Chambord that can be said, it remains | places within reach. The town of Blois is one which no one can leave without regret. It is endeared by reason of its steep streets and wide views, its many charming old houses and its amiable citizens: last, and by no means least, because of the excellent quarters and moderate tariff of the Grand Hôtel de Blois. One is puzzled at first to account for the greyness of these places on the Loire; one misses the play of color with which Continental towns are wont to tickle the insular eye. The chief cause of this is found in the use of slate for roofing; nor is this owing, as it is in many districts of our own land, to the substitution of the lighter and more durable material for the ancient tiles and thatch, for Evelyn noticed that most of the houses here in his time were roofed with slate. Then, all doors and railings are painted grey or stonecolor: even in their dress the countrypeople avoid bright colors, and the universal blouse sinks the well-loved blue in mournful black. Between Blois and Tours lie five-andthirty miles of capital road, beset with many allurements in the shape of Chaumont, Amboise, and other chateaux. Tours is the centre for so many attractive places, that the luxurious Hôtel de l'Univers is pervaded by almost too many of our dear compatriots. Hence it comes that the charges run high; déjeuner is served there only à la carte, which not only swells the bill, but deprives that charming meal of one of its chief attractions—the unexpected. He who prefers to forget for a season the land of his birth will be apt to go in search of local color in the Faisan in the Rue Nationale, or the Hôtel de Bordeaux in the Boulevard Heurteloup, where he will find nothing to complain of in either fare or tariff. The chief difficulty at Tours is to choose between the many interesting Splendid roads lead in every direction to some town or château which should not be left unvisited. We may suppose that the visitor has seen most of the beautiful things in the town, of which Evelyn declared that "no town in France exIceeds it in beauty and delight." He will have loitered in the great cathedral of Saint Gatien with its sister towers, its gorgeous western front-surely the culmination of Flamboyant exuberance -and oh, such stained glass in the windows as he shall hardly see elsewhere! He will have blessed the archbishop and chapter for the discretion, so rarely exercised in French provincial churches, which has saved this splendid fane from disfigurement by tawdry "station" pictures. Stations there are, each with its picture of little merit, but mercifully unobtrusive and quiet in tone. The stranger will have groped his way also into the crypt of the modern basilica of Saint Martin; for, alas! of the ancient church and monastery nothing is left save two great towers, standing gaunt and apart, with a broad new street driven between them. The new church is a structure so weighty, so solid, so dark-such mountains of marble are piled over the tomb, that, supposing the bones of the saint to be really there, one is inclined to trace in the architect's design precautions against too facile resurrection. The ancient abbey church of Saint Julien, at the end of the Rue Nationale next the river, must by no means be unvisited; for in spite of recent disfigurement in the shape of criard glass and excruciating wall-painting, there remains the tower-a lovely bit of Romanesque of the tenth century-and there is much good later work in the choir. All these and much more will have been viewed: perhaps the only root of bitterness will have been the disappointing discovery that the épiciers of this fine town are not more scrupulous than those elsewhere, despite their charming manners; for the grand white baskets of irresistible dried plums, cunningly piled in front windows, are made ron. with a great bell in the bottom, like the naughty stories of the Heptamea champagne bottle, so that the unwary stranger, believing that he is buying a basketful, finds out too late that he has got but a single layer. road Aurâ favente-the first run from Tours is pretty sure to be made to Chénonceaux. Much of the thither lies through woodland, with adorable views over river and meadow. Nearly all the villages on the wayDierre, Civray, Bléré, etc.