--a soft agglomeration of gardens, vineyards,
scattered villas, gables and turrets of slate-roofed chateaux, terraces
with grey balustrades, moss-grown walls draped in scarlet
Virginia-creeper. You turn into the town again beside a great military
barrack which is ornamented with a rugged mediaeval tower, a relic of the
ancient fortifications, known to the Tourangeaux of to-day as the Tour
de Guise. The young Prince of Joinville, son of that Duke of Guise who
was murdered by the order of Henry II. at Blois, was, after the death of
his father, confined here for more than two years, but made his escape
one summer evening in 1591, under the nose of his keepers, with a
gallant audacity which has attached the memory of the exploit to his
sullen-looking prison. Tours has a garrison of five regiments, and the
little red-legged soldiers light up the town. You see them stroll upon
the clean, uncommercial quay, where there are no signs of navigation,
not even by oar, no barrels nor bales, no loading nor unloading, no
masts against the sky nor booming of steam in the air. The most active
business that goes on there is that patient and fruitless angling in
which the French, as the votaries of art for art, excel all other
people. The little soldiers, weighed down by the contents of their
enormous pockets, pass with respect from one of these masters of the rod
to the other, as he sits soaking an indefinite bait in the large,
indifferent stream. After you turn your back to the quay you have only
to go a little way before you reach the cathedral.

[Illustration]

Chapter ii

[Tours: the Cathedral]

It is a very beautiful church of the second order of importance, with a
charming mouse-coloured complexion and a pair of fantastic towers. There
is a commodious little square in front of it, from which you may look up
at its very ornamental face; but for purposes of frank admiration the
sides and the rear are perhaps not sufficiently detached. The cathedral
of Tours, which is dedicated to Saint Gatianus, took a long time to
build. Begun in 1170, it was finished only in the first half of the
sixteenth century; but the ages and the weather have interfused so well
the tone of the different parts that it presents, at first at least, no
striking incongruities, and looks even exceptionally harmonious and
complete. There are many grander cathedrals, but there are probably few
more pleasing; and this effect of delicacy and grace is at its