X.

The consequence of my leaving to the last my little

mention of Loches is that space and opportunity fail

me; and yet a brief and hurried account of that extra-

ordinary spot would after all be in best agreement with

my visit. We snatched a fearful joy, my companion

and I, the afternoon we took the train for Loches.

The weather this time had been terribly against us:

again and again a day that promised fair became hope-

lessly foul after lunch. At last we determined that if

we could not make this excursion in the sunshine, we

would make it with the aid of our umbrellas. We

grasped them firmly and started for the station, where

we were detained an unconscionable time by the evolu-

tions, outside, of certain trains laden with liberated

(and exhilarated) conscripts, who, their term of service

ended, were about to be restored to civil life. The

trains in Touraine are provoking; they serve as little

as possible for excursions. If they convey you one

way at the right hour, it is on the condition of bring-

ing you back at the wrong; they either allow you far

too little time to examine the castle or the ruin, or

they leave you planted in front of it for periods that

outlast curiosity. They are perverse, capricious, ex-

asperating. It was a question of our having but an

hour or two at Loches, and we could ill afford to sacri-

fice to accidents. One of the accidents, however, was

that the rain stopped before we got there, leaving be-

hind it a moist mildness of temperature and a cool

and lowering sky, which were in perfect agreement

with the gray old city. Loches is certainly one of the

greatest impressions of the traveller in central France,

- the largest cluster of curious things that presents

itself to his sight. It rises above the valley of the

Indre, the charming stream set in meadows and sedges,

which wanders through the province of Berry and

through many of the novels of Madame George Sand;

lifting from the summit of a hill, which it covers to

the base, a confusion of terraces, ramparts, towers, and

spires. Having but little time, as I say, we scaled

the hill amain, and wandered briskly through this

labyrinth of antiquities. The rain had decidedly

stopped, and save that we had our train on our minds,

we saw Loches to the best advantage. We enjoyed

that sensation with which the conscientious tourist is

- or ought to be - well acquainted, and for which, at

any rate, he has a formula in his rough-and-ready

language. We "experienced," as they say, (most odious

of verbs!) an "agreeable disappointment." We were

surprised and delighted; we had not suspected that

Loches was so good.

I hardly know what is best there: the strange and

impressive little collegial church, with its romanesque

atrium or narthex, its doorways covered with primitive

sculpture of the richest kind, its treasure of a so-called

pagan altar, embossed with fighting warriors, its three

pyramidal domes, so unexpected, so sinister, which I

have not met elsewhere, in church architecture; or the

huge square keep, of the eleventh century, - the most

cliff-like tower I remember, whose immeasurable thick-

ness I did not penetrate; or the subterranean mysteries

of two other less striking but not less historic dungeons,

into which a terribly imperative little cicerone intro-

duced us, with the aid of downward ladders, ropes,

torches, warnings, extended hands; and, many, fearful

anecdotes, - all in impervious darkness. These horrible

prisons of Loches, at an incredible distance below the

daylight, were a favorite resource of Louis XI., and

were for the most part, I believe, constructed by him.

One of the towers of the castle is garnished with the

hooks or supports of the celebrated iron cage in which

he confined the Cardinal La Balue, who survived so

much longer than might have been expected this extra-

ordinary mixture of seclusion and exposure. All these

things form part of the castle of Loches, whose enorm-

ous _enceinte_ covers the whole of the top of the hill, and

abounds in dismantled gateways, in crooked passages,

in winding lanes that lead to postern doors, in long

facades that look upon terraces interdicted to the

visitor, who perceives with irritation that they com-

mand magnificent views. These views are the property

of the sub-prefect of the department, who resides at

the Chateau de Loches, and who has also the enjoy-

ment of a garden - a garden compressed and curtailed,

as those of old castles that perch on hill-tops are apt

to be - containing a horse-chestnut tree of fabulous

size, a tree of a circumference so vast and so perfect

that the whole population of Loches might sit in con-

centric rows beneath its boughs. The gem of the place,

however, is neither the big _marronier_, nor the collegial

church, nor the mighty dungeon, nor the hideous prisons

of Louis XI.; it is simply the tomb of Agnes Sorel, _la

belle des belles_, so many years the mistress of Charles VII.

She was buried, in 1450, in the collegial church,

whence, in the beginning of the present century, her

remains, with the monument that marks them, were

transferred to one of the towers of the castle. She has

always, I know not with what justice, enjoyed a fairer

fame than most ladies who have occupied her position,

and this fairness is expressed in the delicate statue

that surmounts her tomb. It represents her lying there

in lovely demureness, her hands folded with the best

modesty, a little kneeling angel at either side of her

head, and her feet, hidden in the folds of her decent

robe, resting upon a pair of couchant lambs, innocent

reminders of her name. Agnes, however, was not

lamb-like, inasmuch as, according to popular tradition

at least, she exerted herself sharply in favor of the ex-

pulsion of the English from France. It is one of the

suggestions of Loches that the young Charles VII.,

hard put to it as he was for a treasury and a capital,

- "le roi de Bourges," he was called at Paris, - was

yet a rather privileged mortal, to stand up as he does

before posterity between the noble Joan and the _gentille

Agnes_; deriving, however much more honor from one

of these companions than from the other. Almost as

delicate a relic of antiquity as this fascinating tomb is

the exquisite oratory of Anne of Brittany, among the

apartments of the castle the only chamber worthy of

note. This small room, hardly larger than a closet,

and forming part of the addition made to the edifice

by Charles VIII., is embroidered over with the curious

and remarkably decorative device of the ermine and

festooned cord. The objects in themselves are not

especially graceful; but the constant repetition of the

figure on the walls and ceiling produces an effect of

richness, in spite of the modern whitewash with which,

if I remember rightly, they have been endued. The

little streets of Loches wander crookedly down the hill,

and are full of charming pictorial "bits:" an old town-

gate, passing under a mediaeval tower, which is orna-

mented by Gothic windows and the empty niches of

statues; a meagre but delicate _hotel de ville_, of the

Renaissance, nestling close beside it; a curious _chancel-

lerie_ of the middle of the sixteenth century, with

mythological figures and a Latin inscription on the

front, - both of these latter buildings being rather un-

expected features of the huddled and precipitous little

town. Loches has a suburb on the other side of the

Indre, which we had contented ourselves with looking

down at from the heights, while we wondered whether,

even if it had not been getting late and our train were

more accommodating, we should care to take our way

across the bridge and look up that bust, in terra-cotta,

of Francis I., which is the principal ornament of the

Chateau de Sansac and the faubourg of Beaulieu. I

think we decided that we should not; that we were

already quite well enough acquainted with the nasal

profile of that monarch.