-Mars.
+In the chapel they were secretly married, and for eight days the
+proverbial marriage-bell rang true. Their Nemesis appeared on the ninth
+day in the person of the dowager, and Cinq-Mars told his mother that
+the whole affair was simply a _passe temps_, and that Mlle. Delorme was
+still Mlle. Delorme. His mother would not be deceived, however, and she
+flew for succour to Richelieu, who himself was more than slightly
+acquainted with the charms of the fair Marion.
+
+This was Cinq-Mars's downfall. He advised the king "by fair means or
+foul, let Richelieu die," and the king listened. A conspiracy was
+formed, by Cinq-Mars and others, to do away with the cardinal, _and even
+the king_, at whose death Gaston of Orleans was to be proclaimed regent
+for his nephew, the infant Louis XIV.
+
+The court went to Narbonne, on the Mediterranean, that it might be near
+aid from Spain; all of which was a subterfuge of Cinq-Mars. The rest
+moves quickly: Richelieu discovered the plot; Cinq-Mars attempted to
+flee disguised as a Spaniard, was captured and brought as a prisoner to
+the castle at Montpellier.
+
+Richelieu had proved the more powerful of the two; but he was dying, and
+this is the reason, perhaps, why he hurried matters. Cinq-Mars, "the
+amiable criminal," went to the torture-chamber, and afterward to the
+scaffold.
+
+"Then," say the old chronicles, "Richelieu ordered that the feudal
+castle of Cinq-Mars, in the valley of the Loire, should be blown up,
+and the towers razed to the height of infamy."
+
+From Cinq-Mars to Langeais, whose château is really one of the most
+appealing sights of the Loire, the characteristics of the country are
+topographically and economically the same; green hills slope,
+vine-covered, to the river, with here and there a tiny rivulet flowing
+into the greater stream.
+
+As at Cinq-Mars, the chief commodity of Langeais is wine, rich, red wine
+and pale amber, too, but all of it wine of a quality and at a price
+which would make the city-dweller envious indeed.
+
+There are two distinct châteaux at Langeais; at least, there is _the_
+château, and just beyond the ornamental stone-carpet of its courtyard
+are the ruins of one of the earliest donjons, or keeps, in all France.
+It dates from the year 990, and was built by the celebrated Comte
+d'Anjou, Foulques Nerra, "_un criminel dévoyé des hommes et de Dieu_,"
+whose hobby, evidently, was building châteaux, as his "follies" in stone
+are said to have encumbered the land in those old days.
+
+Taken and retaken, dismantled and in part razed in the fifteenth
+century, it gave place to the present château by the orders of Louis
+XI.
+
+[Illustration: _Château de Langeais_]
+
+The Château de Langeais of to-day is a robust example of its kind; its
+walls, flanked by great hooded towers, have a surrounding "_guette_," or
+gallery, which served as a means of communication from one part of the
+establishment to another and, in warlike times, allowed boiling oil or
+melted lead, or whatever they may have used for the purpose, to be
+poured down upon the heads of any besiegers who had the audacity to
+attack it.
+
+There is no glacis or moat, but the machicolations, sixty feet or more
+up from the ground, must have afforded a well-nigh perfect means of
+repelling a near attack.
+
+Altogether Langeais is a redoubtable little château of the period, and
+its aspect to-day has changed but very little. "It is the swan-song of
+expiring feudalism," said the Abbé Bosseboeuf.
+
+One gets a thrill of heroic emotion when he views its hardy walls for
+the first time: "a mountain of stone, a heroic poem of Gothic art," it
+has with reason been called.
+
+Jean Bourré, the minister of Louis XI., built the present château about
+1460. The chief events of its history were the drawing up within its
+walls of the "common law" of Touraine, by the order of Charles VII., and
+the marriage of Charles VIII. with Anne de Bretagne, on the 16th of
+December, 1491.
+
+The land belonged, in 1276, to Pierre de Brosse, the minister of
+Philippe-le-Hardi; later, to François d'Orleans, son of the celebrated
+_Bâtard_; to the Princesse de Conti, daughter of the Duc de Guise; to
+the families Du Bellay and D'Effiats, Barons of Cinq-Mars; and, finally,
+to the Duc de Luynes, in whose hands it remained up to the Revolution.
+
+Honoré de Balzac, who may well be called one of the historians of
+Touraine, gave to one of his heroines the name of Langeais. To-day,
+however, the family of Langeais does not exist, and, indeed, according
+to the chronicles, never had any connection with either the donjon of
+Foulques Nerra or the château of the fifteenth century. The present
+owner is M. Jacques Siegfreid, who has admirably restored and furnished
+it after the Gothic style of the middle ages.
+
+The château of Langeais, like that of Chenonceaux, is occupied, as one
+learns from a visit to its interior. A lackey of a superior order
+receives you; you pay a franc for an admission ticket, and the lackey
+conducts you through nearly, if not quite all, of the apartments. Where
+the family goes during this process it is hard to say, but doubtless
+they are willing to inconvenience themselves for the benefit of
+"touring" humanity.
+
+The interior, no less than the exterior, impresses one as being
+something which has lived in the past, and yet exists to-day in all its
+original glory, for the present proprietor, with the aid of an admirable
+adviser, M. Lucien Roy, a Parisian architect, has produced a resemblance
+of its former furnishings which, so far as it goes, is beyond criticism.
+
+There is nothing of bareness about it, nor is there an over-luxuriant
+interpolation of irrelevant things, such as a curator crowds into a
+museum. In short, nothing more has been done than to attempt to
+reconstitute a habitation of the fifteenth century. For seventeen years
+the work has gone on, and there have been collected many authentic
+furnishings contemporary with the fabric itself, great oaken beds,
+tables, chairs, benches, tapestries, and other articles. In addition,
+the decorations have been carried out after the same manner, copied in
+many cases from contemporary pictures and prints.
+
+To-day, the general aspect is that of a peaceful household, with all
+recollections of feudal times banished for ever. All is tranquil,
+respectable, and luxurious, and it would take a chronic faultfinder not
+to be content with the manner with which these admirable restorations
+and refurnishings have been carried out.
+
+One notes particularly the infinite variety and appropriateness of the
+tiling which goes to make up the floors of these great salons--modern
+though it is. The great chimneypieces, however, are ancient, and have
+not been retouched. Those in the Salle des Gardes and the Salle where
+was celebrated the marriage of Charles VIII. and Anne de Bretagne, with
+their ornamentation in the best of Gothic, are especially noteworthy.
+
+This latter apartment is the chief attraction of the château and the
+room of which the present dwellers in this charming monument of history
+are naturally the most proud. To-day it forms the great dining-hall of
+the establishment. Mementos of this marriage, so momentous for France,
+are exceedingly numerous along the lower Loire, but this handsome room
+quite leads them all. This marriage, and the goods and lands it brought
+to the Crown, had but one stipulation connected with it, and that was
+that the Duchesse Anne should be privileged to marry the elderly king's
+successor, should she survive her royal husband.
+
+[Illustration: ARMS OF LOUIS XII. AND ANNE DE BRETAGNE]
+
+Louis XII. was not at all opposed to becoming the husband of la Duchesse
+Anne after Charles VIII. had met his death on the tennis-court, because
+this second marriage would for ever bind to France that great province
+ruled by the gentle Anne.
+
+In the Salle des Gardes are six valuable tapestries representing such
+heroic figures as Cæsar and Charlemagne, surrounded by their companions
+in arms.
+
+From the towers, on a clear day, one may see the pyramids of the
+cathedral at Tours rising on the horizon to the northward. Below is the
+Château de Villandry, where Philippe-Auguste met Henry II. of England to
+conclude a memorable peace. To the right is Azay-le-Rideau, and to the
+extreme right are the ruined towers of Cinq-Mars and its Pile. Nothing
+could be more delicious on a bright summer's day than the view from the
+ramparts of Langeais over the roof-tops of the charming little town in
+the foreground.
+
+Some time after the Revolution there was found, in the gardens of the
+château, the remains of a _chapelle romaine_ which historians, who have
+searched the annals of antiquity in Touraine, claim to have been the
+chapel in honour of St. Sauveur which Foulques V., called le Jeune, one
+of the five Counts of Anjou of that name, constructed upon his return
+from his voyage to Palestine in the twelfth century. To-day it is
+overgrown with a trellised grapevine and is practically not visible,
+still it is another architectural monument of the first rank with which
+the not very ample domain of the Château de Langeais is endowed.
+
+From the courtyard the walls of the château take on a Renaissance
+aspect; a tiny doorway beside the great gate is manifestly Renaissance;
+so, too, are the polygonal towers, with their winding stairs, the
+pignons and gables of the roof, and what carved stone there is in
+evidence. Three stone stairways which mount by the slender _tourelles_
+serve to communicate with the various floors to-day as they did in the
+times of Charles VIII.
+
+The courtyard itself, with its formal carpet design in stone, its shaded
+walls, its stone seats, and its Roman sarcophagus, is a pleasant
+retreat, but it has not the seclusion of the larger park, delightful
+though it is.
+
+Just before the drawbridge of the old château, that mediæval gateway by
+which one enters to-day, one sees the Maison de Rabelais, who is the
+deity of Langeais and Chinon, as is Balzac that of Tours. It is a fine
+old-time house of a certain amplitude and grandeur among its less
+splendid fellows, now given over, on the ground floor, to a bakery and
+pastry-shop. Enough is left of its original aspect, and the Renaissance
+decorations of its façade are sufficiently well preserved to stamp it as
+a worthy abode for the "Curé de Chinon," who lived here for some years.
+
+Two other names in literature are connected with Langeais: Ronsard, the
+poet, who lived here for a time, and César-Alexis-Chichereau, Chevalier
+de la Barre, who was a poet and a troubadour of repute.
+
+The main street of Langeais is still flanked with good Gothic and
+Renaissance houses, neither pretentious nor mean, but of that order
+which sets off to great advantage the walls and towers and porches of
+the château and the church. This street follows the ancient Roman
+roadway which traversed the valley of the Loire through Gaul.
+
+The river is here crossed by one of those too frequent, though useful,
+suspension-bridges, with which the Loire abounds. The guide-books call
+it _beau_, but it is not. One has to cross it to reach Azay-le-Rideau,
+which lies ten kilometres or more away across the Indre.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+AZAY-LE-RIDEAU, USSÉ, AND CHINON
+
+
+From Langeais, one's obvious route lies towards Chinon, via
+Azay-le-Rideau and Ussé. These latter are practically within the forest,
+though the Forêt de Chinon proper does not actually begin until one
+leaves Azay behind, when for twenty kilometres or more one of the most
+superb forest roads in France crosses many hills and dales until it
+finally descends into Chinon itself.
+
+Like most forest roads in France, this highway is not flat; it rises and
+falls with a sheer that is sometimes precipitous, but always with a
+gravelled surface that gives little dust, and which absorbs water as the
+sand from the pounce-box of our forefathers dried up ink. This simile
+calls to mind the fact that in twentieth-century France the pounce-box
+is still in use, notably at wayside railway stations, where the agent
+writes you out your ticket and dries it off in a box, not of sand, but
+of sawdust.
+
+To partake of the hospitality of Azay-le-Rideau one must arrive before
+four in the afternoon, and not earlier than midday. From the photographs
+and post-cards by which one has become familiar with Azay-le-Rideau, it
+appears like a great country house sitting by itself far away from any
+other habitation. In England this is often the case, in France but
+seldom.
+
+Clustered around the walls of the not very great park which surrounds
+the château are all manner of shops and cafés, not of the tourist
+order,--for there is very little here to suggest that tourists ever
+come, though indeed they do, by twos and threes throughout all the
+year,--but for the accommodation of the population of the little town
+itself, which must approximate a couple of thousand souls, all of whom
+appear to be engaged in the culture of the vine and its attendant
+pursuits, as the wine-presses, the coopers' shops, and other similar
+establishments plainly show. There is, moreover, the pleasant smell of
+fermented grape-juice over all, which, like the odour of the hop-fields
+of Kent, is conducive to sleep; and there lies the charm of
+Azay-le-Rideau, which seems always half-asleep.
+
+The Hôtel du Grand Monarque is a wonderfully comfortable country inn,
+with a dining-room large enough to accommodate half a hundred persons,
+but which, most likely, will serve only yourself. One incongruous note
+is sounded,--convenient though it be,--and that is the electric light
+which illuminates the hotel and its dependencies, including the stables,
+which look as though they might once have been a part of a mediæval
+château themselves.
+
+However, since posting days and tallow dips have gone for ever, one
+might as well content himself with the superior civilization which
+confronts him, and be comfortable at least.
+
+The Château d'Azay-le-Rideau is one of the gems of Touraine's splendid
+collection of Renaissance art treasures, though by no means is it one of
+the grandest or most imposing.
+
+A tree-lined avenue leads from the village street to the château, which
+sits in the midst of a tiny park; not a grand expanse as at Chambord or
+Chenonceaux, but a sort of green frame with a surrounding moat, fed by
+the waters of the Indre.
+
+The main building is square, with a great coiffed round tower at each
+corner. The Abbé Chevalier, in his "Promenades Pittoresques en
+Touraine," called it the purest and best of French Renaissance, and such
+it assuredly is, if one takes a not too extensive domestic
+establishment of the early years of the sixteenth century as the typical
+example.
+
+Undoubtedly the sylvan surroundings of the château have a great deal to
+do with the effectiveness of its charms. The great white walls of its
+façade, with the wonderful sculptures of Jean Goujon, glisten in the
+brilliant sunlight of Touraine through the sycamores and willows which
+border the Indre in a genuinely romantic fashion.
+
+Somewhere within the walls are the remains of an old tower of the
+one-time fortress which was burned by the Dauphin Charles in 1418,
+after, says history, "he had beheaded its governor and taken all of the
+defenders to the number of three hundred and thirty-four." This act was
+in revenge for an alleged insult to his sacred person.
+
+There are no remains of this former tower visible exteriorly to-day, and
+no other bloody acts appear to have attached themselves to the present
+château in all the four hundred years of its existence.
+
+[Illustration: _Château d'Azay-le-Rideau_]
+
+Gilles Berthelot erected the present structure early in the reign of
+François I. He was a man close to the king in affairs of state, first
+_conseiller-secrétaire_, then _trésorier-général des finances_, hence
+he knew the value of money. Among the succeeding proprietors was Guy de
+Saint Gelais, one of the most accomplished diplomats of his time. He was
+followed by Henri de Beringhem, who built the stables and ornamented the
+great room known as the Chambre du Roi from the fact that Louis XIV.
+once slept there, with the magnificent paintings which are shown to-day.
+
+Everywhere is there a rich, though not gross, display of decoration,
+beginning with such constructive details as the pointed-roofed
+_tourelles_, which are themselves exceedingly decorative. The doors,
+windows, roof-tops, chimneypieces, and the semi-enclosed circular
+stairways are all elaborately sculptured after the best manner of the
+time.
+
+The entrance portico is a wonder of its kind, with a strong sculptured
+arcade and arched window-openings and niches filled with bas-reliefs.
+Sculptured shells, foliage, and mythological symbols combine to form an
+arabesque, through which are interspersed the favourite ciphers of the
+region, the ermine and the salamander, which go to prove that François
+and other royalties must at one time or another have had some connection
+with the château.
+
+History only tells us, however, that Gilles Berthelot was a king's
+minister and Mayor of Tours. Perhaps he thought of handing it over as a
+gift some day in exchange for further honours. His device bore the
+words, "_Ung Seul Desir_," which may or may not have had a special
+significance.
+
+The interior of the edifice is as beautiful as is its exterior, and is
+furnished with that luxuriance of decorative effect so characteristic of
+the best era of the Renaissance in France.
+
+Until recently the proprietor was the Marquis de Biencourt, who, like
+his fellow proprietors of châteaux in Touraine, generously gave visitors
+an opportunity to see his treasure-house for themselves, and, moreover,
+furnished a guide who was something more than a menial and yet not a
+supercilious functionary.
+
+Within a twelvemonth this "purest joy of the French Renaissance" was put
+upon the real estate market, with the result that it might have fallen
+into unappreciative hands, or, what a Touraine antiquarian told the
+writer would be the worse fate that could possibly befall it, might be
+bought up by some American millionaire, who through the services of the
+house-breaker would dismantle it and remove it stone by stone and set it
+up anew on some asphalted avenue in some western metropolis. This
+extraordinary fear or rumour, whatever it was, soon passed away and as
+a "_monument historique_" the château has become the property of the
+French government.
+
+Less original, perhaps, in plan than Chenonceaux, less appealing in its
+_ensemble_ and less fortunate in its situation, Azay-le-Rideau is
+nevertheless entitled to the praises which have been heaped upon it.
+
+It is but a dozen kilometres from Azay-le-Rideau to Ussé, on the road to
+Chinon. The Château d'Ussé is indeed a big thing; not so grand as
+Chambord, nor so winsome as Langeais, but infinitely more characteristic
+of what one imagines a great residential château to have been like. It
+belongs to-day to the Comte de Blacas, and once was the property of
+Vauban, Maréchal of France, under Louis XIV., who built the terrace
+which lies between it and the river, a branch of the Indre.
+
+Perched high above the hemp-lands of the river-bottom, which here are
+the most prolific in the valley of the Indre, the château with its park
+of seven hundred or more acres is truly regal in its appointments and
+surroundings. This park extends to the boundary of the national
+reservation, the Forêt de Chinon.
+
+The Renaissance château of to-day is a reconstruction of the sixteenth
+century, which preserves, however, the great cylindrical towers of a
+century earlier. Its architecture is on the whole fantastic, at least as
+much so as Chambord, but it is none the less hardy and strong.
+Practically it consists of a series of _pavillons_ bound to the great
+fifteenth-century donjon by smaller towers and turrets, all slate-capped
+and pointed, with machicolations surrounding them, and above that a sort
+of roofed and crenelated battlement which passes like a collar around
+all the outer wall.
+
+The general effect of the exterior walls is that of a great feudal
+stronghold, while from the courtyard the aspect is simply that of a
+luxurious Renaissance town house, showing at least how the two styles
+can be pleasingly combined.
