THE CHÂTEAUX OF TOURAINE.—I.

[FROM A CORRESPONDENT.]

THERE is no province of France faller of fine and curious old houses, of ghosts, legends, and old family traditions, than the province of Anjou; but perhaps, to a foreigner in France, any deep interest in these things is what one may call an acquired taste. You must live a certain time within the old white walls three yards thick, you must love the voice of frogs and owls, you must breathe the pure simple air, must lay aside your Teuton searchings of heart, must believe what is told you, laugh, be philosophical, accept a civilisation which is in some ways oddly different from your own,—all this before the old French spirit, still alive in those sun-baked, tapestried chateaux, those white villages among the woods, along by the little rivers, where the trembling poplars shed on grass and water their downy blossoms like a shower of snow, can lay hold on you with its indescribable charm. Still, with all opportunities, the love of Anjou will never be an universal sentiment. Most people like deeper colours, broader outlines, finer architecture, real history ; and all these they can find in Anjou's very distinguished sister-province, Tonraine.

From their own beauty, splendour, and historical interest, and from the people who lived in them, there is not a more remarkable group in France than the five chateaux lying east of Tours, near the Loire,—Chenonceaux, Amboise, Chaumozit, Blois, Chambord. French people visit them constantly; in the train, in the little country omnibus, on the sunny roads, in the grand, gloomy old rooms, you meet cheerful family parties, father, mother, and children, with round straw hats, brown agreeable faces, and large bunches of wildflowers in their hands. I do not know whether English travellers are pleased to despise them ; but certainly I met no English during the few days I spent among them. And even of the French there were com- paratively few, not enough to disturb the strange atmosphere of silence and loneliness which now surrounds these old royal houses, once built, and loved, and lived in by some of the most brilliant people in Europe.

There is something mysterious in the beauty of Chenone,eaux ; it is like a fairy palace, a place seen in a dream. It is so unique, that Queen Catherine de' Medici's great fancy for it does not seem strange. Chaumont, which she gave to the Dachesse de Valentinois in a forced exchange for it, is a much more ordinary sort of castle; though, for myself, I would rather have Chaummit, which has more human associations for me.

Chenonceanx is a hidden place ; though the old village, with its dark climbing roofs and bright flowers, must always have been near it, there is no friendliness, no lordliness even, in the attitude of chateau to village. It is the beautiful house of an enchanter, of a witch, of a bad fairy,—certainly it was, in the days of Catherine. One fancies that even to this day the villagers may be a little shy of going down that avenue, of passing the tremendous pride and scorn of those two Sphinxes who guard the entrance to the sour d'honneur. And yet the sun is shining over the broad space of glowing gravel, the great stiff garden on the left is fall of roses, and the palace seems to smile as it fronts you, white and grey, with its beautiful windows, and all its turrets and chimney-tops crowned with a gilded flourish of vanes. It does not stand on dry ground, this fairy building ; the River Cher flows under' it, round it; ripples

about its feet for ever; a peacefully Bowing river, with green islands here and there, and great trees on the farther bank, to which there is no bridge but the chciteau itself. For nearly four hundcel years now, the Cher has reflected those walls and turrets and windows, and the strange contrasts of men and women who have lived there. And before those days, the river, so much older than all, only reflected a mill. But the mill, and the estate, and an old manor hard by, fell into the hands of M. Thomas Bohier in 1496, and he, who must have been a man of imagination, built this splendid house on the foundations of the mill. He no doubt dreamed of founding a family ; but the son who succeeded him, and for whom he may have meant the device, ,S'il yield d point, me souviendra, did not keep up his remembrance long, but became bankrupt—the Bohiers were Norman tax-collectors—and in this way Chenon-

ceaux passed into the hands of King Francois I., who made a very splendid hunting-box of it. With Henri II. began its days

of greater splendour, as the home of Diane de Poitiers, who played very much with her new toy, and built the wonderful bridge which connects the great pavilion with the other bank of the Cher. Then came dark days, splendid still, but with witch- craft and cruelty added to other wickedness, when Catherine drove out Diane and lived in her house. Even now her portrait looks down with a sort of cold triumph ; it is a pale, refined, sly, cruel face. One wonders that the artist dared to give her that false look. "Elie a l'air de see ceuvres," says the gardien, who has no weakness for kings and queens.

