y, built in 1634, is of a
much later date than the other royal residences of this part of France;
it belongs to the end of the Renaissance and has a touch of the rococo.
The guard-room is a superb apartment; and as it contains little save its
magnificent ceiling and fireplace and certain dim tapestries on its
walls, you the more easily take the measure of its noble proportions.
The servant opened the shutters of a single window, and the last rays of
the twilight slanted into the rich brown gloom. It was in the same
picturesque fashion that I saw the bedroom (adjoining) of Henry IV.,
where a legendary-looking bed, draped in folds long unaltered, defined
itself in the haunted dusk. Cheverny remains to me a very charming, a
partly mysterious vision. I drove back to Blois in the dark, some nine
miles, through the forest of Russy, which belongs to the State and
which, though consisting apparently of small timber, looked under the
stars sufficiently vast and primeval. There was a damp autumnal smell
and the occasional sound of a stirring thing; and as I moved through the
evening air I thought of Francis I. and Henry IV.

[Illustration]

Chapter vi

[Amboise]

You may go to Amboise either from Blois or from Tours; it is about
half-way between these towns. The great point is to go, especially if
you have put it off repeatedly; and to go, if possible, on a day when
the great view of the Loire, which you enjoy from the battlements and
terraces, presents itself under a friendly sky. Three persons, of whom
the author of these lines was one, spent the greater part of a perfect
Sunday morning in looking at it. It was astonishing, in the course of
the rainiest season in the memory of the oldest Tourangeau, how many
perfect days we found to our hand. The town of Amboise lies, like Tours,
on the left bank of the river--a little white-faced town staring across
an admirable bridge and leaning, behind, as it were, against the
pedestal of rock on which the dark castle masses itself. The town is so
small, the pedestal so big and the castle so high and striking, that
the clustered houses at the base of the rock are like the crumbs that
have fallen from a well-laden table. You pass among them, however, to
ascend by a circuit to the chateau, which you attack, obliquely, from
behind. It is the property of the Comte de Paris, another pretender to
the French throne; having come to him remotely, by inheritance, from his
ancestor, the D