+
+Crenelated battlements are as old as Pompeii, so it is doubtful if the
+feudality of France did much to increase their use or effectiveness.
+They were originally of such dimensions as to allow a complete shelter
+for an archer standing behind one of the uprights. The contrast to those
+of a later day, which, virtually nothing more than a course of
+decorative stonework, give no impression of utility, is great, though
+here at Ussé they are more pronounced than in many other similar
+edifices.
+
+[Illustration: _Château d'Ussé_]
+
+The interior arrangements here give due prominence to a fine staircase,
+ornamented with a painting of St. John that is attributed to Michel
+Ange.
+
+The Chambre du Roi is hung with ancient embroideries, and there is a
+beautiful Renaissance chapel, above the door of which is a
+sixteenth-century bas-relief of the Apostles. Most of the other great
+rooms which are shown are resplendent in oak-beamed ceilings and massive
+chimneypieces, always a distinct feature of Renaissance
+château-building, and one which makes modern imitations appear mean and
+ugly. To realize this to the full one has only to recall the dining-room
+of the pretentious hotel which huddles under the walls of Amboise. In a
+photograph it looks like a regal banqueting-hall; but in reality it is
+as tawdry as stage scenery, with its imitation wainscoted walls, its
+imitation beamed ceiling of three-quarter-inch planks, and its plaster
+of Paris fireplace.
+
+Near Ussé is the Château de Rochecotte which recalls the name of a
+celebrated chieftain of the Chouans. It belongs to-day, though it is not
+their paternal home, to the family of Castellane, a name which to many
+is quite as celebrated and perhaps better known.
+
+The château contains a fine collection of Dutch paintings of the
+seventeenth century, and in its chapel there is a remarkably beautiful
+copy of the Sistine Madonna. The name of Talleyrand is intimately
+connected with the occupancy of the château, in pre-revolutionary times,
+by Rochecotte.
+
+On the road to Chinon one passes through, or near, Huismes, which has
+nothing to stay one's march but a good twelfth-century church, which
+looks as though its doors were never opened. The Château de la
+Villaumère, of the fifteenth century, is near by, and of more than
+passing interest are the ruins of the Château de Bonneventure, built, it
+is said, by Charles VII. for Agnes Sorel, who, with all her faults,
+stands high in the esteem of most lovers of French history. At any rate
+this shrine of "_la belle des belles_" is worthy to rank with that
+containing her tomb at Loches.
+
+As one enters Chinon by road he meets with the usual steep decline into
+a river-valley, which separates one height from another. Generally this
+is the topographic formation throughout France, and Chinon, with its
+silent guardians, the fragments of three non-contemporary castles, all
+on the same site, is no exception.
+
+"We never went to Chinon," says Henry James, in his "Little Tour in
+France," written thirty or more years ago. "But one cannot do
+everything," he continues, "and I would rather have missed Chinon than
+Chenonceaux." A painter would have put it differently. Chenonceaux is
+all that fact and fancy have painted it, a gem in a perfect setting, and
+Chinon's three castles are but mere crumbling walls; but their environs
+form a _petit pays_ which will some day develop into an "artists'
+sketching-ground," in years to come, beside which Etretat, Moret, Pont
+Aven, Giverny, and Auvers will cease to be considered.
+
+At the base of the escarped rock on which sit the châteaux, or what is
+left of them, lies the town of Chinon, with its old houses in wood and
+stone and its great, gaunt, but beautiful churches. Before it flows the
+Vienne, one of the most romantically beautiful of all the secondary
+rivers of France.
+
+From the _castrum romanum_ of the emperors to the feudal conquest Chinon
+played its due part in the history of Touraine. There are those who
+claim that Chinon is a "_cité antédiluvienne_" and that it was founded
+by Cain, who after his crime fled from the paternal malediction and
+found a refuge here; and that its name, at first _Caynon_, became
+Chinon. Like the derivation of most ancient place-names, this claim
+involves a wide imagination and assuredly sounds unreasonable. _Caino_
+may, with more likelihood, have been a Celtic word, meaning an
+excavation, and came to be adopted because of the subterranean quarries
+from which the stone was drawn for the building of the town. The
+annalists of the western empire give it as _Castrum-Caino_, and whether
+its origin dates from antediluvian times or not, it was a town in the
+very earliest days of the Christian era.
+
+The importance of Chinon's rôle in history and the beauty of its
+situation have inspired many writers to sing its praises.
+
+                         "... Chinon
+         Petite ville, grand renom
+         Assise sur pierre ancienne
+         Au haute le bois, au bas la Vienne."
+
+The disposition of the town is most picturesque. The winding streets and
+stairways are "foreign;" like Italy, if you will, or some of the steps
+to be seen in the towns bordering upon the Adriatic. At all events,
+Chinon is not exactly like any other town in France, either with
+respect to its layout or its distinct features, and it is not at all
+like what one commonly supposes to be characteristic of the French.
+
+[Illustration: _The Roof-tops of Chinon_]
+
+Dungeons of mediæval châteaux are here turned into dwellings and
+wine-cellars, and have the advantage, for both uses, of being cool in
+summer and warm in winter.
+
+Already, in the year 371, Chinon's population was so considerable that
+St. Martin, newly elected Bishop of Tours, longed to preach Christianity
+to its people, who were still idolators. Some years afterward St. Mesme
+or Maxime, fleeing from the barbarians of the north, came to Chinon, and
+soon surrounded himself with many adherents of the faith, and in the
+year 402 consecrated the original foundation of the church which now
+bears his name.
+
+Clovis made Chinon one of the strongest fortresses of his kingdom, and
+in the tenth century it came into the possession of the Comtes de
+Touraine. Later, in 1044, Thibaut III. ceded it to Geoffroy Martel. The
+Plantagenets frequently sojourned at Chinon, becoming its masters in the
+twelfth century, from which time it was held by the Kings of France up
+to Louis XI.
+
+The most picturesque event of Chinon's history took place in 1428, when
+Charles VII. here assembled the States General, and Jeanne d'Arc
+prevailed upon him to march forthwith upon Orleans, then besieged by the
+English.
+
+Memories of Charles VII., of Jeanne d'Arc, and of François Rabelais are
+inextricably mixed in the guide-book accounts of Chinon; but their
+respective histories are not so involved as would appear. There is some
+doubt as to whether the Pantagruelist was actually born at Chinon or in
+the suburbs, therefore there is no "_maison natale_" before which
+literary pilgrims may make their devotions. All this is a great pity,
+for Rabelais excites in the minds of most people a greater curiosity
+than perhaps any other mediæval man of letters that the world has known.
+
+Though one cannot feast his eye upon the spot of Rabelais's birth,
+historians agree that it took place at Chinon in 1483. Much is known of
+the "Curé de Chinon;" but, in spite of his rank as the first of the
+mediæval satirists, his was not a wide-spread popularity, nor can one
+speak very highly of his appearance as a type of the Tourangeau of his
+time. His portraits make him appear a most supercilious character, and
+doubtless he was. He certainly was not an Adonis, nor had he the head
+of a god or the cleverness of a court gallant. Indeed there has been a
+tendency of late to represent him as a buffoon, a trait wholly foreign
+to his real character.
+
+[Illustration: RABELAIS]
+
+As for Charles VII. and Jeanne d'Arc, Chinon was simply the
+meeting-place between the inspired maid and her sovereign, when she
+urged him to put himself at the head of his troops and march upon
+Orleans.
+
+Chinon is of the sunny south; here the grapes ripen early and cling
+affectionately, not only to the hillsides, but to the very house-walls
+themselves.
+
+Chinon's attractions consist of fragments of three castles, dating from
+feudal times; of three churches, of more than ordinary interest and
+picturesqueness; and many old timbered and gabled houses; nor should one
+forget the Hôtel de France, itself a reminder of other days, with its
+vine-covered courtyard and tinkling bells hanging beneath its gallery,
+for all the world like the sort of thing one sees upon the stage.
+
+There is not much else about the hotel that is of interest except its
+very ancient-looking high-posted beds and its waxed tiled floors, worn
+into smooth ruts by the feet of countless thousands and by countless
+polishings with wax. It is curious how a waxed tiled floor strikes one
+as being something altogether superior to one of wood. Though harder in
+substance, it is infinitely pleasanter to the feet, and warm and mellow,
+as a floor should be; moreover it seems to have the faculty of
+unconsciously keeping itself clean.
+
+_The Château de Chinon_, as it is commonly called, differs greatly from
+the usual Loire château; indeed it is quite another variety altogether,
+and more like what we know elsewhere as a castle; or, rather it is three
+castles, for each, so far as its remains are concerned, is distinct and
+separate.
+
+The Château de St. Georges is the most ancient and is an enlargement by
+Henry Plantagenet--whom a Frenchman has called "the King Lear of his
+race"--of a still more ancient fortress.
+
+The Château du Milieu is built upon the ruins of the _castrum romanum_,
+vestiges of which are yet visible. It dates from the eleventh, twelfth,
+and thirteenth centuries, and was restored under Charles VI., Charles
+VII., and Louis XI.
+
+One enters through the curious Tour de l'Horloge, to which access is
+given by a modern bridge, as it was in other days by an ancient
+drawbridge which covered the old-time moat. The Grand Logis, the royal
+habitation of the twelfth to fifteenth centuries, is to the right,
+overlooking the town. Here died Henry II. of England (1189) and here
+lived Charles VII. and Louis XI. It was in the Grand Salle of this
+château that Jeanne d'Arc was first presented to her sovereign (March 8,
+1429). From the hour of this auspicious meeting until the hour of the
+departure for Orleans she herself lived in the tower of the Château de
+Coudray, a little farther beyond, under guard of Guillaume Bélier.
+
+The meeting between the king and the "Maid" is described by an old
+historian of Touraine as follows: "The inhabitants of Chinon received
+her with enthusiasm, the purpose of her mission having already preceded
+her.... She appeared at court as '_une pauvre petite bergerette_' and
+was received in the Grande Salle, lighted by fifty torches and
+containing three hundred persons." (This statement would seem to point
+to the fact that it was not the _salle_ which is shown to-day; it
+certainly could not be made to hold three hundred people unless they
+stood on each other's shoulders!) "The seigneurs were all clad in
+magnificent robes, but the king, on the contrary, was dressed most
+simply. The 'Maid,' endowed with a spirit and sagacity superior to her
+education, advanced without hesitation. '_Dieu vous donne bonne vie,
+gentil roi_,' said she...."
+
+[Illustration: _Château de Chinon_]
+
+The Grand Logis is flanked by a square tower which is separated from the
+Château de Coudray and the Tour de Boissy by a moat. In the magnificent
+Tour de Boissy was the ancient Salle des Gardes, while above was a
+battlemented gallery which gave an outlook over the surrounding country.
+This watch-tower assured absolute safety from surprise to any monarch
+who might have wished to study the situation for himself.
+
+The Tour du Moulin is another of the defences, more elegant, if
+possible, than the Tour de Boissy. It is taller and less rotund; the
+French say it is "svelt," and that describes it as well as anything. It
+also fits into the landscape in a manner which no other mediæval donjon
+of France does, unless it be that of Château Gaillard, in Normandy.
+
+The primitive Château de Coudray was built by Thibaut-le-Tricheur in
+954, and its bastion and sustaining walls are still in evidence.
+
+The Vienne, which runs by Chinon to join the Loire above Saumur, is, in
+many respects, a remarkable river, although just here there is nothing
+very remarkable about it. It is, however, delightfully picturesque, as
+it washes the tree-lined quays which form Chinon's river-front for a
+distance of upward of two kilometres. In general the waterway reminds
+one of something between a great traffic-bearing river and a mere
+pleasant stream.
+
+The bridge between Chinon and its faubourg is typical of the art of
+bridge-building, at which, in mediæval times, the French were excelled
+by no other nation. To-day, in company with the Americans, they build
+iron and steel abominations which are eyesores which no amount of
+utility will ever induce one to really admire. Not so the French bridges
+of mediæval times, of the type of those at Blois on the Loire; at Chinon
+on the Vienne; at Avignon on the Rhône; or at Cahors on the Lot.
+
+If Rabelais had not rendered popular Chinon and the Chinonais the public
+would have yet to learn of this delightful _pays_, in spite of that
+famous first meeting between Charles VII. and Jeanne d'Arc.
+
+If the modern founders of "garden-cities" would only go as far back as
+the time of Richelieu they would find a good example to follow in the
+little Touraine town, the _chef-lieu_ of the Commune, which bears the
+name of Richelieu. When Armand du Plessis first became the seigneur of
+this "_little land_" he resolutely set about to make of the property a
+town which should dignify his name. Accordingly he built, at his own
+expense, after the plans of Lemercier, "a city, regular, vast, and
+luxurious." At the same time the cardinal-minister replaced the paternal
+manor with a château elaborately and prodigally royal.
+
+Richelieu was a sort of "petit Versailles," which was to be to Chinon
+what the real Versailles was to the capital.
+
+To-day, as in other days, it is a "_ville vaste, régulière et
+luxueuse_," but it is unfinished. One great street only has been
+completed on its original lines, and it is exactly 450 metres long.
+Originally the town was to have the dimensions of but six hundred by
+four hundred metres; modest enough in size, but of the greatest luxury.
+The cardinal had no desire to make it more grand, but even what he had
+planned was not to be. Its one great street is bordered with imposing
+buildings, but their tenants to-day have not the least resemblance to
+the courtiers of the cardinal who formerly occupied them.
+
+Richelieu disappeared in the course of time, and work on his hobby
+stopped, or at least changed radically in its plan. Secondary streets
+were laid out, of less grandeur, and peopled with houses without
+character, low in stature, and unimposing. The plan of a _ville
+seigneuriale_ gave way to a _ville de labeur_. Other habitations grew up
+until to-day twenty-five hundred souls find their living on the spot
+where once was intended to be only a life of luxury.
+
+Of the monuments with which Richelieu would have ornamented his town
+there remains a curious market-hall and a church in the pure Jesuitic
+style of architecture, lacking nothing of pretence and grandeur.
+
+Not much can be said for the vast Église Notre Dame de Richelieu, a
+heavy Italian structure, built from the plans of Lemercier. However
+satisfying and beautiful the style may be in Italy, it is manifestly, in
+all great works of church-building in the north, unsuitable and uncouth.
+
+There was also a château as well, a great Mansart affair with an
+overpowering dome. Practically this remains to-day, but, like all else
+in the town, it is but a promise of greater things which were expected
+to materialize, but never did.
+
+At the bottom of a little valley, in a fertile plain, lies Fontevrault,
+or what there is left of it, for the old abbey is now nothing more than
+a matter-of-fact "_maison de détention_" for criminals. The abbey of
+yesterday is the prison of to-day.
+
+Fontevrault is an enigma; it is, furthermore, what the French themselves
+call a "_triste et maussade bourg_." Its former magnificent abbey was
+one of the few shrines of its class which was respected by the
+Revolution, but now it has become a prison which shelters something like
+a thousand unfortunates.
+
+For centuries the old abbey had royal princesses for abbesses and was
+one of the most celebrated religious houses in all France. It is a sad
+degeneration that has befallen this famous establishment.
+
+In the eleventh century an illustrious man of God, a Breton priest,
+named Robert d'Arbrissel, outlined the foundation of the abbey and
+gathered together a community of monks. He died in the midst of his
+labours, in 1117, and was succeeded by the Abbess Petronille de
+Chemille.
+
+For nearly six hundred years the abbey--which comprised a convent for
+men and another for women--grew and prospered, directed, not
+infrequently, by an abbess of the blood royal. It has been claimed
+that, as a religious establishment for men and women, ruled over by a
+woman, the abbey of Fontevrault was unique in Christendom.
+
+It is an ample structure with a church tower of bistre which forms a
+most pleasing note of colour in the landscape. The basilica was begun in
+1101, and consecrated by Pope Calixtus II. in 1119. Its interior showed
+a deep vaulting, with graceful and hardy arches supported by massive
+columns with quaint and curiously sculptured capitals.
+
+The twelfth-century cloister was indeed a masterwork among those
+examples, all too rare, existing to-day. Its arcade is severely elegant
+and was rebuilt by the Abbess Renée de Bourbon, sister of François I.,
+after the best of decorative Renaissance of that day. The chapter-house,
+now used by the director of the prison, has in a remarkable manner
+retained the mural frescoes of a former day. There are depicted a series
+of groups of mystical and real personages in a most curious fashion. The
+refectory is still much in its primitive state, though put to other uses
+to-day. Its tribune, where the lectrice entertained the sisters during
+their repasts, is, however, still in its place.
+
+[Illustration: _Cuisines, Fontevrault_]
+
+The curious, bizarre, kilnlike pyramid, known as the Tour d'Evrault,
+has ever been an enigma to the archæologist and antiquarian. Doubtless
+it formed the kitchens of the establishment, for it looks like nothing
+else that might have belonged to a great abbey. It has a counterpart at
+the Abbey of Marmoutier near Tours, and of St. Trinité at Vendôme; from
+which fact there would seem to be little doubt as to its real use,
+although it looks more like a blast furnace or a distillery chimney.
+
+This curious pyramidal structure is like the collegiate church of St.
+Ours at Loches, one of those bizarre edifices which defy any special
+architectural classification. At Fontevrault the architect played with
+his art when he let all the light in this curious "_tour_" enter by the
+roof. At the extreme apex of the cone he placed a lantern from which the
+light of day filtered down the slope of the vaulting in a weird and
+tomblike manner. It is a most surprising effect, but one that is wholly
+lost to-day, since the Tour d'Evrault has been turned into the kitchen
+for the "_maison de détention_" of which it forms a part.
+
+The nave of the church of the old abbey of Fontevrault has been cut in
+two and a part is now used as the dormitory of the prison, but the
+choir, the transepts, and the towers remain to suggest the simple and
+beautiful style of their age.
