The vintage had already commenced.  The peasantry were busy in the fields—­the song that cheered their labor was on the breeze, and the heavy wagon tottered by, laden with the clusters of the vine.  Everything around me wore that happy look which makes the heart glad.  In the morning I arose with the lark; and at night I slept where the sunset overtook me....  My first day’s journey brought me at evening to a village, whose name I have forgotten, situated about eight leagues from Orleans.  It is a small, obscure hamlet, not mentioned in the guide-book, and stands upon the precipitous banks of a deep ravine, through which a noisy brook leaps to turn the ponderous wheel of a thatch-roofed mill.  The village inn stands upon the highway; but the village itself is not visible to the traveler as he passes.  It is completely hidden in the lap of a wooded valley, and so embowered in trees that not a roof nor a chimney peeps out to betray its hiding-place.

When I awoke in the morning, a brilliant autumnal sun was shining in at my window.  The merry song of birds mingled sweetly with the sound of rustling leaves and the gurgle of the brook.  The vintagers were going forth to their toil; the wine-press was busy in the shade, and the clatter of the mill kept time to the miller’s song.  I loitered about the village with a feeling of calm delight.  I was unwilling to leave the seclusion of this sequestered hamlet; but at length, with reluctant step, I took the cross-road through the vineyard, and in a moment the little village had sunk again, as if by enchantment, into the bosom of the earth.

I breakfasted at the town of Mer; and, leaving the high-road to Blois on the right, passed down to the banks of the Loire, through a long, broad avenue of poplars and sycamores.  I crossed the river in a boat, and in the after part of the day I found myself before the high and massive walls of the chateau of Chambord.  This chateau is one of the finest specimens of the ancient Gothic castle to be found in Europe.  The little river Cosson fills its deep and ample moat, and above it the huge towers and heavy battlements rise in stern and solemn grandeur, moss-grown with age, and blackened by the storms of three centuries.  Within, all is mournful and deserted.  The grass has overgrown the pavement of the courtyard, and the rude sculpture upon the walls is broken and defaced....

My third day’s journey brought me to the ancient city of Blois, the chief town of the department of Loire-et-Cher.  This city is celebrated for the purity with which even the lower classes of its inhabitants speak their native tongue.  It rises precipitously from the northern bank of the Loire; and many of its streets are so steep as to be almost impassable for carriages.  On the brow of the hill, overlooking the roofs of the city, and commanding a fine view of the Loire and its noble bridge, and the surrounding country, sprinkled with cottages and chateaux, runs