-have churches of the tenth, twelfth, and fifteenth centuries. That of the parish of Saint Martin-le-Beau of itself would confer fame on one English or three Scottish counties. Let nobody form too high expectations of the famed garden of Diane de Poitiers at Chénonceaux. Square, shadeless, and, as we saw it, flowerless (for it was lying all fallow for summer bedding)-it seemed everything that a garden ought not to be, formal without dignity, pretentious without effect. But the château itself is a sweet relic of beautiful, bygone France, with sunnier memories than those of most French houses of renown. Its records are not blurred with the steam of secret slaughter, and its basement chambers, cunningly contrived in the piles of the old mill, were never devoted to the usual purposes of imprisonment and torture, but only to the genial uses of kitchen, cellar, and larder. Its whole history is in harmony with the fantastic grace of the building and the languorous murmur of the Cher. Perhaps of all Marie Stuart's womanhood, the only tranquil months were those she spent here after her first marriage. And if it is superfluous at this distance of time to submit the vie intime of Chénonceaux to the accepted canons of morality, equally so would it be to apply strict criticism to the architecture of such an irregular building. Of the old donjon but one cylindrical tower remains, with the inevitable conical slated roof, and the ugly lantern so dear to British hotel architects. The defensive moats, dug in 1433, only serve now to float skiffs, swans, and waterlilies. Most of the house escapes from their enceinte, spreading across the river like a beautiful liana, incorporating the ancient mill, and raising round its bones a veil of fanciful, but not extravagant, masonry.1 For many years to come, this famous house has been grievously marred by the restoration to which it has been submitted at the hands of its new owners. Owing to its peculiar site, half its beauty consists in its reflection in the shimmering stream. Divert the Cher, and a moiety of the architect's design would disappear with it. The hands which scraped the walls to a glaring whiteness have done almost as much mischief. Only in some of the dormers there still linger scraps of that delicate silvery grey, like the summer plumage of a ptarmigan, to which the weather of four centuries has slowly touched the stones. Now we will bid farewell to Chénonceaux without once having taken on our lips that word from which no writer or speaker of any respectability has been known hitherto to refrain in describing it. If we fall short of being amusing, we can at least be original (which is not the same thing, to be sure); we will not pronounce Chénonceaux to be "a gem." Of course a great deal went on in this old house when it was new that we cannot afford to be found smiling on now. It would be dreadful to suspect that such high jinks as the courtiers of François I. indulged in could ever be tolerated in the chaste precincts of Osborne or Balmoral; but it would be fruitless to expect too much from an age when Marguerite of Navarre-the gentlest, brightest, perhaps the purest hier, general des finances, le chasteau de Chènon spirit in that licentious court-could express herself in nothing loftier than As in visiting old houses, so in prosing about them-one is tempted to linger far too long about each; and I must 1 "Lors se bastissoyt aux soings de Messire Bo ceaulx, lequel, par magnardise et curiosité, boutoyt son bastiment à cheval sur la rivière de Cher."Brantôme. hurry on if I am merely to mention half | with golden kingcups and purple frit those within easy reach of Tours. It is a delightful ride of fifteen miles to Langeais, down the north bank of the Loire, past hundreds of those characteristic cave-dwellings, with their chimneys poked up far back in the vineyards above the sunny cliff. It was an exquisite April morning when we trundled along this fair highway; the sunshine lay soft on the broad river; the grass was of tenderest green, spotted with lady's-smock and iron-blue starch hyacinths; wistaria and judas-tree were bursting into bloom. But perhaps the most delicate display was that of the abele poplars, far spreading along the banks in their strange spring livery of eau-de-Nile bark and silver leaflets. A delightful composition of towers, streets, and trees meets the eye of one entering Langeais by road; but if he has run there for déjeuner, it is to the Lion d'Or that his first homage will be paid. Incredible delicacies were Leaped before us in this pretty tavern, all for the ridiculous charge of three francs. At Langeais, as everywhere else in Touraine, the indefatigable Foulques Nerra has left the ruins of one of his grim keeps; but it stands behind and within the enclosure of the fine fifteenth-century château which makes the fame of this little town. It was here that the duchy of Brittany was first incorporated with the kingdom of France, by the marriage of Charles VIII. to Anne de Bretagne in 1491. Here, also, in a house opposite the château gate, lived Rabelais. illaries, and shadowed by rows of silver-stemmed poplars, lies between l'Islette and Azay-le-Rideau. This is another of the countless country palaces which sprang up like flowers in the reign of the first Francis.1 One may think the roof preposterously heavy, dwarfing the walls, the machicoulis and corner turrets vain figments of defensive work, inconsistent with the large window openings, and yet enjoy the charm of silvery walls reflected in the glassy pools where the great carp roll, of richly carved stonework and stately courtyard, shaded by venerable planes. Perhaps it was the glamour of a spring evening that made Azay seem to us the fairest-the