+
+In the transepts, behind an iron grille, are buried Henry II., King of
+England and Count of Anjou, Éléanore of Guienne, Richard Coeur de Lion,
+and Isabeau of Angoulême, wife of Jean-sans-Terre. Four polychromatic
+statues, one in wood, the others in stone, lying at length, represent
+these four personages so great in English history, and make of
+Fontevrault a shrine for pilgrims which ought to be far less ignored
+than it is. The cemetery of kings has been shockingly cared for, and the
+ludicrous kaleidoscopic decorations of the statues which surmount the
+royal tombs are nothing less than a sacrilege. It is needless to say
+they are comparatively modern.
+
+At Bourgueil, near Fontevrault, are gathered great crops of _réglisse_,
+or licorice. It differs somewhat in appearance from the licorice roots
+of one's childhood, but the same qualities exist in it as in the product
+of Spain or the Levant, whence indeed most of the commercial licorice
+does come. It is as profitable an industry in this part of France as is
+the saffron crop of the Gâtinais, and whoever imported the first roots
+was a benefactor. At the juncture of the Vienne and the Loire are two
+tiny towns which are noted for two widely different reasons.
+
+These two towns are Montsoreau and Candes, the former noted for the
+memory of that bloodthirsty woman who gave a plot to Dumas (and some
+real facts of history besides), and the other noted for its prunes,
+Candes being the chief centre of the industry which produces the
+_pruneaux de Tours_.
+
+Descending the Vienne from Chinon, one first comes to Candes, which
+dominates the confluence of the Vienne with the Loire from its imposing
+position on the top of a hill.
+
+Candes was in other times surrounded by a protecting wall, and there are
+to-day remains of a château which had formerly given shelter to Charles
+VII. and Louis XI. It has, moreover, a twelfth-century church built upon
+the site of the cell in which died St. Martin in the fourth century. The
+native of the surrounding country cares nothing for churches or
+châteaux, but assumes that the prune industry of Candes is the one thing
+of interest to the visitor.
+
+Be this as it may, it is indeed a matter of considerable importance to
+all within a dozen kilometres of the little town. All through the region
+round about Candes one meets with the fruit-pickers, with their great
+baskets laden with prunes, pears, and apples, to be sent ultimately to
+the great ovens to be desiccated and dried. Fifty years ago, you will be
+told, the cultivators attended to the curing process themselves, but now
+it is in the hands of the middle-man.
+
+At Montsoreau much the same economic conditions exist as at Candes, but
+there is vastly more of historic lore hanging about the town. In the
+fourteenth century, after a shifting career the fief passed to the
+Vicomtes de Châteaudun; then, in the century following, to the Chabots
+and the family of Chambes, of which Jean IV., prominent in the massacre
+of St. Bartholomew's night, was a member. It was he who assassinated the
+gallant Bussy d'Amboise at the near-by Château of Coutancière (at
+Brain-sur-Allonnes), who had made a rendezvous with his wife, since
+become famous in the pages of Dumas and of history as "La Dame de
+Montsoreau."
+
+To-day the old bourg is practically non-existent, and there is a
+smugness of prosperity which considerably discounts the former charm
+that it once must have had. But for all that, there is enough left to
+enable one to picture what the life here under the Renaissance must
+have been.
+
+The parish church--that of the ancient Paroisse de Retz--still exists,
+though in ruins, and there are very substantial remains of an old
+priory, an old-time dependency of the Abbey of St. Florent, now
+converted into a farm.
+
+Beside the highroad is the fifteenth-century château. It has a double
+façade, one side of which is ornamented with a series of _mâchicoulis_,
+great high window-openings, and flanking towers; and, in spite of its
+generally frowning aspect, looks distinctly livable even to-day.
+
+The ornamental façade of the courtyard is somewhat crumbled but still
+elegant, and has incorporated within its walls a most ravishing
+Renaissance turret, smothered in exquisite _moulures_ and _arabesques_.
+On the terminal gallery and on the panels which break up the flatness of
+this inner façade are a series of allegorical bas-reliefs, representing
+monkeys, surmounted with the inscription, "_Il le Feray_."
+
+The interior of this fine edifice is entirely remodelled, and has
+nothing of its former fitments, furnishings, or decorations.
+
+Near Port Boulet, almost opposite Candes, is the great farm of a certain
+M. Cail. Communication is had with the Orleans railway by means of a
+traction engine, which draws its own broad-wheeled wagons on the regular
+highway between the _gare d'hommes_ and the tall-chimneyed manor or
+château which forms the residence of this enterprising agriculturist.
+
+The property consists of nearly two thousand acres, of which at least
+twelve hundred are under the process of intensive cultivation, and is
+divided into ten distinct farms, having each an overseer charged
+directly with the control of his part of the domain. These farms are
+wonderfully well kept, with sanded roadways like the courtyard of a
+château. There are no trees in the cultivated parts, and the great
+grain-fields are as the western prairies.
+
+The estate bears the generic name of "La Briche." On one side it is
+bordered by the railroad for a distance of nearly forty kilometres, and
+it gives to that same railway an annual freight traffic of two thousand
+tons of merchandise, which would be considerably more if all the cattle
+and sheep sent to other markets were transported by rail.
+
+As might be expected, this domain of "La Briche" has given to the
+neighbouring farmers a lesson and an example, and little by little its
+influence has resulted in an increased activity among the neighbouring
+landholders, who formerly gave themselves over to "_la chasse_," and
+left the conduct of their farms to incompetent and more or less ignorant
+hirelings.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+ANJOU AND BRETAGNE
+
+
+As one crosses the borderland from Touraine into Anjou, the whole aspect
+of things changes. It is as if one went from the era of the Renaissance
+back again into the days of the Gothic, not only in respect to
+architecture, but history and many of the conditions of every-day life
+as well.
+
+Most of the characteristics of Anjou are without their like elsewhere,
+and opulent Anjou of ancient France has to-day a departmental etiquette
+in many things quite different from that of other sections.
+
+A magnificent agricultural province, it has been further enriched by
+liberal proprietors; a land of aristocracy and the church, it has ever
+been to the fore in political and ecclesiastical matters; and to-day the
+spirit of industry and progress are nowhere more manifest than here in
+the ancient province of Anjou.
+
+The Loire itself changes its complexion but little, and its entrance
+into Saumur, like its entrance into Tours, is made between banks that
+are tinged with the rainbow colours of the growing vine. What hills
+there are near by are burrowed, as swallows burrow in a cliff, by the
+workers of the vineyards, who make in the rock homes similar to those
+below Saumur, in the Vallée du Vendomois, and at Cinq-Mars near Tours.
+
+Anjou has a marked style in architecture, known as Angevin, which few
+have properly placed in the gamut of architectural styles which run from
+the Byzantine to the Renaissance.
+
+The Romanesque was being supplanted everywhere when the Angevin style
+came into being, as a compromise between the heavy, flat-roofed style of
+the south and the pointed sky-piercing gables of the north. All Europe
+was attempting to shake off the Romanesque influence, which had lasted
+until the twelfth century. Germany alone clung to the pure style, and,
+it is generally thought, improved it. The Angevin builders developed a
+species that was on the borderland between the Romanesque and the
+Gothic, though not by any means a mere transition type.
+
+The chief cities of Anjou are not very great or numerous, Angers itself
+containing but slightly over fifty thousand souls. Cholet, of thirteen
+thousand inhabitants, is an important cloth-manufacturing centre, while
+Saumur carries on a great wine trade and was formerly the capital of a
+"_petit gouvernement_" of its own, and, like many other cities and towns
+of this and neighbouring provinces, was the scene of great strife during
+the wars of the Vendée.
+
+In ancient times the _Andecavi_, as the old peoples of the province were
+known, shared with the _Turonii_ of Touraine the honour of being the
+foremost peoples of western Gaul, though each had special
+characteristics peculiarly their own, as indeed they have to-day.
+
+After one passes the junction of the Cher, the Indre, and the Vienne, he
+notices no great change in the conduct of the Loire itself. It still
+flows in and out among the banks of sand and those little round pebbles
+known all along its course, nonchalantly and slowly, though now and then
+one fancies that he notes a greater eddy or current than he had observed
+before. At Saumur it is still more impressed upon one, while at the
+Ponts de Cé--a great strategic spot in days gone by--there is evidence
+that at one time or another the Loire must be a raging torrent; and
+such it does become periodically, only travellers never seem to see it
+when it is in this condition.
+
+When Candes and Montsoreau are passed and one comes under the frowning
+walls of Saumur's grim citadel, a sort of provincial Bastille in its
+awesomeness, he realizes for the first time that there is, somewhere
+below, an outlet to the sea. He cannot smell the salt-laden breezes at
+this great distance, but the general appearance of things gives that
+impression.
+
+From Tours to Saumur by the right bank of the Loire--one of the most
+superb stretches of automobile roadway in the world--lay the road of
+which Madame de Sévigné wrote in "Lettre CCXXIV." (to her mother), which
+begins: "_Nous arrivons ici, nous avons quitté Tours ce matin._" It was
+a good day's journey for those times, whether by _malle-post_ or the
+private conveyance which, likely enough, Madame de Sévigné used at the
+time (1630). To-day it is a mere morsel to the hungry road-devouring maw
+of a twentieth-century automobile. It's almost worth the labour of
+making the journey on foot to know the charms of this delightful
+river-bank bordered with historic shrines almost without number, and
+peopled by a class of peasants as picturesque and gay as the
+Neapolitan of romance.
+
+[Illustration: _Château de Saumur_]
+
+"_Saumur est, ma foi! une jolie ville_," said a traveller one day at a
+_table d'hôte_ at Tours. And so indeed it is. Its quays and its squares
+lend an air of gaiety to its proud old _hôtel de ville_ and its grim
+château. Old habitations, commodious modern houses, frowning
+machicolations, church spires, grand hotels, innumerable cafés, and much
+military, all combine in a blend of fascinating interest that one
+usually finds only in a great metropolis.
+
+The chief attraction is unquestionably the old château. To-day it
+stands, as it has always stood, high above the Quai de Limoges, with
+scarce a scar on its hardy walls and never a crumbling stone on its
+parapet.
+
+The great structure was begun in the eleventh century, replacing an
+earlier monument known as the Tour du Tronc. It was completed in the
+century following and rebuilt or remodelled in the sixteenth. Outside of
+its impressive exterior there is little of interest to remind one of
+another day.
+
+To literary pilgrims Saumur suggests the homestead of the father of
+Eugenie Grandet, and the _bon-vivant_ reveres it for its soft pleasant
+wines. Others worship it for its wonders of architecture, and yet
+others fall in love with it because of its altogether delightful
+situation.
+
+Below Saumur are the cliff-dwellers, who burrow high in the chalk cliff
+and stow themselves away from light and damp like bottles of old wine.
+The custom is old and not indigenous to France, but here it is
+sufficiently in evidence to be remarked by even the traveller by train.
+Here, too, one sees the most remarkable of all the _coiffes_ which are
+worn by any of the women along the Loire. This Angevin variety, like
+Angevin architecture, is like none of its neighbours north, east, south,
+or west.
+
+Students of history will revere Saumur for something more than its
+artistic aspect or its wines, for it was a favourite residence of the
+Angevin princes and the English kings, as well as being the capital of
+the _pape des Huguenots_.
+
+While Nantes is the real metropolis of the Loire, and Angers is
+singularly up-to-date and well laid out, neither of these fine cities
+have a great thoroughfare to compare with the broad, straight street of
+Saumur, which leads from the Gare d'Orleans on the left bank and crosses
+the two bridges which span the branches of the Loire, to say nothing of
+the island between, and finally merges into the great national highway
+which runs south into Poitou.
+
+Fine houses, many, if not most of them, dating from centuries ago, line
+the principal streets of the town, which, when one has actually entered
+its confines, presents the appearance of being too vast and ample for
+its population. And, in truth, so it really is. Its population barely
+reaches fifteen thousand souls, whereas it would seem to have the
+grandeur and appointments of a city of a hundred thousand. The
+revocation of the Edict of Nantes cut its inhabitants down to the extent
+of twenty or twenty-five thousand, and it has never recovered from the
+blow.
+
+In the neighbourhood of Saumur, for a considerable distance up and down
+the Loire, the hills are excavated into dwelling-houses and wine-caves,
+producing a most curious aspect. One continuous line of these cliff
+villages--like nothing so much as the habitations of the cliff-dwelling
+Indians of America--extends from the juncture of the Vienne with the
+Loire nearly up to the Ponts de Cé.
+
+The most curious effect of it all is the multitude of openings of
+doorways and windows and the uprising of chimney-pots through the chalk
+and turf which form the roof-tops of these settlements.
+
+In many of these caves are prepared the famous _vin mousseux_ of
+Saumur, of which the greater part is sold as champagne to an
+unsuspecting and indifferent public, not by the growers or makers, but
+by unscrupulous middlemen.
+
+Saumur, like Angers, is fortunate in its climate, to which is due a
+great part of the prosperity of the town, for the "Rome of the
+Huguenots" is more prosperous--and who shall not say more content?--than
+it ever was in the days of religious or feudal warfare.
+
+Near Saumur is one shrine neglected by English pilgrims which might well
+be included in their itineraries. In the Château de Moraines at
+Dampierre died Margaret of Anjou and Lancaster, Queen of England, as one
+reads on a tablet erected at the gateway of this dainty "_petit castel à
+tour et creneaux_."
+
+    Manoir de la Vignole-Souzay autrefois Dampierre
+                Asile et dernière demure
+        de l'heroine de la guerre des deux roses
+  Marguerite d'Anjou de Lancastre, reine d'Angleterre
+      La plus malheureuse des reines, des éspouses, et des mères
+                Qui Morut le 25 Aout 1482
+                      Agée de 53 Ans.
+
+The Salvus Murus of the ancients became the Saumur of to-day in the year
+948, when the monk Absalom built a monastery here and surrounded it with
+a protecting wall. Up to the thirteenth century the city belonged to the
+"Angevin kings of Angleterre," as the French historians proudly claim
+them.
+
+The city passed finally to the Kings of France, and to them remained
+constantly faithful. Under Henri IV. the city was governed by
+Duplessis-Mornay, the "_pape des Huguenots_," becoming practically the
+metropolis of Protestantism. Up to this time the chief architectural
+monument was the château, which was commenced in the eleventh century
+and which through the next five centuries had been aggrandized and
+rebuilt into its present shape.
+
+The church of Notre Dame de Nantilly dates from the twelfth century and
+was frequently visited by Louis XI. The oratory formerly made use of by
+this monarch to-day contains the baptismal fonts. One of the columns of
+the nave has graven upon it the epitaph composed by King René of Anjou
+for his foster-mother, Dame Thiephanie. Throughout, the church is
+beautifully decorated.
+
+The Hôtel de Ville may well be called the chief artistic treasure of
+Saumur, as the châtteau is its chief historical monument. It is a
+delightful _ensemble_ of the best of late Gothic, dating from the
+sixteenth century, flanked on its façade by turrets crowned with
+_mâchicoulis_, and lighted by a series of elegant windows _à
+croisillons_. Above all is a gracious campanile, in its way as fine as
+the belfry of Bruges, to which, from a really artistic standpoint,
+rhapsodists have given rather more than its due.
+
+The interior is as elaborate and pleasing as is the outside. In the
+Salle des Mariages and Salle du Conseil are fine fifteenth-century
+chimneypieces, such as are only found in their perfection on the Loire.
+The library, of something over twenty thousand volumes, many of them in
+manuscript, is formed in great part from the magnificent collection
+formerly at the abbeys of Fontevrault and St. Florent. Doubtless these
+old tomes contain a wealth of material from which some future historian
+will perhaps construct a new theory of the universe. This in truth may
+not be literally so, but it is a fact that there is a vast amount of
+contemporary historical information, with regard to the world in
+general, which is as yet unearthed, as witness the case of Pompeii
+alone, where the area of the discoveries forms but a small part of the
+entire buried city.
+
+At Saumur numerous prehistoric and _gallo-romain_ remains are
+continually being added to the museum, which is also in the Hôtel de
+Ville. A recent acquisition--discovered in a neighbouring vineyard--is a
+Roman "_trompette_," as it is designated, and a more or less complete
+outfit of tools, obviously those of a carpenter.
+
+The notorious Madame de Montespan--"the illustrious penitent," though
+the former description answers better--stopped here, in a house
+adjoining the Church of St. John, to-day a _maison de retrait_, on her
+way to visit her sister, the abbess, at Fontevrault.
+
+From Saumur to Angers the Loire passes an almost continuous series of
+historical guide-posts, some in ruins, but many more as proudly
+environed as ever.
+
+At Treves-Cunault is a dignified Romanesque church which would add to
+the fame of a more popular and better known town. It is not a grand
+structure, but it is perfect of its kind, with its crenelated façade and
+its sturdy arcaded towers curiously placed midway on the north wall.
+
+Here one first becomes acquainted with _menhirs_ and _dolmens_,
+examples of which are to be found in the neighbourhood, not so
+remarkable as those of Brittany, but still of the same family.
+
+The Ponts de Cé follow next, still in the midst of vine-land, and
+finally appear the twin spires of Angers's unique Cathedral of St.
+Maurice. Here one realizes, if not before, that he is in Anjou; no more
+is the atmosphere transparent as in Touraine, but something of the grime
+of the commercial struggle for life is over all.
+
+Here the Maine joins the Loire, at a little village called La Pointe:
+"the Charenton of Angers," it was called by a Paris-loving boulevardier
+who once wandered afield.
+
+Much has been written, and much might yet be written, about the famous
+Ponts de Cé, which span the Loire and its branches for a distance
+considerably over three kilometres. This ancient bridge or bridges
+(which, with that at Blois, were at one time, the only bridges across
+the Loire below Orleans) formerly consisted of 109 arches, but the
+reconstruction of the mid-nineteenth century reduced these to a bare
+score.
