the river, and
the piers which form their abutments, are about one hundred feet wide,
and support a considerable house. The others support merely a gallery,
called by our guide the ballroom of Catherine de Medicis, ending in a
small theatre. The view from the windows of the river flowing through
wooded meadows is beautiful and peculiar. Every window looks on the
river; many rooms, as is the case with the gallery, look both up and down
it. It must be a charming summer residence. The rooms still retain the
furniture which was put into them by Diane de Poictiers and Catherine de
Medicis; very curious and very uncomfortable; high narrow chairs, short
sofas, many-footed tables, and diminutive mirrors. The sculptured
pilasters, scrolls, bas-reliefs and tracery of the outside are not of
fine workmanship, but are graceful and picturesque. The associations are
interesting, beginning with Francis I. and ending with Rousseau, who
spent there the autumn of 1746, as the guest of Madame Dupin, and wrote a
comedy for its little theatre. The present proprietor, the Marquis de
Villeneuve, is Madame Dupin's grandson.

In the evening we read my report of the debate on Montalembert.

'It is difficult,' said Tocqueville, 'to wish that so great a speech had
been suppressed. But I am inclined to think that Montalembert's wiser
course was to remain silent. What good will his speech do? It will not be
published. Yours is probably the only report of it. So far as the public
hears anything of it, the versions coming through an unfavourable medium
will be misrepresentations. In a letter which I received from Paris
this morning it is called virulent. It was of great importance that the
minority against granting the consent should be large, and I have no
doubt that this speech diminished it by twenty or thirty. It must have
wounded many, frightened many, and afforded a pretext to many. Perhaps,
however, it was not in human nature for such a speaker as Montalembert to
resist the last opportunity of uttering bold truths in a French
Assembly.'

_Friday, April_ 7.--We drove to-day along the Loire to Langrais, about
twelve miles below Tours.

Here is a castle of the thirteenth century, consisting of two centre and
two corner towers, and a curtain between them, terminating in a rocky
promontory. Nothing can be more perfect than the masonry, or more elegant
than the few ornaments. The outside is covered with marks of bullets,
which appear to have rattl