THE CHÂTEAUX OF TOURAINE.—II.

[FRON A CORRESPONDENT:I THE associations of Amboise are as varied as human life itself. It has been the scene of many tragedies, murders, imprison- ments, from the days of its founder Ciesar to the present time. -Clovis and Alaric met there, Louis XI. lived there, Charles VIII., most attractive of kings,was born and died there, striking his head against the low stone lintel of a doorway that has survived him :four hundred years. Here, riding up the broad sloping road in the Tour des Minimes, which leads front the town below to the

top of the castle, Charles V. visited Francois I., who also enter- tained here a still more distinguished stranger. Then came horrors enough, when the bodies of Huguenots hung in rows from the balcony overlooking the Loire ;—the strong old bare are there still. After those days, many State prisoners pined away their days in Amboise, and perhaps the beauty of their prison did not make captivity less hard to bear,—certainly not to Abd-el-Kader and his wild Arabs.

But now the grim old Château of Amboise seems to have done with gloom for ever. White and gay and stately in the sunlight, it stands high on its rocky platform above the little town, which is itself full of picturesque roofs and towers ; houses dating from Louis XII. and Francois I. are to be found in every street of these towns on the Loire. Amboise is full of life and movement. On its long shady road, beside the river, a fair is held, and there are rows of gay booths,—flowers, cutlery, china,

caps, handkerchiefs, a lottery-wheel spinning here and there, where, if you are lucky, you may win a long pink stick of suers de pomme for twopence ; strings of horses walking through; heaps of splendid fruit and vegetables on the grass under the trees; dark grave faces ready to smile, eager voices,—that gentil which, in such an English scene, is so dismally absent.

But we must leave the fair, with all its small attractions, and go up through the narrow white streets, and by a place with

low trees, and so up a steep slope with long grass and poppies, under the great walls, which are all tapestried with green and wildflowers. A sort of tunnel in the rock, with old gateways,

brings you up into the great court of the chtiteau, which is now

a most enchanting garden. Trees, grass, a wilderness of roses and other flowers, cover the top of this high platform. On one side there is the white stone building, now being restored to something of its earlier beauty, which is all that remains of the great Castle of Amboise; on the other side, guarding and bless- ing the town,—the castle defends it towards the Loire,—stands the Chapel of St. Hubert, with its high delicate spire and wonderful carving. But the view is the great charm here, in this garden lifted above the world. One hardly notices the dark, crowded roofs of the town, but looks away along the course of the stately Loire, with its bridges, flowing on to the sea, glittering in the splendid sunshine, between the bright fields and smiling slopes of Touraine.

Perhaps the most striking thought connected with this chdteau-garden of Amboise is, that here Lionardo da Vinci lies

buried,—certainly a more distinguished guest of King Francois than even Charles V. One wonders whether he cared much for being here, whether he found much inspiration among the

Tourangeaux. He certainly did not like dying here, if the eyes of his bust, which stands here in the garden, have any truth in them ; they gaze away at the passing river with a fixed, eternal sadness.

M. le Comte de Paris has been restoring the Château d'Amboise for the last eleven years, and it is not nearly finished • yet. "Pour la nation !" they say,—certainly an ungrateful nation. Perhaps the works will be stopped, now that the master cannot visit them any more.

Blois is, perhaps, the most historical and the least personal of all the royal castles on the Loire, and has the uninteresting fate of being national property. In its great days, three hundred years ago, the history of Blois was the history of France. One cannot connect it with the private life and fancies of any par-

ticular king or queen. All the stately procession, bad and good alike splendid, walks in the cloisters and courts of Blois, and through its richly-painted rooms. Charles d'Orleans, Louis XII , and Anne of Bretagne ; Francois I., his guests and his following kings ; Catherine de' Medici, whose rooms and oratory are rather terribly near the oubliettes of the chciteau, and who died here, struck with horror and remorse at last after the murder of the Due de Guise ; Henri IV., Marie de' Medici, Gaston d'Orleans, Louis XIV., Stanislas Leczinski ; and, in later days, Napoleon and Josephine, Marie Louise and her son.

• In this century, the chateau has been a barrack and a powder magazine ; but in the last few years it has been restored, and now those empty rooms and galleries echo with the feet of tourists. You walk on strips of matting along the polished floors, and look at the beautiful colours of wall and ceiling, and refurnish the rooms in your mind for Henri and Catherine, and feel as if you were not in the home of kings and queens, but in their very magnificent prison. The Château de Blois is dead, with all its splendour ; but it is worth while, in the glowing heat of the day, to stand under Louis XII.'s red cloister, and look at

the lovely white facade to the right, with the crowned " F " and the Salamander marking everywhere the work of Francois le Magnificre, and the open staircase tower standing lightly forward, a crowning feat of the Renaissance, almost unmatched in Europe for grace and beauty. Nobody knows the names of the architect, builder, and carver who worked on that north wing of the Chateau de Blois ; but they were probably natives of Blois,—the same, perhaps, who built Chambord. These Tourangeaux are very clever people.