+
+[Illustration: _The Ponts de Cé_]
+
+As a vantage-point in warfare the Ponts de Cé were ever in contention,
+the Gauls, the Romans, the Franks, the Normans, and the English
+successively taking possession and defending them against their
+opponents. The Ponts de Cé is a weirdly strange and historic town which
+has lost none of its importance in a later day, though the famous
+_ponts_ are now remade, and their antique arches replaced by more solid,
+if less picturesque piers and piling. They span the shallow flow of the
+Loire water for three-quarters of a league and produce a homogeneous
+effect of antiquity, coupled with the city's three churches and its
+château overlooking the fortified isle in mid-river, which looks as
+though it had not changed since the days when Marie de Medici looked
+upon it, as recalled by the great Rubens painting in the Louvre. Since
+the beginning of the history of these parts, battles almost without
+number have taken place here, as was natural on a spot so strategically
+important.
+
+There is a tale of the Vendean wars, connected with the "Roche-de-Murs"
+at the Ponts de Cé, to the effect that a battalion, left here to guard
+any attack from across the river, was captured by the Vendeans. Many of
+the "_Bleus_" refused to surrender, and threw themselves into the river
+beneath their feet. Among these was the wife of an officer, to whom the
+Vendeans offered life if she surrendered. This was refused, and
+precipitately, with her child, she threw herself into the flood beneath.
+
+On the largest isle, that lying between the Louet and the Loire, is one
+vast garden or orchard of cherry-trees, which produce a peculiarly juicy
+cherry from which large quantities of _guignolet_, a sort of "cherry
+brandy," is made. The Angevins will tell you that this was a well-known
+refreshment in the middle ages, and was first made by one of those
+monkish orders who were so successful in concocting the subtle liquors
+of the commerce of to-day.
+
+It is with real regret that one parts from the Ponts de Cé, with La
+Fontaine's couplet on his lips:
+
+        "... Ce n'est pas petite gloire
+         Que d'être pont sur la Loire."
+
+Some one has said that the provinces find nothing to envy in Paris as
+far as the transformation of their cities is concerned. This, to a
+certain extent, is so, not only in respect to the modernizing of such
+grand cities as Lyons, Marseilles, or Lille, but in respect to such
+smaller cities as Nantes and Angers, where the improvements, if not on
+so magnificent a scale, are at least as momentous to their immediate
+environment.
+
+For the most part these second and third class cities are to-day
+transformed in exceedingly good taste, and, though many a noble monument
+has in the past been sacrificed, to-day the authorities are proceeding
+more carefully.
+
+Angers, in spite of its overpowering château and its unique cathedral,
+is of a modernity and luxuriousness in its present-day aspect which is
+all the more remarkable because of the contrast. Formerly the Angevin
+capital, from the days of King John up to a much later time Angers had
+the reputation of being a town "_plus sombre et plus maussade_" than any
+other in the French provinces. In Shakespeare's "King John" one reads of
+"black Angers," and so indeed is its aspect to-day, for its roof-tops
+are of slate, while many of the houses are built of that material
+entirely. In the olden time many of its streets were cut in the slaty
+rock, leaving its sombre surface bare to the light of day. One sees
+evidences of all this in the massive walls of the great black-banded
+castle of Angers, and, altogether, this magpie colouring is one of the
+chief characteristics of this grandly historic town.
+
+Both the new and the old town sit proudly on a height crowned by the two
+slim spires of the cathedral. In front, the gentle curves of the river
+Maine enfold the old houses at the base of the hillside and lap the very
+walls of the grim fortress-château itself, or did in the days when the
+Counts of Anjou held sway, though to-day the river has somewhat receded.
+
+Beyond the ancient ramparts, up the hill, have been erected the
+"_quartiers neufs_," with houses all admirably planned and laid out,
+with gardens forming a veritable girdle, as did the retaining walls of
+other days which surrounded the old château and its faubourg. To-day
+Angers shares with Nantes the title of metropolis of the west, and the
+Loire flows on its ample way between the two in a far more imposing
+manner than elsewhere in its course from source to sea.
+
+Angers does not lie exactly at the juncture of the Maine and Loire, but
+a little way above, but it has always been considered as one of the
+chief Loire cities; and probably many of its visitors do not realize
+that it is not on the Loire itself.
+
+The marvellous fairy-book château of Angers, with its fourteen
+black-striped towers, is just as it was when built by St. Louis, save
+that its chess-board towers lack, in most cases, their coiffes, and all
+vestiges have disappeared of the _charpente_ which formerly topped
+them off.
+
+[Illustration: _Château d'Angers_]
+
+Beyond the rocky formation of the banks of the Loire, which crop out
+below the juncture of the Maine and the Loire, below Angers, are
+Savennières and La Possonière, whence come the most famous vintages of
+Anjou, which, to the wines of these parts, are what Château Margaux and
+Château Yquem are to the Bordelais, and the Clos Vougeot is to the
+Bourguignons.
+
+The peninsula formed by the Loire and the Maine at Angers is the richest
+agricultural region in all France, the nurseries and the kitchen-gardens
+having made the fortune of this little corner of Anjou.
+
+Angers is the headquarters for nursery-garden stock for the open air, as
+Orleans is for ornamental and woodland trees and shrubs.
+
+The trade in living plants and shrubs has grown to very great
+proportions since 1848, when an agent went out from here on behalf of
+the leading house in the trade and visited America for the purpose of
+searching out foreign plants and fruits which could be made to thrive on
+French soil.
+
+Both the soil and climate are very favourable for the cultivation of
+many hitherto unknown fruits, the neighbourhood of the sea, which, not
+far distant, is tempered by the Gulf Stream, having given to Anjou a
+lukewarm humidity and a temperature of a remarkable equality.
+
+Some of the nurseries of these parts are enormous establishments, the
+Maison André Leroy, for example, covering an extent of some six hundred
+acres. A catalogue of one of these establishments, located in the
+suburbs of Angers, enumerates over four hundred species of pear-trees,
+six hundred varieties of apple-trees, one hundred and fifty varieties of
+plums, four hundred and seventy-five of grapes, fifteen hundred of
+roses, and two hundred and nineteen of rhododendrons.
+
+Each night, or as often as fifty railway wagons are loaded, trains are
+despatched from the _gare_ at Angers for all parts. When the
+_choux-fleurs_ are finished, then come the _petits pois_, and then the
+_artichauts_ and other _légumes_ in favour with the Paris _bon-vivants_.
+
+Near Angers is one of those Cæsar's camps which were spread thickly up
+and down Gaul and Britain alike. One reaches it by road from Angers,
+and, until it dawns upon one that the vast triangle, one of whose
+equilateral sides is formed by the Loire, another by the Maine, and the
+third by a ridge of land stretching between the two, covers about
+fourteen kilometres square, it seems much like any other neck or
+peninsula of land lying between two rivers. One hundred thousand of the
+Roman legion camped here at one time, which is not so very wonderful
+until it is recalled that they lived for months on the resources of this
+comparatively restricted area.
+
+Before coming to Nantes, Ancenis and Oudon should claim the attention of
+the traveller, though each is not much more than a typically interesting
+small town of France, in spite of the memories of the past.
+
+Ancenis has an ancient château, remodelled and added to in the
+nineteenth century, which possesses some remarkably important
+constructive details, the chief of which are a great tower-flanked
+doorway and the _corps de logis_, each the work of an Angevin architect,
+Jean de Lespine, in the sixteenth century. Within the walls of this
+château François II., Duc de Bretagne, and Louis XI. signed one of the
+treaties which finally led up to the union of the Duché de Bretagne with
+the Crown of France.
+
+Oudon possesses a fine example of a mediæval donjon, though it has been
+restored in our day.
+
+One does not usually connect Brittany with the Loire except so far as
+to recollect that Nantes was a former political and social capital. As a
+matter of fact, however, a very considerable proportion of Brittany
+belongs to the Loire country.
+
+Anjou of the counts and kings and Bretagne of the dukes and duchesses
+embrace the whole of the Loire valley below Saumur, although the
+river-bed of the Loire formed no actual boundary. Anjou extended nearly
+as far to the southward as it did to the north of the vine-clad banks,
+and Bretagne, too, had possession of a vast tract south of Nantes, known
+as the Pays de Retz, which bordered upon the Vendée of Poitou.
+
+All the world knows, or should know, that Nantes and St. Nazaire form
+one of the great ports of the world, not by any means so great as New
+York, London, or Hamburg, nor yet as great as Antwerp, Bordeaux, or
+Marseilles, but still a magnificent port which plays a most important
+part with the affairs of France and the outside world.
+
+Nantes, la Brette, is tranquil and solid, with the life of the laborious
+bourgeois always in the foreground. It is of Bretagne, to which province
+it anciently belonged, only so far as it forms the bridge between the
+Vendée and the old duchy; literally between two opposing feudal lords
+and masters, both of whom were hard to please.
+
+The memoirs of this corner of the province of Bretagne of other days are
+strong in such names as the Duchesse Anne, the monk Abelard, the
+redoubtable Clisson, the infamous Gilles de Retz, the warrior Lanoue,
+surnamed "Bras de Fer," and many others whose names are prominent in
+history.
+
+"_Ventre Saint Gris! les Ducs de Bretagne n'étaient pas de petits
+compagnons!_" cried Henri Quatre, as he first gazed upon the Château de
+Nantes. At that time, in 1598, this fortress was defended by seven
+curtains, six towers, bastions and caponieres, all protected by a wide
+and deep moat, into which poured the rising tide twice with each round
+of the clock.
+
+To-day the aspect of this château is no less formidable than of yore,
+though it has been debased and the moat has disappeared to make room for
+a roadway and the railroad.
+
+It was in the château of Nantes, the same whose grim walls still
+overlook the road by which one reaches the centre of the town from the
+inconveniently placed station, that Mazarin had Henri de Gondi, Cardinal
+de Retz and co-adjutor of the Archbishop of Paris, imprisoned in 1665,
+because of his offensive partisanship. Fouquet, too, after his splendid
+downfall, was thrown into the donjon here by Louis XIV.
+
+De Gondi recounts in his "Mémoires" how he took advantage of the
+inattention of his guards and finally evaded them by letting himself
+over the side of the Bastion de Mercoeur by means of a rope smuggled
+into him by his friends. The feat does not look a very formidable one
+to-day, but then, or in any day, it must have been somewhat of an
+adventure for a portly churchman, and the wonder is that it was
+performed successfully. At any rate it reads like a real adventure from
+the pages of Dumas, who himself made a considerable use of Nantes and
+its château in his historical romances.
+
+Landais, the minister and favourite of François II. of Bretagne, was
+arrested here in 1485, in the very chamber of the prince, who delivered
+him up with the remark: "_Faites justice, mais souvenez-vous que vous
+lui êtes redevable de votre charge._"
+
+There is no end of historical incident connected with Nantes's old
+fortress-château of mediæval times, and, in one capacity or another, it
+has sheltered many names famous in history, from the Kings of France,
+from Louis XII. onward, to Madame de Sévigné and the Duchesse de Berry.
+
+Nantes's Place de la Bouffai (which to lovers of Dumas will already be
+an old friend) was formerly the site of a château contemporary with that
+which stands by the waterside. The Château de Bouffai was built in 990
+by Conan, first Duc de Bretagne, and served as an official residence to
+him and many of his successors.
+
+In Nantes's great but imperfect and unfinished Cathedral of St. Pierre
+one comes upon a relic that lives long in the memory of those who have
+passed before it: the tomb of François II., Duc de Bretagne, and
+Marguerite de Foix. The cathedral itself is no mean architectural work,
+in spite of its imperfections, as one may judge from the following
+inscription graven over the sculptured figure of St. Pierre, its patron:
+
+        "L'an mil quatre cent trente-quatre,
+         A my-avril sans moult rabattre:
+         An portail de cette église,
+         Fut la première pierre assise."
+
+Within, the chief attraction is that masterwork of Michel Colombe, the
+before-mentioned tomb, which ranks among the world's art-treasures. The
+beauty of the emblematic figures which flank the tomb proper, the fine
+chiselling of the recumbent effigies themselves, and the general
+_ensemble_ is such that the work is bound to appeal, whatever may be
+one's opinion of Renaissance sculpture in France. The tomb was brought
+here from the old Église des Carmes, which had been pillaged and burned
+in the Revolution.
+
+The mausoleum was--in its old resting-place--opened in 1727, and a
+small, heart-shaped, gold box was found, supposed to have contained the
+heart of the Duchesse Anne. The coffer was surmounted by a royal crown
+and emblazoned with the order of the Cordelière, but within was found
+nothing but a scapulary. On the circlet of the crown was written in
+relief:
+
+        "Cueur de vertus orné
+         Dignement couronné."
+
+And on the box beneath one read:
+
+  "En ce petit vaisseau, de fin or pur et munde,
+   Repose un plus grand cueur que oncque dame eut au monde.
+   Anne fut le nom d'elle, en France deux fois Royne
+
+          *       *       *       *       *
+
+   Et ceste parte terrestre en grand deuil nos demure.
+
+            IX. JANVIER M.V.XIII."
+
+In one respect only has Nantes suffered through the march of time. Its
+magnificent Quai de la Fosse has disappeared, a long façade which a
+hundred or more years ago was bordered by the palatial dwellings of the
+great ship-owners of the Nantes of a former generation. The whole,
+immediately facing the river where formerly swung many ships at anchor,
+has disappeared entirely to make way for the railway.
+
+[Illustration: _ENVIRONS OF NANTES_]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The islands of the Loire opposite Nantes are an echo of the life of the
+metropolis itself. The Ile Feydeau is monumental, the Ile Gloriette
+hustling and nervous with "_affaires_," and Prairie-au-Duc busy with
+industries of all sorts.
+
+Couëron, below Nantes on the right bank, is sombre with gray walls
+surrounding its numberless factories, and chimney-stacks belching forth
+clouds of dense smoke. Behind are great walls of chalky-white rock
+crowned with verdure. Nearly opposite is the little town of Le Pellerin
+graciously seated on the river's bank and marking the lower limit of the
+Loire Nantaise.
+
+Another hill, belonging to the domain of Bois-Tillac and La Martinière,
+where was born Fouché, the future Duc d'Otranta, comes to view, and the
+basin of the Loire enlarges into the estuary, and all at once one finds
+himself in the true "Loire Maritime."
+
+At Martinière is the mouth of the Canal Maritime à la Loire, which, from
+Paimboeuf to Le Pellerin, is used by all craft ascending the river to
+Nantes, drawing more than four metres of water.
+
+At the entrance of the Acheneau is the Canal de Buzay, which connects
+that stream with the more ambitious Loire, and makes of the Lac de Grand
+Lieu a public domain, instead of a private property as claimed by the
+"marquis" who holds in terror all who would fish or shoot over its
+waters. All this immediate region formerly belonged to the monks of the
+ancient Abbey of Buzay, and it was they who originally cut the waterway
+through to the Loire. About half-way in its length are the ruins of the
+ancient monastery, clustered about the tower of its old church. It is a
+most romantically sad monument, and for that very reason its grouping,
+on the bank of the busy canal, suggests in a most impressive manner the
+passing of all great works.
+
+The prosperity of Nantes as a deep-sea port is of long standing, but
+recent improvements have increased all this to a hitherto unthought-of
+extent. Progress has been continuous, and now Nantes has become, like
+Rouen, a great deep-water port, one of the important seaports of France,
+the realization of a hope ever latent in the breast of the Nantais since
+the days and disasters of the Edict and its revocation.
+
+Below Nantes, in the actual "Loire Maritime," the aspect of all things
+changes and the green and luxuriant banks give way to sand-dunes and
+flat, marshy stretches, as salty as the sea itself. This gives rise to a
+very considerable development of the salt industry which at Bourg de
+Batz is the principal, if not the sole, means of livelihood.
+
+St. Nazaire, the real deep-water port of Nantes, dates from the
+fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when it was known as Port Nazaire. It
+is a progressive and up-to-date seaport of some thirty-five thousand
+souls, but it has no appeal for the tourist unless he be a lover of
+great smoky steamships and all the paraphernalia of longshore life.
+
+Pornichet, a "_station de bains de mer très fréquentée_;" Batz, with its
+salt-works; Le Croisic, with its curious waterside church, and the old
+walled town of Guérande bring one to the mouth of the Loire. The rest is
+the billowy western ocean whose ebb and flow brings fresh breezes and
+tides to the great cities of the estuary and makes possible that
+prosperity with which they are so amply endowed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+SOUTH OF THE LOIRE
+
+
+The estuary of the Loire belongs both to Brittany and to the Vendée,
+though, as a matter-of-fact, the southern bank, opposite Nantes, formed
+a part of the ancient Pays de Retz, one of the old seigneuries of
+Bretagne.
+
+It was Henri de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz, who was the bitter rival of
+Mazarin. French historians have told us that when the regency under Anne
+of Austria began, Mazarin, who had been secretary to the terrible
+Richelieu, was just coming into his power. He was a subtle, insidious
+Italian, plodding and patient, but false as a spring-time rainbow. Gondi
+was bold, liberal, and independent, a mover of men and one able to take
+advantage of any turn of the wind, a statesman, and a great
+reformer,--or he would have been had he but full power. It was Cromwell
+who said that De Retz was the only man in Europe who saw through his
+plans.
+
+Gondi had entered the church, but he had no talents for it. His life
+was free, too free even for the times, it would appear, for, though he
+was ordained cardinal, it was impossible for him to supplant Mazarin in
+the good graces of the court. As he himself had said that he preferred
+to be a great leader of a party rather than a partisan of royalty, he
+was perhaps not so very greatly disappointed that he was not able to
+supplant the wily Italian successor of Richelieu in the favour of the
+queen regent. Gondi was able to control the parliament, however, and,
+for a time, it was unable to carry through anything against his will.
+Mazarin rose to power at last, barricaded the streets of Paris, and
+decided to exile Gondi--as being the too popular hero of the people.
+Gondi knew of the edict, but stuck out to the last, saying: "To-morrow,
+I, Henri de Gondi, before midday, will be master of Paris." Noon came,
+and he _was_ master of Paris, but as he was still Archbishop-Coadjutor
+of Paris his hands were tied in more ways than one, and the plot for his
+supremacy over Mazarin, "the plunderer," fell through.