most mignon-of all the châteaux of "la mignonne Touraine;" for we saw it as Balzac's Felix de Vandenesse saw it-"la nature s'était parée comme une femme allant à la rencontre du bien-aimé." Greatly different must be the impressions one brings away from Loches. The cyclist, moreover, will find it a very difficult place to reach in a single day from Tours, not because of the distance, for it lies not more than thirty miles along a splendid road up the wooded valley of the Indre, but because of the attractions on the way. Montbazon lies at the right distance for déjeuner, about eleven miles from Tours. Here a vast keep of Foulques Nerra bears aloft on its battlements a colossal modern statue of the Virgin in bronze. Though of dubious merit as a work of art, this graven image has a striking effect, seen afar in the valley, over verdant meadows and sloping woods. This vale between Montbazon and Tours, be it remembered, is that of Balzac's romance, "Le Lys dans la Vallée." Between Langeais and Azay-leRideau lie eight hilly miles. There is a little church at Lignières, unnoticed by Baedeker, but not the less worth inspection, for it contains paintings in fresco of the twelfth century. These are deliciously naïve, representing the temp-cessful anglers in the flowery meadows, tation of Adam and Eve on one side of the chancel, and that of the Saviour on the other. Farther on is the pretty Château de l'Islette, built across the Indre, being apparently, like Chénonceaux, the expansion of an old mill. A mile and a half of meadows, jewelled Too long we loitered in this pleasant village, contemplating rows of unsuc an' fascinated by the evolutions of a man in a pea-green mackintosh, work 1 Inquiry as to the meaning of the name Azay-leRideau is much oftener made than answered. It is supposed to commemorate Hugues Ridel, a knight banneret, who built the castle to guard the road from Tours to Chinon. ing a casting-net with equal futility. | amazing group of buildings; but it is We were so anxious to see just one fish the fell spirit of Louis XI. that overcaught among so many fishers, but shadows them all. Donjon, palace, and neither anglers nor netsman brought collegiate church, with the bartering ashore a single fin. Then Veigné and town below, seem to reflect that comEsvres, each with its Early Norman bination of alert suspicion, grinding church, claimed half an hour apiece, so terrorism, craven piety, and commerthat it was well on in the afternoon cial eagerness, which make up the odious before we reached the strange little memory of this gloomy despot. The town of Cormery, with ruins of a great political changes of five centuries, Benedictine abbey and college, and a though they have laid bare the duncurious, gaunt parish church of Norman geons of this hideous prison-house, have work. Impossible to hurry past the spared many traces of the torments of lofty bell-tower, the shattered cloisters, the king's victims. The cages have disand the refectory with its noble tim- appeared wherein the limbs of Jean bered roof. So Loches had to be post- Balue, cardinal-bishop of Angers, and poned to another day. of the historian Comines, stiffened as month by month of their inhuman punishment dragged on; but the staples on which these cages hung may still be seen. The walls have been scrawled over or patiently carved by successive prisoners; one may still read the sentence attributed to the hand of Comines, who lay here for eight months in solitary confinement by orders of Charles VIII.: "Dixisse me aliquando pœnituit, tacuisse nunquam" (I have suffered at times for having spoken, never for having held my peace). This had been a day of much quiet enjoyment, but it was to be marred by an incident towards its close, of a nature as unpleasant as, happily, it is rare in France, for Frenchmen are remarkably humane to horses as a rule. Among many vehicles approaching Cormery as we left it, I noticed one-a gipsy van-drawn by a pair of white percherons, sadly emaciated and legweary, as different as possible from the plump, sleek animals one usually sees. My attention was drawn, first, to one of the worst spavins I ever saw on the near hock of one of them, and next, to what seemed to be a scarlet cloth under the collar-a piece of finery strangely at variance with the rest of the dilapidated equipage. Merciful Lord! on nearer approach this proved to be the raw and bleeding flesh of the miserable beast, flayed by the space of nearly a foot, and with the collar pressing on it. The driver sat smoking on the van; what degree of personal privation and suffering, think you, had made him so utterly callous to the horror of this spectacle? Loc es, when we did visit it, left impressions never to be effaced. Sullen, massive, and menacing, the great castle, piled on a lofty cliff, scowls across the fertile river-meadows and the vineclad slopes on either side. Foulques Nerra built the donjon, of course; Agnes Sorel sleeps in the chapel of the Château Royal, where is also the oratory of good Anne de