One feels as if a better time for Chenonceaux may have been its ownership by Louise de Vandemont, who mourned here for her murdered husband, Henri III. And then, in later days, its associations are more brilliant, though not exactly charming. One can picture pretty well what M. and Mdme. Dupin were, amiable philosophes of the eighteenth century, entertainers of Rousseau, Voltaire, Bolingbroke, and so on. Chenonceaux has never been a high or a holy place ; its associations are not exactly sweet, at any time of its history, though brilliant with all the attraction that each age could give. Mime. Dupin, they say, was entirely spared by the Revolution, which only demanded of her, then a very old woman, to burn some deeds and pictures rather too aristocratic. Very nice of the Revolution ; and Mdme. Dupin was no doubt a most agreeable and delightful person. But I, coming from Anjou, have learnt to love the old ladies.who were guillotined.

Mdme. Pelouze, the present owner of Chenonceaux, has restored it within and without ; the rooms are magnificently arranged, in "style Francois Premier," " style Louis Treize," I rather think that the great taste and knowledge of M. Charton, who has beautified so many of the Anjou chateaux, have been at work here too. But its outside beauty is, perhaps, the most impressive thing about Chenonceaux. When I was there, nobody was at home, nobody moving about the place. A country.

woman, in her blue gown and white cap, might cross the court with a basket; but her steps died away, and then there was no sound, except the gentle splash of the river against those great old piers, and the distant rustling of the tall trees in the avenue.

I stood on the terrace looking for a long time, till I went slowly back to breakfast at " Le Bon Laboureur," in the midst of pottery and photographs and flowers. Then I very nearly rushed back down the avenue again, at the risk of missing my train, to make quite sure that I had not been dreaming all the morning, and that the Chateau de Chenonceaux was real.

Chaumont., the exchange for Chenonceaux, older than it by four hundred years, is a contrast to it in every way. Not possess- ing its singular beauty, not suggestive of magic or wickedness, though Catherine's cabalistic signs are to be seen everywhere, and her astrologer, Ruggieri, lived and worked in one of those round towers. Her own bed-curtains, stripes of olive-green velvet and faded silk embroidery,—her prie-Dieu, her livre d'heures, her candlestick, and many other relics, have probably always been at Chaumont ; and the old rooms, rugged, ancient, hung with Beauvais tapestry, and floored with dark, glazed tiles, have been arranged with a taste, a vraisenzblance, which, to my mind, surpasses the splendid restoration of Chenonceaux. Here you have not the reproduction of the old, but the old itself,— rusty, worn, threadbare, and real. Diane's portrait smiles from the wall of her awn room. She does not look as if she hated Chaumont ; though any one who loved Chenonceaux must have found it, as a building, a somewhat dismal exchange.

As a building only ; for the situation of Chaumont is magni- ficent. It stands high above the Loire, with its village about its feet, and from a distance looks truly majestic and royal. It is not very easy to visit, being more than half-an-hour's walk from the little Onzaia Station, on the line between Amboise and Blois. And walk you must, for there is no omnibus or convey- ance to take you there. Perhaps the afternoon sun is blazing down, that June day, on the long road that leads to the Loire. But the poplars give a little shade, straight and tall as they are, and there is a pleasant green roadside to walk on, and in ponds and marshy places below the road, intersected by lines of poplars and willows, the frogs are croaking deliciously. The sound takes one back to a certain dear avenue in Anjou, and makes one forget heat and dust, and the uncertain distance of Chaumont ; makes one even forget to envy the men and women in blue who. jog by, drawn by strong white horses, and look a little curiously at the traveller walking alone.

Then we come to the suspension-brifig e over the great, wide, slow-flowing Loire. There is Chaumont at last, far away, high up on the left bank, a group of grey towers rising out of trees, high above the village and the church spire. It looks an alarm- ingly long way off still. " Defendu de trotter : " so the white horses with their carts go stumping and rumbling on over the wooden bridge, and the solitary tourist follows them. It takes about ten minutes to cross the river here. Then the road goes up through the village, past various quaint old buildings, till you turn into the shady avenue of the chateau, climbing up, up into the park, where they are making hay, and immense cocks stand about among beds of roses and geraniums. Round about an English chateau these grass slopes and banks would be kept in a very different kind of order ; but we have no trim lawns here.

There among the hay-cocks you may meet a sweet-faced old woman who stops to talk to you, and makes two discoveries which delight her,—that .you are English, and travelling alone. And perhaps when you have seen the chateau, and its wondere,. and have lingered as long as you can on the beautiful terrace above the Loire, you may stroll down through hay and roses to her shady lodge by the gate, and drink milk out of a little brown pot, and talk confidentially to her and her sturdy old husband. And if she has loved you at first sight, you may find some sweet pink roses waiting for you, and she may run out into the sun- shine, before you part, and fetch scented geranium-leaves for you to take home to England. Au revoir, dear old friends ! friends of a quarter of an hour ! "Nous sommes tres vienx !" she says, with a smile and a sigh, and her husband adds that they have been there fifty years already. Anyhow, if I never see you again, you are the one sweet human touch that endears-