+
+The whole neighbouring region south of the Loire opposite Nantes, the
+ancient Pays de Retz, is unfamiliar to tourists in general, and for that
+reason it has an unexpected if not a superlative charm. It was the
+bloodiest of the battle-grounds of the Vendean wars, and, though its
+monumental remains are not as numerous or as imposingly beautiful as
+those in many other parts, there is an interest about it all which is as
+undying as is that of the most ornate or magnificent château or
+fortress-peopled land that ever existed.
+
+Not a corner of this land but has seen bloody warfare in all its
+grimness and horror, from the days when Clisson was pillaged by the
+Normans in the ninth century, to the guerilla warfare of the Vendean
+republicans in the eighteenth century. The advent of the railway has
+changed much of the aspect of this region and brought a
+twentieth-century civilization up to the very walls of the ruins of
+Clisson and Maulévrier, the latter one of the many châteaux of this
+region which were ruined by the wars of Stofflet, who, at the head of
+the insurgents, obliged the nobility to follow the peasants in their
+uprising.
+
+Now and then, in these parts, one comes upon a short length of railway
+line not unlike that at which our forefathers marvelled. The line may be
+of narrow gauge or it may not, but almost invariably the two or three
+so-called carriages are constructed in the style (or lack of style) of
+the old stage-coach, and they roll along in much the same lumbering
+fashion. The locomotive itself is a thing to be wondered at. It is a
+pigmy in size, but it makes the commotion of a modern decapod, or one of
+those great flyers which pull the Southern Express on the main line via
+Poitiers and Angoulême, not fifty kilometres away.
+
+There is a little tract of land lying just south of the Loire below
+Angers which is known as "le Bocage Vendéen." One leaves the Loire at
+Chalonnes and, by a series of gentle inclines, reaches the plateau where
+sits the town of Cholet, the very centre of the region, and a town whose
+almost only industry is the manufacture of pocket-handkerchiefs.
+
+The aspect of the Loire has changed rapidly and given way to a more
+vigorous and varied topography; but, for all that, Cholet and the
+surrounding country depend entirely upon the great towns of the Loire
+for their intercourse with the still greater markets beyond. Like
+Angers, Cholet and all the neighbouring villages are slate-roofed, with
+only an occasional red tile to give variety to the otherwise gray and
+sombre outlook.
+
+_En route_ from Chalonnes one passes Chemillé almost the only
+market-town of any size in the district. It is very curious, with its
+Romanesque church and its old houses distributed around an amphitheatre,
+like the _loges_ in an opera-house.
+
+This is the very centre of the Bocage, where, in Revolutionary times,
+the Republican armies so frequently fought with the bands of Vendean
+fanatics.
+
+The houses of Cholet are well built, but always with that grayness and
+sadness of tone which does not contribute to either brilliancy of aspect
+or gaiety of disposition. Save the grand street which traverses the town
+from east to west, the streets are narrow and uncomfortable; but to make
+up for all this there are hotels and cafés as attractive and as
+comfortable as any establishments of the kind to be found in any of the
+smaller cities of provincial France.
+
+The handkerchief industry is very considerable, no less than six great
+establishments devoting themselves to the manufacture.
+
+Cholet is one of the greatest cattle markets, if not the greatest, in
+the land. The farmers of the surrounding country buy _boeufs maigres_ in
+the southwest and centre of France and transform them into good fat
+cattle which in every way rival what is known in England as "best
+English." This is accomplished cheaply and readily by feeding them with
+cabbage stalks.
+
+On Saturdays, on the Champ de Foire, the aspect is most animated, and
+any painter who is desirous of emulating Rosa Bonheur's "Horse Fair"
+(painted at the great cattle market of Bernay, in Normandy) cannot find
+a better vantage-ground than here, for one may see gathered together
+nearly all the cattle types of Poitou, the Vendée, Anjou, Bas Maine, and
+of Bretagne Nantaise.
+
+In earlier days Cholet was far more sad than it is to-day; but there
+remain practically no souvenirs of its past. The wars of the Vendée
+left, it is said, but three houses standing when the riot and bloodshed
+was over. Two of the greatest battles of this furious struggle were
+fought here.
+
+On the site of the present railroad station Kleber and Moreau fought the
+royalists, and the heroic Bonchamps received the wound of which he died
+at St. Florent, just after he had put into execution the order of
+release for five thousand Republican prisoners. This was on the 17th
+October, 1793. Five months later Stofflet possessed himself of the town
+and burned it nearly to the ground. Not much is left to remind one of
+these eventful times, save the public garden, which was built on the
+site of the old château.
+
+[Illustration: _Donjon of the Château de Clisson_]
+
+La Moine, a tiny and most picturesque river, still flows under the
+antique arches of the old bridge, which was held in turn by the Vendeans
+and the Republicans.
+
+To the west of Cholet runs another line of railway, direct through the
+heart of the Sèvre-Nantaise, one of those _petits pays_ whose old-time
+identity is now all but lost, even more celebrated in bloody annals than
+is that region lying to the eastward. Here was a country entirely sacked
+and impoverished. Mortagne was completely ruined, though it has yet left
+substantial remains of its fourteenth and fifteenth century château.
+Torfou was the scene of a bloody encounter between the Vendean hordes
+and Kleber's two thousand _héroiques de Mayence_. The able Vendean
+chiefs who opposed him, Bonchamps, D'Elbée, and Lescure, captured his
+artillery and massacred all the wounded.
+
+At the extremity of this line was the stronghold of Clisson, which
+itself finally succumbed, but later gave birth to a new town to take the
+place of that which perished in the Vendean convulsion.
+
+Throughout this region, in the valleys of the Moine and the
+Sèvre-Nantaise, the rocks and the verdure and the admirable, though ill
+preserved, ruins, all combine to produce as unworldly an atmosphere as
+it is possible to conceive within a short half-hundred kilometres of the
+busy world-port of Nantes and the great commercial city of Angers. One
+continually meets with ruins that recall the frightful struggle of
+Revolutionary times; hence the impression that one gets from a ramble
+through or about this region is well-nigh unique in all France.
+
+The coast southward, nearly to La Rochelle, is a vast series of shallow
+gulfs and salt marshes which form weirdly wonderful outlooks for the
+painter who inclines to vast expanses of sea and sky.
+
+Pornic is a remarkably picturesque little seaside village, where the
+inflowing and outflowing tides of the Bay of Biscay temper the southern
+sun and make of it--or would make of it if the tide of fashion had but
+set that way--a watering-place of the first rank.
+
+It is an entrancing bit of coast-line which extends for a matter of
+fifty kilometres south of the juncture of the Loire with the ocean, with
+an aspect at times severe with a waste of sand, and again gracious with
+verdure and tree-clad and rocky shores.
+
+The great Bay of Bourgneuf and its enfolding peninsula of Noirmoutier
+form an artist's sketching-ground that is not yet overrun with mere
+dabblers in paint and pencil, and is accordingly charming.
+
+The Bay of Bourgneuf has most of the characteristics of the Morbihan,
+without that severity and sternness which impress one so deeply when on
+the shores of the great Breton inland sea.
+
+The little town of Bourgneuf-en-Retz, with its little port of Colletis,
+is by no means a city of any artistic worth; indeed it is nearly bare of
+most of those things which attract travellers who are lovers of old or
+historic shrines; but it is a delightful stopping-place for all that,
+provided one does not want to go farther afield, to the very tip of the
+Vendean "land's end" at Noirmoutier across the bay.
+
+Three times a day a steamer makes the journey to the little island town
+which is a favourite place of pilgrimage for the Nantais during the
+summer months. Once it was not even an island, but a peninsula, and not
+so very long ago either. The alluvial deposits of the Loire made it in
+the first place, and the sea, backing in from the north, made a strait
+which just barely separates it to-day from the mainland.
+
+On this out-of-the-way little island there are still some remains of
+prehistoric monuments, the dolmen of Chiron-Tardiveau, the menhirs of
+Pinaizeaux and Pierre-Levée, and some others. In the speech of the
+inhabitants the isle is known as Noirmoutier, a contraction of "_Nigrum
+Monasterium_," a name derived from the monastery founded here in the
+seventh century by St. Philibert.
+
+In the town is an old château, the ancient fortress-refuge of the Abbé
+of Her. It is a great square structure flanked at the angles with little
+towers, of which two are roofed, one uncovered, and the fourth
+surmounted by a heliograph for communicating with the Ile de Yeu and the
+Pointe de Chenoulin. The view from the heights of these château towers
+is fascinating beyond compare, particularly at sundown on a summer's
+evening, when the golden rays of the sinking sun burnish the coast of
+the Vendée and cast lingering shadows from the roof-tops and walls of
+the town below. To the northwest one sees the Ilot du Pilier, with its
+lighthouse and its tiny coast-guard fortress; to the north is clearly
+seen Pornic and the neighbouring coasts of the Pays de Retz and of
+Bouin with its encircling dikes,--all reminiscent of a little Holland.
+To the south is the narrow neck of Fromentin, the jagged Marguerites,
+which lift their fangs wholly above the surface of the sea only at low
+water, and the towering cliffs of the Ile de Yeu, which rise above the
+mists.
+
+Just south of the Loire, between Nantes and Bourgneuf, is the Lac de
+Grand-Lieu, in connection with which one may hear a new rendering of an
+old legend. At one time, it is said, it was bordered by a city, whose
+inhabitants, for their vices, brought down the vengeance of heaven upon
+them, even though they cried out to the powers on high to avert the
+threatened flood which rose up out of the lake and overflowed the banks
+and swallowed the city and all evidences of its past. In this last lies
+the flaw in the legend; but, like the history of Sodom, of the Ville
+d'Ys in Bretagne, and of Ars in Dauphiné, tradition has kept it alive.
+
+This wicked place of the Loire valley was called _Herbauge_ or
+_Herbadilla_, and, from St. Philibert at the southern extremity of the
+lake, one looks out to-day on a considerable extent of shallow water,
+which is as murderous-looking and as uncanny as a swamp of the
+Everglades.
+
+From the central basin flow two tiny rivers, the Ognon and the Boulogne,
+which are charming enough in their way, as also is the route by highroad
+from Nantes, but the gray monotonous lake, across which the wind
+whistles in a veritable tempest for more than six months of the year, is
+most depressing.
+
+There are various hamlets, with some pretence at advanced civilization
+about them, scattered around the borders of the lake, St. Leger, St.
+Mars, St. Aignan, St. Lumine, Bouaye, and La Chevrolière; but in the
+whole number you will not get a daily paper that is less than
+forty-eight hours old, and nothing but the most stale news of happenings
+in the outside world ever dribbles through. St. Philibert is the
+metropolis of these parts, and it has no competitors for the honour.
+
+At the entrance of the Ognon is the little village of Passay, built at
+the foot of a low cliff which dominates all this part of the lake. It is
+a picturesque little village of low houses and red roofs, with a little
+sandy beach in the foreground, through which little rivulets of soft
+water trickle and go to make up the greater body.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+BERRY AND GEORGE SAND'S COUNTRY
+
+
+Whether one enters Berry through the valley of the Cher or the Indre or
+through the gateway of Sancerre in the mid-Loire, the impression is much
+the same. The historic province of Berry resounds again and again with
+the echoes of its past, and no province adjacent to the Loire is more
+prolific in the things that interest the curious, and none is so little
+known as the old province which was purchased for the Crown by Philippe
+I. in 1101.
+
+[Illustration: BERRY (MAP)]
+
+With the interior of the province, that portion which lies away from
+the river valleys, this book has little to do, though the traveller
+through the region would hardly omit the episcopal city of Bourges, and
+its great transeptless cathedral, with its glorious front of quintupled
+portals. With the cathedral may well be coupled that other great
+architectural monument, the Maison de Jacques Coeur. At Paris one is
+asked, "_Avez-vous vu le Louvre?_" but at Bourges it is always,
+"_Êtes-vous allé à Jacques Coeur?_" even before one is asked if he has
+seen the cathedral.
+
+From the hill which overlooks Sancerre, and forms a foundation for the
+still existing tower of the château belonging to the feudal Counts of
+Sancerre, one gets one of the most wonderfully wide-spread views in all
+the Loire valley. The height and its feudal tower stand isolated, like a
+rock rising from the ocean. From Cosne and beyond, on the north, to La
+Charité, on the south, is one vast panorama of vineyard, wheat-field,
+and luxuriant river-bottom. At a lesser distance, on the right bank, is
+the line of the railroad which threads its way like a serpent around the
+bends of the river and its banks.
+
+Below the hill of Sancerre is a huge overgrown hamlet--and yet not large
+enough to be called a village--surrounding a most curious church (St.
+Satur), without either nave or apse. The old Abbey of St. Satur once
+possessed all the lands in the neighbourhood that were not in the actual
+possession of the Counts of Sancerre, and was a power in the land, as
+were most of the abbeys throughout France. The church was begun in
+1360-70, on a most elaborate plan, so extensive in fact (almost
+approaching that great work at La Charité) that it has for ever remained
+uncompleted. The history of this little churchly suburb of Sancerre has
+been most interesting. The great Benedictine church was never finished
+and has since come to be somewhat of a ruin. In 1419 the English sacked
+the abbey and stole its treasure to the very last precious stone or
+piece of gold. A dozen flatboats were anchored or moored to the banks of
+the river facing the abbey, and the monks were transported thither and
+held for a ransom of a thousand crowns each. As everything had already
+been taken by their captors, the monks vainly protested that they had no
+valuables with which to meet the demand, and accordingly they were bound
+hand and foot and thrown into the river, to the number of fifty-two,
+eight only escaping with their lives. A bloody memory indeed for a fair
+land which now blossoms with poppies and roses.
+
+Sancerre, in spite of the etymology of its name (which comes down from
+Roman times--Sacrum Cæsari), is of feudal origin. Its fortress, and the
+Comté as well, were under the suzerainty of the Counts of Champagne, and
+it was the stronghold and refuge of many a band of guerilla warriors,
+adventurers, and marauding thieves.
+
+At the end of the twelfth century a certain Comte de Sancerre, at the
+head of a coterie of bandits called Brabaçons, marched upon Bourges and
+invaded the city, killing all who crossed their path, and firing all
+isolated dwellings and many even in the heart of the city.
+
+Sancerre was many times besieged, the most memorable event of this
+nature being the attack of the royalists in 1573 against the Frondeurs
+who were shut up in the town. The defenders were without artillery, but
+so habituated were they to the use of the _fronde_ that for eight months
+they were able to hold the city against the foe. From this the _fronde_
+came to be known as the "_arquebuse de Sancerre_."
+
+[Illustration: _La Tour, Sancerre_]
+
+Sancerre is to-day a ruined town, its streets unequal and tortuous, all
+up and down hill and blindly rambling off into _culs-de-sac_ which
+lead nowhere. Above it all is the fine château, built in a modern day
+after the Renaissance manner, of Mlle. de Crussol, proudly seated on the
+very crest of the hill. Within the grounds, the only part of the domain
+which is free to the public, are the ruins of the famous citadel which
+was bought by St. Louis, in 1226, from the Comte Thibaut. The only
+portion of this feudal stronghold which remains to-day is known as the
+"Tour des Fiefs."
+
+One may enter the grounds and, in the company of a _concierge_, ascend
+to the platform of this lone tower, whence a wonderful view of the broad
+"_ruban lumineux_" of the Loire spreads itself out as if fluttering in
+the wind, northward and southward, as far as the eye can reach. Beside
+it one sees another line of blue water, as if it were a strand detached
+from the broader band. This is the Canal Latéral de la Loire, one of
+those inland waterways of France which add so much to the prosperity of
+the land.
+
+Above Sancerre is Gien, another gateway to Berry, through which the
+traveller from Paris through the Orléannais is bound to pass.
+
+[Illustration: _Château de Gien_]
+
+At a distance of five kilometres or more, coming from the north, one
+sees the towers of the château of Gien piercing the horizon. The
+château is a most curious affair, with its chainbuilt blocks of stone,
+and its red and black--or nearly black--_brique_, crossed and recrossed
+in quaint geometrical designs. It was built in 1494 for Dame Anne de
+Beaujeau, who was regent of the kingdom immediately after the death of
+Charles VIII. This building replaced another of a century before, built
+by Jean-sans-Peur, where was celebrated the marriage of his daughter
+with the Comte de Guise. Gien's château, too, may be said to be a
+landmark on Jeanne d'Arc's route to martyrdom and fame, for here she
+made her supplication to Charles VII. to march on Reims. In
+Charlemagnian times this old castle had a predecessor, which, however,
+was more a fortress than a habitable château; but all remains of this
+had apparently disappeared before the later structure made its
+appearance. Louis XIV. and Anne of Austria, regent, held a fugitive,
+impoverished court in this château, and heard with fear and trembling
+the cannon-shots of the armies of Turenne and Condé at Bleneau, five
+leagues distant.
+
+At Nevers or at La Charité one does not get the view of the Loire that
+he would like, for, in one case, the waterway is masked by a row of
+houses, and in the other by a series of walled gardens; but at Gien,
+where everything is splendidly theatrical, there is a tree-bordered quay
+and innumerable examples of those coquettish little houses of brick
+which are not beautiful, but which set off many a French riverside
+landscape as nothing else will.
+
+In Gien's main street there are a multitude of rare mellowed old houses
+with sculptured fronts and high gables. This street twists and turns
+until it reaches the old stone and brick château, with its harmoniously
+coloured walls, making a veritable symphony of colour. Each turn in this
+old high-street of Gien gives a new vista of mediævalism quite
+surprising and eerielike, as fantastic as the weird pictures of Doré.
+
+Gien and its neighbour Briare are chiefly noted commercially for their
+pottery. Gien makes crockery ware, and Briare inundates the entire world
+with those little porcelain buttons which one buys in every land.
+
+Crossing the Sologne and entering Berry from the capital of the
+Orléannais, or coming out from Tours by the valley of the Cher, one
+comes upon the little visited and out-of-the-way château of Valençay, in
+the charming dainty valley of the Nahon.
