mns, is wrought over with lovely images,
strange and ingenious devices, prime among which is the great heraldic
salamander of Francis I. The salamander is everywhere at Blois--over the
chimneys, over the doors, on the walls. This whole quarter of the castle
bears the stamp of that eminently pictorial prince. The running cornice
along the top of the front is like an unfolded, an elongated bracelet.
The windows of the attic are like shrines for saints. The gargoyles, the
medallions, the statuettes, the festoons are like the elaboration of
some precious cabinet rather than the details of a building exposed to
the weather and to the ages. In the interior there is a profusion of
restoration, and it is all restoration in colour. This has been,
evidently, a work of great energy and cost, but it will easily strike
you as overdone. The universal freshness is a discord, a false note; it
seems to light up the dusky past with an unnatural glare. Begun in the
reign of Louis Philippe, this terrible process--the more terrible always
the better case you conceive made out for it--has been carried so far
that there is now scarcely a square inch of the interior that preserves
the colour of the past. It is true that the place had been so coated
over with modern abuse that something was needed to keep it alive; it is
only perhaps a pity the clever doctors, not content with saving its
life, should have undertaken to restore its bloom. The love of
consistency, in such a business, is a dangerous lure. All the old
apartments have been rechristened, as it were; the geography of the
castle has been re-established. The guard-rooms, the bedrooms, the
closets, the oratories have recovered their identity. Every spot
connected with the murder of the Duke of Guise is pointed out by a
small, shrill boy, who takes you from room to room and who has learned
his lesson in perfection. The place is full of Catherine de'Medici, of
Henry III., of memories, of ghosts, of echoes, of possible evocations
and revivals. It is covered with crimson and gold. The fireplaces and
the ceilings are magnificent; they look like expensive "sets" at the
grand opera.

I should have mentioned that below, in the court, the front of the wing
of Gaston d'Orleans faces you as you enter, so that the place is a
course of French history. Inferior in beauty and grace to the other
portions of the castle, the wing is yet a nobler monument than the
memory of Gaston deserves. The second of t