Chapter 10

The consequence of my leaving to the last my little
mention of Loches is that space and opportunity fail
me; and yet a brief and hurried account of that extra-
ordinary spot would after all be in best agreement with
my visit. We snatched a fearful joy, my companion
and I, the afternoon we took the train for Loches.
The weather this time had been terribly against us:
again and again a day that promised fair became hope-
lessly foul after lunch. At last we determined that if
we could not make this excursion in the sunshine, we
would make it with the aid of our umbrellas. We
grasped them firmly and started for the station, where
we were detained an unconscionable time by the evolu-
tions, outside, of certain trains laden with liberated
(and exhilarated) conscripts, who, their term of service
ended, were about to be restored to civil life. The
trains in Touraine are provoking; they serve as little
as possible for excursions. If they convey you one
way at the right hour, it is on the condition of bring-
ing you back at the wrong; they either allow you far
too little time to examine the castle or the ruin, or
they leave you planted in front of it for periods that
outlast curiosity. They are perverse, capricious, ex-
asperating. It was a question of our having but an
hour or two at Loches, and we could ill afford to sacri-
fice to accidents. One of the accidents, however, was
that the rain stopped before we got there, leaving be-
hind it a moist mildness of temperature and a cool
and lowering sky, which were in perfect agreement
with the gray old city. Loches is certainly one of the
greatest impressions of the traveller in central France,
- the largest cluster of curious things that presents
itself to his sight. It rises above the valley of the
Indre, the charming stream set in meadows and sedges,
which wanders through the province of Berry and
through many of the novels of Madame George Sand;
lifting from the summit of a hill, which it covers to
the base, a confusion of terraces, ramparts, towers, and
spires. Having but little time, as I say, we scaled
the hill amain, and wandered briskly through this
labyrinth of antiquities. The rain had decidedly
stopped, and save that we had our train on our minds,
we saw Loches to the best advantage. We enjoyed
that sensation with which the conscientious tourist is
- or ought to be - well acquainted, and for which, at
any rate, he has a formula in his rough-and-ready
language. We "experienced," as they say, (most odious
of verbs!) an "agreeable disappointment." We were
surprised and delighted; we had not suspected that
Loches was so good.

I hardly know what is best there: the strange and