+
+There is some reason for its comparative neglect by the tourist, for it
+is on a cross-country railway line which demands quite a full day of
+one's time to get there from Tours and get away again to the next centre
+of attraction, and if one comes by the way of the Orléannais, he must be
+prepared to give at least three days to the surrounding region.
+
+This is the gateway to George Sand's country, but few English-speaking
+tourists ever get here, so it may be safely called unknown.
+
+It is marvellous how France abounds in these little corners all but
+unknown to strangers, even though they lie not far off the beaten track.
+The spirit of exploration and travel in unknown parts, except the Arctic
+regions, Thibet, and the Australian desert, seems to be dying out.
+
+The château of Valençay was formerly inhabited by Talleyrand, after he
+had quitted the bishopric of Autun for politics. It is seated proudly
+upon a vast terrace overlooking one of the most charming bits of the
+valley of the Nahon, and is of a thoroughly typical Renaissance type,
+built by the great Philibert Delorme for Jacques d'Étampes in 1540, and
+only acquired by the minister of Napoleon and Louis XVIII. in 1805.
+
+The architect, in spite of the imposing situation, is not seen at his
+best here, for in no way does it compare with his masterwork at Anet, or
+the Tuileries. The expert recognizes also the hands of two other
+architects, one of the Blaisois and the other of Anjou, who in some
+measure transformed the edifice in the reign of François I.
+
+The enormous donjon,--if it is a donjon,--with its great, round corner
+tower with a dome above, which looks like nothing so much as an
+observatory, is perhaps the outgrowth of an earlier accessory, but on
+the whole the edifice is fully typical of the Renaissance.
+
+The court unites the two widely different terminations in a fashion more
+or less approaching symmetry, but it is only as a whole that the effect
+is highly pleasing.
+
+Beyond a _balustrade à jour_ is the Jardin de la Duchesse, communicating
+with the park by a graceful bridge over an ornamental water. In general
+the apartments are furnished in the style of the First Empire, an epoch
+memorable in the annals of Valençay.
+
+[Illustration: _Château de Valençay_]
+
+By the orders of Napoleon many royalties and ambassadors here received
+hospitality, and in 1808-14 it became a gilded cage--or a "golden
+prison," as the French have it--for the Prince of the Asturias,
+afterward Ferdinand VII. of Spain, who consoled himself during his
+captivity by constructing wolf-traps in the garden and planting
+cauliflowers in the great urns and vases with which the terrace was set
+out.
+
+There is a great portrait gallery here, where is gathered a collection
+of portraits in miniature of all the sovereigns who treated with
+Talleyrand during his ministerial reign, among others one of the Sultan
+Selim, painted from life, but in secret, since the reproduction of the
+human form is forbidden by the Koran.
+
+In the Maison de Charité, in the town, beneath the pavement of the
+chapel, is found the tomb of the family of Talleyrand, where are
+interred the remains of Talleyrand and of Marie Thérèse Poniatowska,
+sister of the celebrated King of Poland who served in the French army in
+1806. In this chapel also is a rare treasure in the form of a chalice
+enriched with precious stones, originally belonging to Pope Pius VI.,
+the gift of the Princess Poniatowska.
+
+The Pavillon de la Garenne,--what in England would be called a
+"shooting-box,"--a rendezvous for the chase, built by Talleyrand, is
+some distance from the château on the edge of the delightful little
+Forêt de Gatine.
+
+Varennes, just above Valençay, is thought by the average traveller
+through the long gallery of charms in the château country to be wholly
+unworthy of his attention. As a matter of fact, it does not possess much
+of historical or artistic interest, though its fine old church dates
+from the twelfth century.
+
+Ascending the Cher from its juncture with the Loire, one passes a number
+of interesting places. St. Aignan, with its magnificent Gothic and
+Renaissance château; Selles; Romorantin, a dead little spot, dear as
+much for its sleepiness as anything else; Vierzon, a rich, industrial
+town where they make locomotives, automobiles, and mechanical hay-rakes,
+copying the most approved American models; and Mehun-sur-Yevre, all
+follow in rapid succession.
+
+Mehun-sur-Yevre, which to most is only a name and to many not even that,
+is possessed of two architectural monuments, a grand ruin of a Gothic
+fortress of the time of Charles VII. and a feudal gateway of two great
+rounded cone-roofed towers, bound by a ligature through which a
+port-cullis formerly slid up and down like an act-drop in a theatre.
+
+[Illustration: GATEWAY OF MEHUN-SUR-YEVRE]
+
+Wonderfully impressive all this, and the more so because these
+magnificent relics of other days are unspoiled and unrestored.
+
+[Illustration: _Le Carrior Dore, Romorantin_]
+
+Charles VII. was by no means constant in his devotions, it will be
+recalled, though he seems to have been seriously enamoured of Agnes
+Sorel--at any rate while she lived. Afterward he speedily surrounded
+himself with a galaxy of "_belles demoiselles vêtues comme reines_."
+They followed him everywhere, and he spent all but his last sou upon
+them, as did some of his successors.
+
+One day Charles VII. took refuge in the strong towers of the château of
+Mehun-sur-Yevre, which he himself had built and which he had frequently
+made his residence. Here he died miserable and alone,--it is said by
+history, of hunger. Thus another dark chapter in the history of kings
+and queens was brought to a close.
+
+If one has the time and so desires, he may follow the Indre, the next
+confluent of the Loire south of the Cher, from Loches to "George Sand's
+country," as literary pilgrims will like to think of the pleasant
+valleys of the ancient province of Berry.
+
+The history of the province before and since Philippe I. united it with
+the Crown of France was vivid enough to make it fairly well known, but
+on the whole it has been very little travelled. It is essentially a
+pastoral region, and, remembering George Sand and her works, one has
+refreshing memories of the idyls of its prairies and the beautiful
+valleys of the Indre and the Cher, which join their waters with the
+Loire near Tours.
+
+If one would love Berry as one loves a greater and more famous haunt of
+a famous author, and would prepare in advance for the pleasure to be
+received from threading its highways and byways, he should read those
+"_petits chefs-d'oeuvre_ of sentiment and rustic poesy", the romances of
+George Sand. If he has done this, he will find almost at every turning
+some long familiar spot or a peasant who seems already an old friend.
+
+Châteauroux is the real gateway to the country of George Sand.
+
+Nohant is the native place of the great authoress, Madame Dudevant, whom
+the world best knows as George Sand; a little by-corner of the great
+busy world, loved by all who know it. Far out in the open country is the
+little station at which one alights if he comes by rail. Opposite is a
+"_petite route_" which leads directly to the banks of the Indre, where
+it joins the highway to La Châtre.
+
+Nohant itself, as a dainty old-world village, is divine. Has not George
+Sand expressed her love of it as fervidly as did Marie Antoinette for
+the Trianon? The French call it a "_bon et honnête petit village
+berrichon_." Nude of artifice, it is deliciously unspoiled. A delightful
+old church, with a curious wooden porch and a parvise as rural as could
+possibly be, not even a cobblestone detracting from its rustic beauty,
+is the principal thing which strikes one's eye as he enters the village.
+Chickens and geese wander about, picking here and there on the very
+steps of the church, and no one says them nay.
+
+The house of George Sand is just to the right of the church, within
+whose grounds one sees also the pavilion known to her as the "_théâtre
+des marionettes_."
+
+In a corner of the poetic little cemetery at Nohant, one sees among the
+humble crosses emerging from the midst of the verdure, all
+weather-beaten and moss-grown, a plain, simple stone, green with mossy
+dampness, which marks the spot where reposes all that was mortal of
+George Sand. Here, in the midst of this land which she so loved, she
+still lives in the memory of all; at the house of the well-lettered for
+her abounding talent--second only to that of Balzac--and in the homes
+of the peasants for her generous fellowship.
+
+Through her ancestry she could and did claim relationship with Charles
+X. and Louis XVIII.; but her life among her people had nought of
+pretence in it. She was born among the roses and to the sound of music,
+and she lies buried amid all the rusticity and simple charm of what may
+well be called the greenwood of her native land.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+THE UPPER LOIRE
+
+
+The gateway to the upper valley may be said to be through the Nivernais,
+and the capital city of the old province, at the juncture of the Allier
+and the Loire.
+
+After leaving Gien and Briare, the Loire passes through quite the most
+truly picturesque landscape of its whole course, the great height of
+Sancerre dominating the view for thirty miles or more in any direction.
+
+Cosne is the first of the towns of note of the Nivernais, and is a gay
+little bourg of eight or nine thousand souls who live much the same life
+that their grandfathers lived before them. As a place of residence it
+might prove dull to the outsider, but as a house of call for the wearied
+and famished traveller, Cosne, with its charming situation, its
+tree-bordered quays, and its Hôtel du Grand Cerf, is most attractive.
+
+[Illustration: _Église S. Aignan, Cosne_]
+
+Pouilly-sur-Loire is next, with three thousand or more inhabitants
+wholly devoted to wine-growing, Pouilly being to the upper river what
+Vouvray is to Touraine. It is not a tourist point in any sense, nor is
+it very picturesque or attractive.
+
+Some one has said that the pleasure of contemplation is never so great
+as when one views a noble monument, a great work of art, or a charming
+French town for the first time. Never was it more true indeed than of
+the two dissimilar towns of the upper Loire, Nevers, and La
+Charité-sur-Loire. The old towers of La Charité rise up in the sunlight
+and give that touch to the view which marks it at once as of the
+Nivernais, which all archæologists tell one is Italian and not French,
+in motive as well as sentiment.
+
+It is remarkable, perhaps, that the name La Charité is so seldom met
+with in the accounts of English travellers in France, for in France it
+is invariably considered to be one of the most picturesque and famous
+spots in all mid-France.
+
+It is an unprogressive, sleepy old place, with streets mostly unpaved,
+whose five thousand odd souls, known roundabout as Les Caritates, live
+apparently in the past.
+
+[Illustration: _Pouilly-sur-Loire_]
+
+Below, a stone's throw from the windows of your inn, lies the Loire,
+its broad, blue bosom scarcely ruffled, except where it slowly eddies
+around the piers of the two-century-old _dos d'ane_ bridge; a lovely old
+structure, built, it is recorded, by the regiment known as the "Royal
+Marine" in the early years of the eighteenth century.
+
+The town is terraced upon the very edge of the river, with views up and
+down which are unusually lovely for even these parts. Below, almost
+within sight, is Nevers, while above are the heights of Sancerre, still
+visible in the glowing western twilight.
+
+Beyond the bridge rises a giant column of blackened stone, festooned by
+four ranges of arcades, the sole remaining relic of the ancient church
+standing alone before the present structure which now serves the
+purposes of the church in La Charité.
+
+The walls which surrounded the ancient town have disappeared or have
+been built into house walls, but the effect is still of a self-contained
+old burg.
+
+In the fourteenth century, during the Hundred Years' War, the town was
+frequently besieged. In 1429 Jeanne d'Arc, coming from her success at
+St. Pierre-le-Moutier, here met with practically a defeat, as she was
+able to sustain the siege for only but a month, when she withdrew.
+
+La Charité played an important part in the religious wars of the
+sixteenth century, and Protestants and Catholics became its occupants in
+turn. Virtually La Charité-sur-Loire became a Protestant stronghold in
+spite of its Catholic foundation.
+
+In 1577 it bade defiance to the royal arms of the Duc d'Alençon, as is
+recounted by the following lines:
+
+        "Ou allez-vous, hélas! furieux insensés
+         Cherchant de Charité la proie et la ruine,
+         Qui sans l'ombre de Foy abbatre la pensez!
+
+                *       *       *       *       *
+
+         Le canon ne peut rien contre la Charité,
+         Plus tot vous détruira la peste et la famine,
+         Car jamais sans Foy n'aurez la Charité."
+
+In spite of this defiance it capitulated, and, on the 15th of May, at
+the château of Plessis-les-Tours on the Loire, Henri III. celebrated the
+victory of his brother by a fête "_ultra-galante_," where, in place of
+the usual pages, there were employed "_des dames vestues en habits
+d'hommes...._" Surely a fantastic and immodest manner of celebrating a
+victory against religious opponents; but, like many of the customs of
+the time, the fête was simply a fanatical debauch.
+
+[Illustration: _Porte du Croux, Nevers_]
+
+At Nevers one meets the Canal du Nivernais, which recalls Daudet's "La
+Belle Nivernaise" to all readers of fiction, who may accept it without
+question as a true and correct guide to the region, its manners, and
+customs.
+
+The chief characteristic of Nevers is that it is Italian in nearly, if
+not quite all, its aspects; its monuments and its history. Its ancient
+ducal château, part of which dates from the feudal epoch, was the abode
+of the Italian dukes who came in the train of Mazarin, the last of whom
+was the nephew of the cardinal, "who himself was French if his speech
+was not."
+
+Nevers has also a charming Gothic cathedral (St. Cyr) with a double
+Romanesque apse (in itself a curiosity seldom, if ever, seen out of
+Germany), and, in addition to the cathedral, can boast of St. Etienne,
+one of the most precious of all the Romanesque churches of France.
+
+The old walls at Nevers are not very complete, but what remain are
+wonderfully expressive. The Tour Gouguin and the Tour St. Eloi are
+notable examples, but they are completely overshadowed by the Porte du
+Croux, which is one of the best examples of the city gates which were so
+plentiful in the France of another day.
+
+Above Nevers, Decize, Bourbon-Lancy, Gilly, and Digoin are mere names
+which mean nothing to the traveller by rail. They are busy towns of
+central France, where the bustle of their daily lives is of quite a
+different variety from that of the Ile de France, of Normandy, or of the
+Pas de Calais.
+
+From Digoin to Roanne the Loire is followed by the Canal Latéral. Roanne
+is a not very pleasing, overgrown town which has become a veritable
+_ville des ouvriers_, all of whom are engaged in cloth manufacture.
+
+Virtually, then, Roanne is not much more than a guide-post on the route
+to Le Puy--"the most picturesque place in the world"--and the
+wonderfully impressive region of the Cevennes and the Vivaris, where
+shepherds guard their flocks amid the solitudes.
+
+Far above Le Puy, in a rocky gorge known as the Gerbier-de-Jonc, near
+Ste. Eulalie, in the Ardeche, rises the tiny Liger, which is the real
+source of the mighty Loire, that natural boundary which divides the
+north from the south and forms what the French geographers call "_la
+bassin centrale de France_."
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+  Abbeville, 107.
+
+  _Abd-el-Kader, Emir_, 165.
+
+  _Abelard_, 293.
+
+  _Absalom_, 281.
+
+  Acheneau, The, 298.
+
+  _Adams, John_, 124.
+
+  _Alaric_, 149.
+
+  _Alcuin, Abbé_, 206.
+
+  _Alençon, Ducs d'_, 195, 334.
+
+  _Alençon, Marguerite d'_, 97, 150, 151-152.
+
+  Allier, The, 330.
+
+  Amboise and Its Château, 3, 20, 82, 96, 100, 123, 130-131, 137, 140,
+    148-169, 172, 181, 186, 194, 249.
+
+  _Amboise, Family of_, 118, 120-122.
+
+  Amboise, Forêt d', 169.
+
+  Amiens, 210.
+
+  Ancenis and Its Château, 11, 21-23, 291.
+
+  _Andrelini, Fausto_, 66.
+
+  Anet, Château d', 107, 177, 322.
+
+  _Ange, Michel_, 208, 249.
+
+  Angers and Its Château, 7, 10-13, 15, 21-23, 40, 84, 275, 278,
+    280, 283-284, 286-290, 304, 308.
+
+  Angoulême, 194, 304.
+
+  _Angoulême, Isabeau d'_, 267.
+
+  _Angoulême, Jean d'_, 89.
+
+  _Angoulême, Louise de Savoie, Duchesse d'_ (See _Savoie,
+  Louise de_).
+
+  Anjou, 15, 26, 142, 161, 273, 274, 284, 289-290, 292, 306, 322.
+
+  _Anjou, Counts of_, 150, 193, 208, 232, 239, 267, 288.
+
+  _Anjou, Foulques Nerra, Comte d'_ (See _Foulques Nerra_).
+
+  _Anjou, Margaret of_, 280.
+
+  _Anne of Austria_, 301-302, 319.
+
+  Aquitaine, 18, 193.
+
+  _Arbrissel, Robert d'_, 263.
+
+  _Arc, Jeanne d'_, 202, 254-256, 258-260.
+
+  _Ardier, Paul_, 115.
+
+  Arques, Château d', 9.
+
+  _Aumale, Duc d'_, 165.
+
+  _Aussigny, Thibaut d'_, 48.
+
+  Authion, The, 13.
+
+  Autun, 321.
+
+  Auvergne, 15.
+
+  Auvers, 251.
+
+  Auxerre, 17, 119.
+
+  Avignon, 51, 260.
+
+  Azay-le-Rideau and Its Château, 10, 63, 140, 226, 238, 240-247.
+
+
+  Bacon, 40.
+
+  Ballon, 215.
+
+  _Balue, Cardinal_, 194, 196.
+
+  _Balzac, Honoré de_, 3, 6, 20, 128-129, 137-138, 143, 207-209,
+    234, 239, 329.
+
+  _Bardi, Comte de_, 108.
+
+  _Barre, De la_, 144, 240.
+
+  _Barry, Madame du_, 169, 215.
+
+  _Beaudoin, Jean_, 200.
+
+  _Beaufort, A._, 138.
+
+  Beaugency and Its Château, 9, 41, 48-53.
+
+  _Beaujeau, Anne de_, 319.
+
+  Beaulieu, 201-202.
+
+  Beauregard, Château de, 114-116.
+
+  Beauvron, The, 114.
+
+  _Becket_, 190.
+
+  _Bélier, Guillaume_, 258.
+
+  _Bellanger, Stanislas_, 135.
+
+  _Bellay Family, Du_, 5, 128, 234.
+
+  _Belleau, Remy_, 128.
+
+  _Beringhem, Henri de_, 245.
+
+  Bernay, 306.
+
+  _Bernier_, 57.
+
+  Berry, 7, 15, 56, 123, 313-314, 318, 320, 326-329.