Bretagne: a host of other famous names are associated with this One shudders as the air strikes chill out of that dark past, for modern statecraft has taught us how wider realms than France of the fifteenth century may be governed without constant recourse to the axe, the halter, and the rack; but who shall say how far mild methods might have prevailed to build up kingdoms when the aims of subjects were more ambitious and their mode of attaining them less constitutional than now? Louis XI. was a cruel king towards his subjects, but a good one for France. One steps out of the gloom of Louis's Tour Neuve into the sunshine with a gasp of relief; and there are still to be visited the wonderful collegiate church and the palace, both within the castle enceinte. In the town below are the Tour Saint Antoine, the Hôtel-de-Ville, both of sixteenth-century Renaissance, and a number of interesting buildings; while beyond the Indre lies Beaulieu with its abbey church, a most beautiful Norman ruin, and the fourteenth-cen- | by the nuns of the Sacré Cœur. In tury church of Saint Laurent. front of this gate Pope Urban II. One more reminiscence, and let it be preached the first Crusade, and in front the last. The saint most famous at Tours, and most intimately connected with its ecclesiastical history, is without doubt Saint Martin, its bishop under Pope Siricius in the fourth century. Ninian, the evangelist of our own Picts, spent many weeks with Martin at Tours on his way from Rome to Scotland in 396, and borrowed from him the cementarios or masons, of whom we read in Ailred's life of Ninian, in order to build his Candida Casa at Whithorn, reputed the first stone church erected in Scotland. Ninian heard of Martin's death in the year 398, just before Candida Casa was finished, and the affectionate veneration which Ninian had for the good bishop is enough to account for the honor afterwards paid in Scotland to the memory of Martin. Even now, in spite of the edicts of the Presbyterian reformers against the observation of saint-days, Martinmas remains one of the two great Scottish terms. The building of stone churches was not the only practice that Ninian learnt from Martin. There may still be seen on the east shore of the Bay of Luce, in Galloway, about three miles from Candida Casa, a sea-cave, distinguished from many others on that rocky coast by the name of Saint Ninian, whither the evangelist used to retire for seasons of fasting and meditation. That this cavern was long afterwards regarded with peculiar veneration is attested by numerous crosses carved on the rocks, with other traces of primitive worship. In retiring to a cave for solitary prayer, Ninian was following the example set by his mentor, Martin, whose cave may still be seen at Marmoutier, where he founded his great abbey, built against the honeycombed cliff on the north bank of the Loire. The abbey has ceased to exist; of its extensive buildings only a fine thirteenth-century gatehouse remains erect-le portail de la Crosse. The enclosure within is now occupied by a beautiful garden, in which stands a pensionnat for girls, kept of this gate, after an interval of some seven centuries, we dismounted from our bicycles and rang the bell. We had come, we said to the nun who answered it, to view the cave of Saint Martin. Ah! the great pity, but this was not a day on which strangers could be admitted; messieurs will have the bounty to return on such and such a day. Impossible, we explained; we should then be far away; we had come many hundreds of miles-could not an exception be made in our favor? The kindly nun was sympathetic; she would tell the Lady-Principal; and finally, after some delay, we were bidden to the presence of that authority. Laying our case before her, we urged as a last reason for special consideration that we came from a country where Saint Martin was held in great honor, because he had taught Saint Ninian to build our Candida Casa. A change flitted over the good lady's features—a puzzled expression-then a light dawned in her eyes and she exclaimed in good honest Scots, "Ye're surely not Scotch? I come from Edinburgh myself!" Thirty years had gone by since she had left the convent at Bruntsfield; she had never seen her native land since, and her warm heart overflowed towards her wandering compatriots. Everything was made easy for us; a nun was told off to show us the cave-chapels of Saint Gatien, of Saint Leobard, and of the Seven Sleepers, and finally the shrine of Saint Martin, with the cracks in the rock, still plainly to be seen, which the devil made when he visited the Bishop of Tours. It is said that, failing to make any impression on the holy man, he vented his chagrin on the more vulnerable walls and roof of the cave. The cool, silent cavern, with the splendid sunshine flooding the stairs outside and the garden below, made a picture strangely in contrast with that far-off reft in the Galloway cliff, where the wet winds howl and the tides roar, which Ninian adopted in imitation of |
