rmite--a
gentleman whom the readers of "Quentin Durward" will not have
forgotten--the hangman-in-ordinary to that great and prompt chastener
Louis XI. Unfortunately the house of Tristan is not the house of Tristan
at all; this illusion has been cruelly dispelled. There are no illusions
left at all, in the good city of Tours, with regard to Louis XI. His
terrible castle of Plessis, the picture of which sends a shiver through
the youthful reader of Scott, has been reduced to suburban
insignificance; and the residence of his _triste compere_, on the front
of which a festooned rope figures as a motive for decoration, is
observed to have been erected in the succeeding century. The Maison de
Tristan may be visited for itself, however, if not for Sir Walter; it is
an exceedingly picturesque old facade, to which you pick your way
through a narrow and tortuous street--a street terminating, a little
beyond it, in the walk beside the river. An elegant Gothic doorway is
let into the rusty-red brickwork, and strange little beasts crouch at
the angles of the windows, which are surmounted by a tall graduated
gable, pierced with a small orifice, where the large surface of brick,
lifted out of the shadow of the street, looks yellow and faded. The
whole thing is disfigured and decayed; but it is a capital subject for a
sketch in colours. Only I must wish the sketcher better luck--or a
better temper--than my own. If he ring the bell to be admitted to see
the court, which I believe is more sketchable still, let him have
patience to wait till the bell is answered. He can do the outside while
they are coming.

[Tours: Plessis-les-Tours]

The Maison de Tristan, I say, may be visited for itself; but I hardly
know for what the remnants of Plessis-les-Tours may be investigated. To
reach them you wander through crooked suburban lanes, down the course of
the Loire, to a rough, undesirable, incongruous spot, where a small,
crude building of red brick is pointed out to you by your cabman (if you
happen to drive) as the legendary frame of the grim portrait, and where
a strong odour of pigsties and other unclean things so prostrates you
for the moment that you have no energy to protest against this obvious
fiction. You enter a yard encumbered with rubbish and a defiant dog, and
an old woman emerges from a shabby lodge and assures you that you stand
deep in historic dust. The red brick building, which looks like a small
factory, rises on the ruins of