+
+  _Berry, Counts of_, 150.
+
+  _Berry, Duchesse de_, 295.
+
+  _Berthelot, Gilles_, 244, 246.
+
+  _Berthier, Maréchal_, 108.
+
+  Beuvron, 87-88.
+
+  _Biencourt, Marquis de_, 246.
+
+  _Blacas, Comte de_, 247.
+
+  Blaisois, The, 52, 54, 56-84, 102, 123-124, 136, 148, 193, 322.
+
+  Bleneau, 319.
+
+  Blésois, The (_See_ Blaisois, The).
+
+  Blois and Its Château, 3, 9, 11, 20, 40, 52-54, 56-84, 88, 94-95, 98,
+    100, 107, 110-112, 116-117, 119, 123, 125-126, 136, 139, 149, 156,
+    160, 164, 167, 174, 184, 186, 194, 260, 284.
+
+  _Blois, Comtes de_, 57-59, 62, 84, 87, 98, 118.
+
+  Blois, Forêt de, 54.
+
+  _Blondel_, 99.
+
+  Bocage, The, 304-305.
+
+  _Bohier, Thomas_, 174, 182, 184-186.
+
+  Bois-Tillac, 298.
+
+  _Bolingbroke_, 42, 183.
+
+  _Bonchamps_, 306-307.
+
+  _Bonheur, Rosa_, 306.
+
+  Bonneventure, Château de, 250.
+
+  _Bontemps, Pierre_, 105.
+
+  Bordeaux, 133, 171, 203, 292.
+
+  _Bordeaux, Duc de_, 108.
+
+  _Bosseboeuf, Abbé_, 233.
+
+  Bouaye, 312.
+
+  Bouin, 311.
+
+  Boulogne, The, 312.
+
+  _Bourbon, Cardinal de_, 164.
+
+  _Bourbon, Renée de_, 264.
+
+  Bourbon-Lancy, 336.
+
+  Bourbonnais, 15.
+
+  Bourdaisière, Château de la, 169.
+
+  Bourg de Batz, 300.
+
+  Bourges, 15, 314, 316.
+
+  Bourgneuf-en-Retz, 309, 311.
+
+  Bourgogne, 4, 15, 142.
+
+  Bourgueil, 267.
+
+  _Bourré, Jean_, 233.
+
+  _Boyer_, 111.
+
+  Bracieux, 110.
+
+  Brain-sur-Allonnes, 269.
+
+  _Brantôme_, 101, 155, 157, 158.
+
+  Brenne, 135.
+
+  Bretagne, 15, 26, 35-36, 57, 192, 218, 284, 291-293, 301.
+
+  _Bretagne, Anne de_, 63, 97, 120, 168, 196, 209, 234,
+    236-238, 293, 296.
+
+  _Bretagne, Conan, Duc de_, 295.
+
+  _Bretagne, François II., Duc de_, 291, 294-296.
+
+  _Brézé, Pierre de_, 195.
+
+  Briare, 320, 330.
+
+  _Briçonnet, Cardinal_, 42.
+
+  _Brinvilliers_, 144.
+
+  Brittany (_See_ Bretagne).
+
+  _Broglie, Princesse de_, 120.
+
+  _Brosse, Pierre de_, 234.
+
+  Bruges, 282.
+
+  _Brunyer, Abel_, 80, 81.
+
+  _Buffon_, 61, 183.
+
+  _Bullion_, 119.
+
+  _Bussy d'Amboise, De_, 269.
+
+  Buzay, Abbey of, 299.
+
+  _Byron_, 138.
+
+
+  _Cæsar_, 18, 290.
+
+  Cahors, 260.
+
+  _Cail, M._, 270-272.
+
+  _Cain_, 251.
+
+  _Calixtus II._, 264.
+
+  Canal de Brest à Nantes, 24.
+
+  Canal de Buzay, 298.
+
+  Canal d'Orleans, 36-37.
+
+  Canal du Nivernaise, 17, 335.
+
+  Canal Lateral, 12, 17, 318, 336.
+
+  Canal Maritime, 298.
+
+  Candes, 268-270, 276.
+
+  _Castellane Family_, 250.
+
+  _Caumont, De_, 195.
+
+  _Cellini_, 152.
+
+  Chalonnes, 24, 304.
+
+  Chambord and Its Château, 2-3, 20, 53, 79, 82, 84, 86, 94-110, 123,
+    139, 174, 186, 243, 247-248.
+
+  _Chambord, Comte de_, 109.
+
+  Chambris, 10.
+
+  _Champagne, Counts of_, 316.
+
+  Champeigne, 135.
+
+  Champtocé, 24.
+
+  Chanteloup, 154, 169.
+
+  _Charlemagne_, 206.
+
+  _Charles I. (the Bald)_, 18, 193.
+
+  _Charles II. of England_, 82.
+
+  _Charles V., Emperor_, 130-131, 155, 194.
+
+  _Charles VI._, 257.
+
+  _Charles VII._, 150, 188-189, 194-195, 202, 233, 250, 254-256,
+    257-260, 268, 319, 324, 326.
+
+  _Charles VIII._, 45, 98, 130, 150, 165, 194-195, 234, 236, 238-239,
+    319.
+
+  _Charles IX._, 107, 122, 180.
+
+  _Charles X._, 329.
+
+  _Charles Martel_, 5.
+
+  _Charles the Bold of Burgundy_, 44.
+
+  Chartres, 22, 133.
+
+  Chartreuse du Liget, 190.
+
+  _Châteaubriand, Comtesse de_, 101, 130.
+
+  Château Chevigné, 22.
+
+  Château de la Fontaine, 43.
+
+  Château de la Source, 42-43.
+
+  Châteaudun and Its Castle, 21-22.
+
+  _Châteaudun, Vicomtes de_, 269.
+
+  Château Gaillard, 259.
+
+  Château l'Epinay, 22.
+
+  Châteauneuf-sur-Loire, 36, 84.
+
+  Châteauroux, 327.
+
+  Château Serrand, 22.
+
+  Chatillon, 12, 17, 19.
+
+  _Chatillon, Cardinal de_, 160.
+
+  _Chatillon, Comtes de_, 61, 68.
+
+  Chaumont and Its Château, 11, 20, 107, 110, 116-126, 140.
+
+  _Chaumont, Charles de_, 120.
+
+  _Chaumont, Donatien Le Ray de_, 123-125.
+
+  Chemillé, 304-305.
+
+  _Chemille, Petronille de_, 263.
+
+  Chenonceaux and Its Château, 10, 63, 107, 118, 140, 148, 165,
+    169, 171-187, 234, 243, 247, 251.
+
+  Cher, The, 10, 21, 91, 171-173, 177-178, 180, 183, 191, 215,
+    275, 313, 320, 324, 326-327.
+
+  _Chevalier, Abbé_, 243.
+
+  Cheverny and Its Château, 82, 110-114, 133.
+
+  _Cheverny, Philippe Hurault, Comte de_, 111.
+
+  _Chicot_, 201.
+
+  Chinon and Its Châteaux, 10, 92, 140, 171, 193, 202, 239,
+    241, 247, 250-261, 268.
+
+  Chinon, Forêt de, 241, 247.
+
+  Chiron-Tardiveau, 310.
+
+  _Choiseul, Duc de_, 164, 169.
+
+  Cholet, 275, 304-307.
+
+  _Cholet, Comte de_, 115.
+
+  Cinq-Mars and Its Ruins, 7, 21, 137, 220, 227-232, 238, 274.
+
+  _Cinq-Mars, Henri, Marquis de_, 228, 229-231, 234.
+
+  _Cinq-Mars, Marquise de_, 230, 231.
+
+  _Claude of France_, 72, 80, 97, 155.
+
+  _Clément, Jacques_, 78.
+
+  Clermont-Ferrand, 15.
+
+  Cléry, 32, 41, 44-46, 214.
+
+  Clisson and Its Château, 8, 303, 307.
+
+  _Clisson_, 293.
+
+  _Clopinel, Jehan_ (See _Jean de Meung_).
+
+  _Clouet_, 112.
+
+  _Clovis_, 43, 149, 253.
+
+  Coeuvres, 170.
+
+  _Coligny_, 160-161.
+
+  Colletis, 309.
+
+  _Colombe, Michel_, 207-208, 295.
+
+  _Commines, De_, 45.
+
+  _Condé, Prince de_, 119, 160-161, 168, 319.
+
+  _Conti, Princesse de_, 234.
+
+  _Cormeri, Citizen_, 215.
+
+  Cormery, 133.
+
+  Cosne, 18, 314, 330.
+
+  Cosson, The, 2, 97-98, 101.
+
+  Coteau de Guignes, 52.
+
+  Couëron, 298.
+
+  _Coulanges, M. de_, 18.
+
+  Coulmiers, 40.
+
+  Cour-Cheverny, 110, 114, 133.
+
+  _Cousin, Jean_, 105.
+
+  Coutancière, Château of, 269.
+
+  _Coxe, Miss_, 125.
+
+  _Créquy, Marquise de_, 183.
+
+  Croix de Monteuse, 16.
+
+  _Cromwell_, 301.
+
+  _Crussol, Mlle. de_, 318.
+
+
+  _Dalahaide_, 77.
+
+  Dampierre, 280.
+
+  _Dante_, 203.
+
+  _Danton_, 144.
+
+  _Daudet_, 17, 335.
+
+  Decize, 336.
+
+  _Delavigne, Casimir_, 34.
+
+  _Delorme, Marion_, 230-231.
+
+  _Delorme, Philibert_, 321.
+
+  _Deneux, Mlle._, 215.
+
+  _Descartes_, 3, 208.
+
+  Digoin, 336.
+
+  Dijon, 15.
+
+  _Dino, Duc de_, 115.
+
+  Dive, The, 13.
+
+  Domfront, Château de, 9.
+
+  _Doré_, 207, 320.
+
+  _Duban_, 73.
+
+  _Ducos, Roger_, 164-165.
+
+  _Dudevant, Madame_ (See _Sand, George_).
+
+  _Duguesclin_, 49.
+
+  _Dumas_, 3, 6, 47, 82, 201, 268-269, 294-295.
+
+  Dunois, The, 56.
+
+  _Dupin, M. and Mme._, 183, 187.
+
+  _Duplessis-Mornay_, 281.
+
+
+  _Eckmühl, Prince_, 42.
+
+  _Effiats Family, D'_ (See _Cinq-Mars_).
+
+  _Elbée, D'_, 307.
+
+  _Eleanor of Portugal_, 155.
+
+  _Éléanore of Guienne_, 267.
+
+  Embrun, 44, 45.
+
+  _Epernon, Duc d'_, 194.
+
+  _Este, Cardinal d'_, 180.
+
+  _Estrées, Gabrielle d'_, 164, 169-170.
+
+  _Étampes, Duchesse d'_, 101, 130-131, 155.
+
+  _Étampes, Jacques d'_, 321.
+
+  Etretat, 251.
+
+  Eure et Loir, Department of, 35.
+
+
+  Falaise, Château de, 9.
+
+  _Ferdinand VII. of Spain_, 323.
+
+  Finistère, 35.
+
+  _Flaubert_, 6.
+
+  _Foix, Marguerite de_, 295-296.
+
+  Folie-Siffait, 26.
+
+  Fontainebleau, 97.
+
+  Fontaine des Sables Mouvants, 52.
+
+  _Fontenelle_, 183.
+
+  Fontenoy, 107.
+
+  Fontevrault, Abbey of, 3, 263-267, 282.
+
+  _Force, Piganiol de la_, 106.
+
+  Forez, Plain of, 17.
+
+  _Fouché_, 298.
+
+  _Foulques Nerra_, 93, 201, 232, 234.
+
+  _Foulques V._, 238.
+
+  _Fouquet_, 164, 294.
+
+  _François I._, 60-64, 69-70, 72-73, 75, 89, 94-99, 101, 104-107,
+    109, 114, 118, 130, 148, 151-156, 171-172, 174-176, 189-190,
+    194, 196-197, 200, 244-245, 264, 322.
+
+  _François II._, 156-162, 168, 181, 215.
+
+  _Franklin, Benjamin_, 123-124, 125.
+
+  Freiburg, 22.
+
+  Fromentin, 311.
+
+
+  _Galles, Prince de_, 49.
+
+  _Gaston of Orleans_, 59-60, 62, 68-70, 79-82.
+
+  Gatanais, The, 36.
+
+  Gatine, Forêt de, 324.
+
+  _George IV._, 169.
+
+  Gerbier-de-Jonc, 16, 336.
+
+  Gien and Its Château, 8, 18, 19, 202, 318-320, 330.
+
+  Gilly, 336.
+
+  Giverny, 251.
+
+  _Gondi, Henri de_, 293-294, 301-302.
+
+  _Goujon, Jean_, 105, 179, 244.
+
+  _Gregory of Tours_, 57.
+
+  _Grise-Gonelle, Geoffroy_, 195.
+
+  Grottoes of Ste. Radegonde, 218.
+
+  Guérande, 300.
+
+  _Guise, Henri, Duc de (Le Balafré)_, 67, 69-70, 73-78, 157, 160,
+    162, 164, 168, 180, 234.
+
+
+  Haute Loire, Department of, 11.
+
+  _Henri II._, 69, 99, 107, 109, 115, 156, 158, 171-172, 174-177,
+    183-184, 197, 200.
+
+  _Henri III._, 69-70, 73, 75-78, 182, 195, 201, 334.
+
+  _Henri IV. (de Navarre)_, 78, 164, 170, 201, 281, 293.
+
+  _Henry II. of England_, 190, 208, 238, 257-258, 267.
+
+  _Henry VIII. of England_, 107.
+
+  _Holbein_, 152.
+
+  _Hugo, Victor_, 37.
+
+  Huismes, 250.
+
+  _Hurault, Philippe_, 111, 112.
+
+
+  Ile de Yeu, 310-311.
+
+  Ile Feydeau, 298.
+
+  Ile Gloriette, 298.
+
+  Ile St. Jean, 149.
+
+  Ilot du Pilier, 310.
+
+  Indre, The, 10, 21, 191-192, 240, 243-244, 247, 275, 313, 326-327.
+
+  Indre et Loire, Département d', 142.
+
+
+  _Jahel, Miss_, 125.
+
+  _James V. of Scotland_, 157.
+
+  _James, Henry_, 14, 189, 204, 251.
+
+  Jargeau, 36.
+
+  _Jean de Meung_, 46-47.
+
+  _Jean-sans-Peur_, 319.
+
+  _Jean-sans-Terre_, 193, 267.
+
+  _Jeanne d'Arc_, 33-35, 38, 49, 319, 333.
+
+  _Jeanne of France_, 209.
+
+  _John, King_, 287.
+
+  Joué, 215.
+
+  _Juvenet_, 34.
+
+
+  _Kleber_, 306, 307.
+
+
+  La Beauce, 38, 41, 53, 87, 141.
+
+  "La Briche," 270-272.
+
+  Lac de Grand Lieu, 298-299, 311-312.
+
+  Lac d'Issarles, 16.
+
+  La Chapelle, 43.
+
+  La Charité, 17-18, 314-315, 319, 332-334.
+
+  La Châtre, 327.
+
+  La Chevrolière, 312.
+
+  _Lafayette, Madame de_, 109.
+
+  _La Fontaine_, 128, 286.
+
+  La Martinière, 298.
+
+  La Motte, 87-88.
+
+  _Landais_, 294.
+
+  _Landes, Houdon des_, 137.
+
+  Langeais and Its Château, 7, 21, 82, 133, 140, 165, 174, 224,
+    232-241, 247.
+
+  Languedoc, 15.
+
+  _Lanoue_, 293.
+
+  Lanterne de Rochecorbon, 220.
+
+  La Pointe, 13, 22-23, 284.
+
+  La Possonière, 289.
+
+  Larçay, 10.
+
+  La Rochelle, 208, 308.
+
+  _Lauzun_, 164.
+
+  _Lavedan_, 31-32.
+
+  Layon, The, 13.
+
+  Le Croisic, 300.
+
+  Le Havre, 27.
+
+  _Lemaitre, Jules_, 34.
+
+  _Lemercier_, 261-262.
+
+  _Lenoir_, 57.
+
+  _Lenôtre_, 43.
+
+  _Lepage_, 35.
+
+  Le Pellerin, 298.
+
+  Le Puy, 4-5, 10, 16, 137, 336.
+
+  _Leray, M._, 120.
+
+  Les Andelys, Château de, 9.
+
+  _Lescure_, 307.
+
+  _Lespine, Jean de_, 291.
+
+  Liger, The, 336.
+
+  Lille, 286.
+
+  _Lille, Abbé de_, 107.
+
+  "_Limieul, La Demoiselle de_" (See _Tour, Isabelle de la_).
+
+  Limousin, The, 109.
+
+  Lisieux, 92.
+
+  Loches and Its Châteaux, 3, 9-10, 130, 133, 140, 142, 188-202, 250,
+    266, 326.
+
+  Loches, Forêt de, 190.
+
+  Loir, The, 13, 21.
+
+  Loir et Cher, Department of the, 35, 57.
+
+  Loire, The, 1, 3-30, 32, 34-38, 40-41, 43, 50-51, 53-54, 56, 58,
+    64-65, 68, 92, 95-97, 101-102, 110, 116-118, 120-122, 124, 129,
+    133, 134, 137, 140-142, 148-149, 156, 163, 171, 173, 177-178, 191,
+    196, 208, 215, 220-223, 225, 227-228, 232, 236, 240, 257, 259-260,
+    267, 273, 275-276, 278-279, 282-286, 288-290, 292-293, 297-302,
+    304, 308-309, 311, 313-314, 318-319, 324, 326-327, 330, 332-334,
+    336.
+
+  Loiret, The, 41-43.
+
+  Loiret, Department of the, 35-36.
+
+  _Lorraine, Cardinal de_, 157, 180.
+
+  _Lorraine, Marie de_, 157.
+
+  Lorris, 37.
+
+  _Lorris, Guillaume de_, 37, 46.
