wed under the clear arches and between the
solid pedestals of the part that spanned it, with the softest, vaguest
light on its bosom. This was the right perspective; we were looking
across the river of time. The whole scene was deliciously mild. The moon
came up; we passed back through the gallery and strolled about a little
longer in the gardens. It was very still. I met my old gondolier in the
twilight. He showed me his gondola, but I hated, somehow, to see it
there. I don't like, as the French say, to _meler les genres_. A gondola
in a little flat French river? The image was not less irritating, if
less injurious, than the spectacle of a steamer in the Grand Canal,
which had driven me away from Venice a year and a half before. We took
our way back to the Bon Laboureur, and waited in the little inn-parlour
for a late train to Tours. We were not impatient, for we had an
excellent dinner to occupy us; and even after we had dined we were still
content to sit awhile and exchange remarks upon the superior
civilisation of France. Where else, at a village inn, should we have
fared so well? Where else should we have sat down to our refreshment
without condescension? There were a couple of countries in which it
would not have been happy for us to arrive hungry, on a Sunday evening,
at so modest an hostelry. At the little inn at Chenonceaux the _cuisine_
was not only excellent, but the service was graceful. We were waited on
by mademoiselle and her mamma; it was so that mademoiselle alluded to
the elder lady as she uncorked for us a bottle of Vouvray mousseux. We
were very comfortable, very genial; we even went so far as to say to
each other that Vouvray mousseux was a delightful wine. From this
opinion indeed one of our trio differed; but this member of the party
had already exposed herself to the charge of being too fastidious by
declining to descend from the carriage at Chaumont and take that
back-stairs view of the castle.

[a] 1884.

[Illustration]

Chapter viii

[Azay-le-Rideau]

Without fastidiousness it was fair to declare on the other hand that the
little inn at Azay-le-Rideau was very bad. It was terribly dirty and it
was in charge of a fat _megere_ whom the appearance of four trustful
travellers--we were four, with an illustrious fourth, on that
occasion--roused apparently to fury. I attached great importance to this
incongruous hostess, for she uttered the only uncivil words I heard
spoken (in connect