The Chateau de Blois stands up high above the town, looking down on the Loire, and on all the narrow streets of houses that go winding and climbing round it. The town has great attrac- tions of its own—a grand old church, St. Nicholas—and many of the streets and lanes are flights of steps, sometimes with a flower-garden or a clump of trees in the middle of them. There are curious old houses in these streets, which M. Joanne describes as "tfoifes, tortueuses, esearinles,dfsertes." Every one who loves an old French town knows what that means, what lovely colour and shadow, what masses of flowers in dark corners, what busy old brown women, and smiling young girls, and quaint little cropped children. Twelve o'clock strikes, and all the bells in the city break out into music overhead, some high, some low, the whole air ringing with them. If the fascina- tions of Blois have kept you wandering and climbing about since half-past eight, you now begin to be hungry, and find your way back to the hotel as fast as the shop-windows will let you. Mountains of strawberries on this early day in June, and ci Ome de St. Gervais in little brown pots, with vine-leaves tied over them ! Is not this enough to cover any small annoyances, and sweeten one's temper for the day ?

Then Chambord, the last of the group of five ch(Itcauic,—the largest, the saddest, the loneliest, once, perhaps, the most magnificent.

You drive from Blois through a cheerful country, wide and open, with many-coloured fields and vineyards and distant woods. Here and there is a little white stone village, or a farm by the road-side, and everywhere are blue figures moving,—load- ing hay-carts, weeding crops, tending animals. But with the park of Chambord all this life ceases ; you drive along a broad clearing between low dismal-looking woods, the remains of the great forest which the Priticesse de Wagrain, to whom Napoleon had given the place, cut down fifty years ago. It is a very long road through the forest, perfectly straight and still ; you have gone some distance before you are aware of a faint vision of towers and pinnacles, still far away, closing up the end of the avenue. At last you come to Chambord,—the Versailles of Tonrain s.

There stands the great lonely palace, a wonderful, fantastic mass of towers and turrets and pinnacles, soaring grey roofs, high ornamented windows, and amazing chimney-pots, all fretted and carved in the wonderful ways of the Renaissance, with the crowned " F " and the Salamander everywhere. Round about it, on the borders of the wood, stand a few scattered houses, two inns, and a church on a small rising ground. Here you are in the very nest and cradle of Legitimism. The whole place, including the dark.eyed gardien, with his air of melancholy sweetness, seems to be mourning for Henri Cinq and the old line of kings; for till his death, Chambord could feel, forsaken as she might be, that she still belonged to a King of France. Here are kept his old toys,—a park of artillery given him when be was six years old ; and here are presents from Legitimists of all ranks, tapestry from great ladies, ironwork from a locksmith of Blois. They think in that country that M. le Comte de Chambord always looked on Chambord as his home in France. " Nous sommes voisins, alors," he said in his charming way to an Anjou lady who attended his reception at Antwerp a few years ago.

The most remarkable things about Chanabord are its enormous size, 440 rooms, and the great double spiral staircase. There are thirteen great staircases, but this is the chief of them. It is in the middle of the building, and on every storey you can step out on four great rooms. One of these rooms was formerly a theatre, where M. de Poureeaugnac and .Le Bourgeois Gentil- homine were acted for the first time before Louis XIV. The staircase ends in a lofty lantern, the highest part of the building ; and if you climb so high, you are rewarded by a curious view of roofs, turrets, chimney-pots, and forest.

Francois I. lived much at Chambord during his last years, and entertained Charles V. with hunting-parties. Of following Xinje, it was Louis XIV. who came here most, caring more for a palace than a castle. Then it was the refuge of old Stanislas of Poland, with his funny red face, the father of poor Queen Marie Leczinska. One of the charming things at Chambord is her picture by Vanloo ; a pretty, happy, smiling face, with sweet brown eyes. There are a great many in- teresting pictures at Chambord, Bourbon family portraits, be- longing now, I suppose, to the Duke of Parma. Among- them there is a clever, good-humoured, sensible, plain woman, Madame de Maintenon. I looked at her with the strangest conviction of knowing her perfectly well, and then remembered buying photographs in a shop at Blois that morning from a good lady who was the very image of her.

The glory of these old houses is probably past for ever, but the fate of Chambord seems the saddest of all. Chenonceanx and Chaumont belong to rich people who restore and admire and pet them. Blois is a monument historigue. Amboise sees her owner banished, but is not without hope for the future. Only poor Chambord seems alone in the world, as she sits in the middle of her dwarfed woods, all her fantastic splendour for- gotten and forsaken. Yet perhaps in her old Legitimist pride she would rather belong to an Italian prince, her Henri's nephew, than to any Frenchman of the present day. In some- French hearts this kind of loyalty is a passion, and the- atmosphere of Chambord helps one to understand it. E.