+
+  Lot, The, 260.
+
+  Louet, The, 286.
+
+  _Louis II. (Le Bègue)_, 150.
+
+  _Louis IX._ (See _St. Louis_).
+
+  _Louis XI._, 5, 32, 41, 44-46, 48, 69, 130-131, 150, 154, 194,
+    195, 211-212, 214-218, 232-233, 253, 257-258, 268, 281, 291.
+
+  _Louis XII._, 60-61, 64, 66, 83, 97, 120, 122, 151, 167,
+    194-195, 209, 215, 238, 294.
+
+  _Louis XIII._, 63, 99, 107, 139, 222, 224, 228, 230-231.
+
+  _Louis XIV._, 32, 82-83, 98-99, 107, 109, 111, 164, 215, 227,
+    232, 245, 247, 294, 319.
+
+  _Louis XV._, 54, 84, 107, 164, 169, 215.
+
+  _Louis XVI._, 32, 123.
+
+  _Louis XVIII._, 321, 329.
+
+  _Louis Philippe_, 165.
+
+  Louvre, The, 130, 285.
+
+  _Lubin, M._, 126.
+
+  Luynes and Its Château, 21, 222-227.
+
+  _Luynes Family_, 222, 224, 227, 234.
+
+  Lyonnais, 15.
+
+  Lyons, 16, 203, 286.
+
+  Lyons, Forêt de, 87.
+
+
+  Madon, 126.
+
+  _Maillé, Comte de_, 227.
+
+  Maine, The, 12-13, 21-23, 284, 288-290.
+
+  _Maintenon, Madame de_, 109.
+
+  _Malines_, 77.
+
+  _Mame et Fils, Alfred_, 205.
+
+  _Mansart_ (elder), 62, 79.
+
+  Marguerites, The, 311.
+
+  _Marie Antoinette_, 328.
+
+  _Marigny, De_, 54.
+
+  Marmoutier, Abbey of, 218-220, 266.
+
+  _Marques, Family of_, 185.
+
+  _Marsay, M. de_, 190.
+
+  Marseilles, 27, 136, 203, 286, 292.
+
+  _Martel, Geoffroy_, 253.
+
+  Maulévrier, Château of, 303.
+
+  Mauves, Plain of, 26.
+
+  Mayenne, 21.
+
+  Mayenne, The, 21.
+
+  _Mazarin_, 6, 293, 301-302, 335.
+
+  _Medici, Catherine de_, 73-79, 107, 118-119, 122-123, 156-157,
+    160-162, 168, 175-182, 184-185.
+
+  _Medici, Marie de_, 194, 285.
+
+  Mehun-sur-Yevre and Its Château, 324-326.
+
+  _Mello, Dreux de_, 193.
+
+  Menars and Its Château, 53-54.
+
+  Mer, 52-53.
+
+  Metz, 40.
+
+  Meung-sur-Loire, 41, 44, 46-48.
+
+  Micy, Abbaye de, 43.
+
+  _Mignard_, 112.
+
+  Moine, The, 307-308.
+
+  _Molière_, 108.
+
+  Montbazon, 10.
+
+  _Montespan, Madame de_, 283.
+
+  _Montesquieu_, 183.
+
+  _Montgomery_, 158, 175.
+
+  Montjean, 24.
+
+  Montlivault, 53.
+
+  _Montmorency, Connétable de_, 174.
+
+  Montpellier, Castle of, 231.
+
+  _Montpensier, Charles de_, 154-155.
+
+  Montrichard and its Donjon, 9-10, 91-93.
+
+  Montsoreau, 268-270, 276.
+
+  Moraines, Château de (_See_ Dampierre).
+
+  _Moreau_, 306.
+
+  Moret, 251.
+
+  _Morrison_, 81.
+
+  Mortagne, 307.
+
+  _Mosnier_, 112.
+
+  Moulins, 15.
+
+  Muides, 53.
+
+
+  Nahon, The, 320-321.
+
+  Nantes and Its Château, 3, 7-8, 12-13, 23, 25-28, 40, 59, 84, 133,
+    207, 278-279, 286, 288, 291-302, 308, 311-312.
+
+  _Napoleon I._, 83, 138, 164, 321-322.
+
+  _Napoleon III._, 88.
+
+  _Napoleon, Louis_, 165.
+
+  Narbonne, 231.
+
+  _Navarre, Marguerite of_ (See _Alençon, Marguerite d'_).
+
+  _Nemours, Duc de_, 157.
+
+  _Nepveu, Pierre_, 104.
+
+  Nevers, 4, 6, 11, 15, 17, 137, 319, 332-333, 335-336.
+
+  _Nini_, 125.
+
+  Nivernais, The, 15, 330, 332.
+
+  Nohant, 327-329.
+
+  Noirmoutier, 309-310.
+
+  Normandy, 85, 92, 306.
+
+
+  Ognon, The, 312.
+
+  Onzain, 116.
+
+  Orléannais, The, 4, 10, 15, 19, 23, 30-57, 318, 320-321.
+
+  Orleans, 7-8, 10-12, 15, 17, 19, 30-35, 37-41, 43, 52, 133, 137,
+    256, 258, 270, 284, 289.
+
+  _Orleans Family_, 63, 65-66, 69, 140, 165, 231, 234 (See also
+    _Gaston of Orleans_).
+
+  Orleans, Forêt d', 39-40.
+
+  Oudon, 25-26, 291.
+
+
+  Paimboeuf, 298.
+
+  Paris, 13, 30, 33, 42, 79, 119, 124, 136, 139-140, 229-230, 284,
+    302, 314.
+
+  _Parme, Duc de_, 108.
+
+  _Parmentier_, 80.
+
+  Pas de Calais, 192.
+
+  Passay, 312.
+
+  Passy-sur-Seine, 124.
+
+  Pays de Retz, 292, 301-302, 310.
+
+  _Penthièvre, Duc de_, 164.
+
+  _Pepin_, 193.
+
+  _Philippe I._, 313, 326.
+
+  _Philippe II. (Auguste)_, 93, 193, 238.
+
+  _Philippe III. (Le Hardi)_, 234.
+
+  _Philippe IV. (Le Bel)_, 49.
+
+  Pierrefonds, Château of, 186.
+
+  Pierre-Levée, 310.
+
+  _Pilon, Germain_, 105.
+
+  Pinaizeaux, 310.
+
+  _Pius VI._, 323.
+
+  _Plantagenet, Henry_ (See _Henry II. of England_).
+
+  _Plantin, Christopher_, 205.
+
+  _Plessis, Armand du_ (See _Richelieu, Cardinal_).
+
+  Plessis-les-Tours, 7, 150, 211-218, 334.
+
+  Pointe de Chenoulin, 310.
+
+  Poitiers, 304.
+
+  _Poitiers, Diane de_, 118, 123, 130, 155, 172, 174-178, 183,
+    187, 197.
+
+  Poitou, 278, 292, 306.
+
+  _Pompadour, La_, 215.
+
+  _Poniatowska, Marie Thérèse_, 323.
+
+  Pont Aven, 251.
+
+  Ponts de Cé, 21-22, 275, 279, 284-286.
+
+  Pornic, 308, 310.
+
+  Pornichet, 300.
+
+  Port Boulet, 270.
+
+  Pouilly, 18, 330-332.
+
+  Prairie-au-Duc, 298.
+
+  _Primaticcio_, 152.
+
+  _Primatice_, 99.
+
+  Puy-de-Dôme, 16.
+
+
+  _Rabelais, François_, 3, 128, 143-144, 239-240, 254-256, 260.
+
+  Rambouillet, Forêt de, 87.
+
+  Reims, 319.
+
+  _Renaudie, Jean Barri de la_, 161.
+
+  _René, King_, 23, 281.
+
+  Rennes, 15.
+
+  _Retz, Cardinal de_ (See _Gondi, Henri de_).
+
+  _Retz, Gilles de_, 24, 293.
+
+  Rhine, The, 13, 26.
+
+  Rhône, The, 13, 23, 260.
+
+  _Richard Coeur de Lion_, 93, 193, 267.
+
+  Richelieu, 260-262.
+
+  _Richelieu, Cardinal_, 224, 228, 231-232, 260-262, 301-302.
+
+  Roanne, 12, 16-17, 336.
+
+  _Rochecotte_, 250.
+
+  Rochecotte, Château de, 249-250.
+
+  Romorantin and Its Château, 85, 88-89, 324.
+
+  _Ronsard_, 128, 157, 180, 240.
+
+  Rouen, 92, 119, 121-122, 203, 221, 299.
+
+  _Rousseau, Jean Jacques_, 172, 183-184, 187.
+
+  _Roy, Lucien_, 235.
+
+  _Royale, Madame_, 109.
+
+  _Rubens_, 285.
+
+  _Ruggieri, Cosmo_, 78-79, 122-123.
+
+  Russy, Forêt de, 114.
+
+
+  _Saint Gelais, Guy de_, 245.
+
+  Sancerre and Its Châteaux, 18, 137, 313-318, 330, 333.
+
+  _Sancerre, Counts of_, 314-316.
+
+  _Sand, George_, 7, 321, 326-329.
+
+  San Juste, Monastery of, 131.
+
+  Saône, The, 23.
+
+  _Sardini, Scipion_, 119.
+
+  Sarthe, The, 13, 21.
+
+  Saumur and Its Château, 21, 119-120, 142, 171, 221-222, 259,
+    274-283, 292.
+
+  Sausac, Château of, 202.
+
+  _Sausac, Seigneur de_, 215.
+
+  Savennières, 289.
+
+  _Savoie, Louise de_, 151.
+
+  _Savoie, Philippe de_, 195.
+
+  _Saxe, Maurice de_, 107-108.
+
+  _Scott, Sir Walter_, 166, 211, 216, 218.
+
+  Sedan, 40.
+
+  Seine, The, 4, 13, 25, 36, 121, 221.
+
+  Selles, 10, 324.
+
+  _Sertio_, 100.
+
+  _Sévigné, Madame de_, 18, 276, 295.
+
+  _Sforza, Ludovic_, 197.
+
+  _Shenstone_, 106.
+
+  _Siegfreid, Jacques_, 234.
+
+  Sologne, The, 38, 52-53, 56, 84-94, 97, 101, 110, 148, 320.
+
+  _Sorel, Agnes_, 152, 188-189, 194, 196, 201-202, 250, 326.
+
+  _Staël, Madame de_, 119-120.
+
+  St. Aignan and Its Château, 10, 312, 324.
+
+  _Stanislas of Poland, King_, 107-108.
+
+  St. Ay, 43-44.
+
+  St. Benoit-sur-Loire, 10, 19.
+
+  St. Claude, 54.
+
+  St. Cyr, 215.
+
+  St. Die, 53.
+
+  Ste. Eulalie, 336.
+
+  _Stendahl_, 128.
+
+  St. Etienne, 5, 16.
+
+  St. Florent, Abbey of, 282, 306.
+
+  St. Galmier, 16.
+
+  St. Georges-sur-Loire, 22.
+
+  St. Leger, 312.
+
+  _St. Liphard_, 48.
+
+  _St. Louis_, 37, 193, 288, 318.
+
+  St. Lumine, 312.
+
+  St. Mars, 312.
+
+  _St. Martin_, 5, 149, 209-211, 218, 220, 253, 268.
+
+  _St. Mesme_, 253.
+
+  St. Mesmin, 41, 43.
+
+  St. Nazaire, 23, 28, 292, 300.
+
+  _Stofflet_, 303, 306.
+
+  _St. Ours_, 193.
+
+  St. Philibert, 311-312.
+
+  _St. Philibert_, 310.
+
+  St. Pierre-le-Moutier, 333.
+
+  St. Rambert, 17.
+
+  _St. Sauveur_, 238.
+
+  Strasburg, 22.
+
+  St. Symphorien, 218.
+
+  St. Trinité, Abbey of, 266.
+
+  _Stuart, Mary_, 157-162, 168, 181.
+
+  _St. Vallier, Comte de_, 175, 197.
+
+  Suèvres, 53.
+
+  Sully, 19.
+
+
+  _Talleyrand_, 250, 321, 323.
+
+  _Tasso_, 180.
+
+  Tavers, 52.
+
+  _Terry, Mr._, 187.
+
+  _Texier_, 22.
+
+  Thézée, 10.
+
+  _Thibaut-le-Tricheur_, 259.
+
+  _Thibaut III._, 253.
+
+  _Thiephanie, Dame_, 281.
+
+  Thouet, The, 13.
+
+  _Thoury, Comtesse_, 105.
+
+  Torfou, 307.
+
+  Toulouse, 15.
+
+  _Tour, Isabelle de la_, 119.
+
+  Touraine, 1-4, 6-9, 15, 19-21, 23, 32, 54, 56, 79, 85, 92, 102,
+    105, 121, 128-148, 161, 164, 169, 172-173, 176, 183, 204, 215,
+    220, 229-230, 233-234, 238, 243-244, 246, 251, 260, 273, 275,
+    284, 332.
+
+  _Touraine, Comtes de_, 253.
+
+  Tours, 3, 4, 7, 8, 10-11, 20-21, 40, 57, 84, 116-117, 120, 132-133,
+    137, 148-149, 166, 171-172, 200, 203-211, 215, 221-222, 224-225,
+    238-239, 246, 253, 266, 274, 276-277, 320-321, 327.
+
+  Treves-Cunault, 283-284.
+
+  _Turenne_, 319.
+
+  _Turner_, 12.
+
+
+  Ussé and Its Château, 241, 247-249.
+
+
+  Valençay and Its Château, 320-324.
+
+  _Valentine de Milan_, 66.
+
+  _Valentinois, Duchesse de_ (See _Poitiers, Diane de_).
+
+  Vallée du Vendomois, 274.
+
+  _Valois, Marguerite de_ (_sister of François I._) (See _Alençon,
+    Marguerite d'_).
+
+  _Valois, Marguerite de (de Navarre)_, 180.
+
+  _Van Eyck_, 152.
+
+  Varennes, 218, 324.
+
+  Varennes, The, 135.
+
+  _Vasari_, 153.
+
+  _Vauban_, 247.
+
+  _Vaudémont, Louise de_, 182.
+
+  Vendôme, 22, 266.
+
+  _Vendôme, César de_, 164.
+
+  Vendomois, The, 56-57.
+
+  Veron, 135.
+
+  Versailles, 43, 60, 86, 98, 139, 261.
+
+  _Vibraye, Marquis de_, 111.
+
+  Vienne, The, 10, 21, 251, 259-260, 267-268, 275, 279.
+
+  Vierzon, 84-85, 324.
+
+  _Vigny, Alfred de_, 128-129.
+
+  Villandry, Château de, 238.
+
+  Villaumère, Château de la, 250.
+
+  _Villon, François_, 48.
+
+  _Vinci, Leonardo da_, 59, 72, 100, 152-153, 166, 169, 174.
+
+  _Viollet-le-Duc_, 185.
+
+  Vivarais Mountains, 16.
+
+  _Voltaire_, 42, 142, 183.
+
+  Vorey, 11, 16.
+
+  Vouvray, 222, 332.
+
+
+  Yonne, The, 17.
+
+  _Young, Arthur_, 86.
+
+
+  _Zamet, Sebastian_, 170.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes
+
+1. Replaced chateau(x) with château(x) throughout the text (title pages
+and pp. xi, 1, 9, 62, 72, 327).
+
+2. P. 36: added quotes after a verse.
+
+3. P. 67: replaced "três" with "très" ("très beau et très agréable ainsy
+que tous ses portraits l'ont représenté...").
+
+4. P. 83: added quotes after the phrase "magasin des subsistances
+militaires".
+
+5. P. 86: added quotes after a phrase "those brilliant and ambitious
+gentlemen".
+
+6. P. 94: "potions" are replaced with "portions" ("... moreover, one can
+drink large portions of it...").
+
+7. P. 108: "know" is replaced with "known" ("The second floor is known
+as the...").
+
+8. All instances of "Francois" are replaced with "François" (pp. 69,
+171, 304, 338, 346).
+
+9. P. 187: "Credit Foncier" is replaced by "Crédit Foncier".
+
+10. P. 235: Replaced "irrelevent" with "irrelevant" ("...an
+over-luxuriant interpolation of irrelevant things...").
+
+11. P. 290: Replaced "Andre" with "André" ("Maison André Leroy").
+
+12. P. 296: Added quotes after a verse "Cueur de vertus orné Dignement
+couronné."
+
+13. P. 314: Replaced "Etes-vous" with "Êtes-vous" ("Êtes-vous allé à...").
+
+14. P. 322: Replaced "Valencay" with "Valençay" ("Château de
+Valençay").
+
+15. Replaced "Eglise" with "Église" (illustration caption: "Église S.
+Aignan, Cosne").
+
+16. Innkeepers, manorhouse, sandbar, Bellilocus, seaside, harbourside,
+headwaters, stairway, and waterways are chosen to be written without a
+hyphen.
+
+17. Dining-table, wine-shops, and quatre-vingzt are chosen to be written
+with a hyphen.
+
+18. P. 338: Replaced "Bréze" with "Brézé" (Brézé, Pierre de).
+
+19. P. 269: Replaced "Chateaudun" with "Châteaudun" ("... the fief
+passed to the Vicomtes de Châteaudun...").
+
+20. Pp. 12, 17, and 339: Replaced "Canal Lateral" with "Canal Latéral".
+
+21. P. 344: Replaced "Orléans" with "Orleans".
+
+22. P. 286: Quotes after the verse added ("... sur la Loire.").
+
+23. P. 327: The (missing) closing quotes are added ("_petits
+chefs-d'oeuvre_ of sentiment and rustic poesy").
+
+24. Added a description of a monogram on p. 177.
+
+25. P. 120: An image description is added.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Castles and Chateaux of Old Touraine
+and the Loire Country, by Francis Miltoun
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CASTLES, CHATEAUX OF OLD TOURAINE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 37211-8.txt or 37211-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/2/1/37211/
+
+Produced by Elizaveta Shevyakhova, Juliet Sutherland and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian
+Libraries)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.