A short time after candle-lighting, I reached the little tavern of the Boule d’Or, a few leagues from Tours, where I passed the night.  The following morning was lowering and sad.  A veil of mist hung over the landscape, and ever and anon a heavy shower burst from the overburdened clouds, that were driving by before a high and piercing wind.  This unpropitious state of the weather detained me until noon, when a cabriolet for Tours drove up, and taking a seat within it, I left the hostess of the Boule d’Or in the middle of a long story about a rich countess, who always alighted there when she passed that way.  We drove leisurely along through a beautiful country, till at length we came to the brow of a steep hill, which commands a fine view of the city of Tours and its delightful environs.  But the scene was shrouded by the heavy drifting mist, through which I could trace but indistinctly the graceful sweep of the Loire, and the spires and roofs of the city far below me.

The city of Tours and the delicious plain in which it lies have been too often described by other travelers to render a new description, from so listless a pen as mine, either necessary or desirable.  After a sojourn of two cloudy and melancholy days, I set out on my return to Paris, by the way of Vendome and Chartres.  I stopt a few hours at the former place, to examine the ruins of a chateau built by Jeanne d’Albret, mother of Henry the Fourth.  It stands upon the summit of a high and precipitous hill, and almost overhangs the town beneath.  The French Revolution has completed the ruin that time had already begun; and nothing now remains, but a broken and crumbling bastion, and here and there a solitary tower dropping slowly to decay.  In one of these is the grave of Jeanne d’Albret.  A marble entablature in the wall above contains the inscription, which is nearly effaced, tho enough still remains to tell the curious traveler that there lies buried the mother of the “Bon Henri.”  To this is added a prayer that the repose of the dead may be respected.

Here ended my foot excursion.  The object of my journey was accomplished; and, delighted with this short ramble through the valley of the Loire, I took my seat in the diligence for Paris, and on the following day was again swallowed up in the crowds of the metropolis, like a drop in the bosom of the sea.

AMBOISE[A]

[Footnote A:  From “Old Touraine.”  Published by James Pott & Co.]

BY THEODORE ANDREA COOK

The Castle of Amboise stands high above the town, like another Acropolis above a smaller Athens; it rises upon the only height visible for some distance, and is in a commanding position for holding the level fields of Touraine around it, and securing the passage of the Loire between Tours and Chaumont, which is the next link in the chain that ends at Blois.

The river at this point is divided in two by an island, as is so often the case where the first bridge-builders sought to join the wide banks of the Loire, and on this little spot between the waters Clovis is said to have met Alaric before he overthrew the power of the Visigoths in Aquitaine.