uc de Penthievre, who toward the close of the last
century bought it from the Crown, which had recovered it after a lapse.
Like the castle of Blois, it has been injured and defaced by base uses,
but, unlike the castle of Blois, it has not been completely restored.
"It is very, very dirty, but very curious"--it is in these terms that I
heard it described by an English lady who was generally to be found
engaged upon a tattered Tauchnitz in the little _salon de lecture_ of
the hotel at Tours. The description is not inaccurate; but it should be
said that if part of the dirtiness of Amboise is the result of its
having served for years as a barrack and as a prison, part of it comes
from the presence of restoring stonemasons, who have woven over a
considerable portion of it a mask of scaffolding. There is a good deal
of neatness as well, and the restoration of some of the parts seems
finished. This process, at Amboise, consists for the most part simply of
removing the vulgar excrescences of the last two centuries.

The interior is virtually a blank, the old apartments having been
chopped up into small modern rooms; it will have to be completely
reconstructed. A worthy woman with a military profile and that sharp,
positive manner which the goodwives who show you through the chateaux of
Touraine are rather apt to have, and in whose high respectability, to
say nothing of the frill of

[Illustration: AMBOISE--THE CHATEAU]

her cap and the cut of her thick brown dress, my companions and I
thought we discovered the particular note, or _nuance_, of Orleanism--a
competent, appreciative, peremptory person, I say--attended us through
the particularly delightful hour we spent upon the ramparts of Amboise.
Denuded and disfeatured within and bristling without with bricklayers'
ladders, the place was yet extraordinarily impressive and interesting. I
should mention that we spent a great deal of time in looking at the
view. Sweet was the view, and magnificent; we preferred it so much to
certain portions of the interior, and to occasional effusions of
historical information, that the old lady with the profile sometimes
lost patience with us. We laid ourselves open to the charge of
preferring it even to the little chapel of Saint Hubert, which stands on
the edge of the great terrace and has, over the portal, a wonderful
sculpture of the miraculous hunt of that holy man. In the way of plastic
art this elaborate scene is the gem of Amboise. It