Chapter 9 - Page 2

in the castle from behind. The enclosure is not
defiantly guarded, however; for a small, rough path,
which you presently reach, leads up to an open gate.
This gate admits you to a vague and rather limited
_parc_, which covers the crest of the hill, and through
which you may walk into the gardens of castle.
These gardens, of small extent, confront the dark
walls with their brilliant parterres, and, covering the
gradual slope of the hill, form, as it were, the fourth
side of the court. This is the stateliest view of the
chateau, which looks to you sufficiently grim and gray
as, after asking leave of a neat young woman who
sallies out to learn your errand, you sit there on a
garden bench and take the measure of the three tall
towers attached to this inner front and forming sever-
ally the cage of a staircase. The huge bracketed cor-
nice (one of the features of Langeais) which is merely
ornamental, as it is not machicolated, though it looks
so, is continued on the inner face as well. The whole
thing has a fine feudal air, though it was erected on
the rains of feudalism.

The main event in the history of the castle is the
marriage of Anne of Brittany to her first husband,
Charles VIII., which took place in its great hall in
1491. Into this great hall we were introduced by
the neat young woman, - into this great hall and
into sundry other halls, winding staircases, galleries,
chambers. The cicerone of Langeais is in too great a
hurry; the fact is pointed out in the excellent Guide-
Joanne. This ill-dissimulated vice, however, is to be
observed, in the country of the Loire, in every one
who carries a key. It is true that at Langeais there
is no great occasion to indulge in the tourist's weak-
ness of dawdling; for the apartments, though they
contain many curious odds and ends of, antiquity, are
not of first-rate interest. They are cold and musty,
indeed, with that touching smell of old furniture, as
all apartments should be through which the insatiate
American wanders in the rear of a bored domestic,
pausing to stare at a faded tapestry or to read the
name on the frame of some simpering portrait.

To return to Tours my companion and I had counted
on a train which (as is not uncommon in France)
existed only in the "Indicateur des Chemins de Fer;"
and instead of waiting for another we engaged a vehicle
to take us home. A sorry _carriole_ or _patache_ it proved
to be, with the accessories of a lumbering white mare
and a little wizened, ancient peasant, who had put on,
in honor of the occasion, a new blouse of extraordinary
stiffness and blueness. We hired the trap of an energetic
woman who put it "to" with her own hands; women