Chapter 9

I hardly know what to say about the tone of
Langeais, which, though I have left it to the end of
my sketch, formed the objective point of the first ex-
cursion I made from Tours. Langeais is rather dark
and gray; it is perhaps the simplest and most severe
of all the castles of the Loire. I don't know why I
should have gone to see it before any other, unless it
be because I remembered the Duchesse de Langeais,
who figures in several of Balzac's novels, and found
this association very potent. The Duchesse de Lan-
geais is a somewhat transparent fiction; but the
castle from which Balzac borrowed the title of his
heroine is an extremely solid fact. My doubt just
above as to whether I should pronounce it excep-
tionally grey came from my having seen it under a
sky which made most things look dark. I have, how-
ever, a very kindly memory of that moist and melan-
choly afternoon, which was much more autumnal than
many of the days that followed it. Langeais lies
down the Loire, near the river, on the opposite side
from Tours, and to go to it you will spend half an
hour in the train. You pass on the way the Chateau
de Luynes, which, with its round towers catching
the afternoon light, looks uncommonly well on a hill
at a distance; you pass also the ruins of the castle
of Cinq-Mars, the ancestral dwelling of the young
favorite of Louis XIII., the victim, of Richelieu, the
hero of Alfred de Vigny's novel, which is usually re-
commended to young ladies engaged in the study of
French. Langeais is very imposing and decidedly
sombre; it marks the transition from the architecture
of defence to that of elegance. It rises, massive and
perpendicular, out of the centre of the village to
which it gives its name, and which it entirely domi-
nates; so that, as you stand before it, in the crooked
and empty street, there is no resource for you but to
stare up at its heavy overhanging cornice and at the
huge towers surmounted with extinguishers of slate.
If you follow this street to the end, however, you
encounter in abundance the usual embellishments of
a French village: little ponds or tanks, with women
on their knees on the brink, pounding and thumping
a lump of saturated linen; brown old crones, the tone
of whose facial hide makes their nightcaps (worn by
day) look dazzling; little alleys perforating the thick-
ness of a row of cottages, and showing you behind,
as a glimpse, the vividness of a green garden. In
the rear of the castle rises a hill which must formerly
have been occupied by some of its appurtenances,
and which indeed is still partly enclosed within its
court. You may walk round this eminence, which,
with the small houses of the village at its base, shuts