ich, though I
have left it to the end of my sketch, formed the objective point of the
first excursion I made from Tours. Langeais is rather dark and grey; 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 that Duchesse de Langeais who figures in
several of Balzac's novels, and found this association very potent. The
Duchesse de Langeais 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
exceptionally grey came from my having seen it under a sky which made
most things look dark. I have, however, a very kindly memory of that
moist and melancholy 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 favourite of
Louis XIII., the victim of Richelieu, the hero of Alfred de Vigny's
novel, which is usually recommended 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 dominates; 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 thickness 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 whi