To reach the chateau of Frapesle, foot-passengers, or those on horseback, shorten the way by crossing the Charlemagne moors, —­uncultivated tracts of land lying on the summit of the plateau which separates the valley of the Cher from that of the Indre, and over which there is a cross-road leading to Champy.  These moors are flat and sandy, and for more than three miles are dreary enough until you reach, through a clump of woods, the road to Sache, the name of the township in which Frapesle stands.  This road, which joins that of Chinon beyond Ballan, skirts an undulating plain to the little hamlet of Artanne.  Here we come upon a valley, which begins at Montbazon, ends at the Loire, and seems to rise and fall,—­to bound, as it were, —­beneath the chateaus placed on its double hillsides,—­a splendid emerald cup, in the depths of which flow the serpentine lines of the river Indre.  I gazed at this scene with ineffable delight, for which the gloomy moor-land and the fatigue of the sandy walk had prepared me.

“If that woman, the flower of her sex, does indeed inhabit this earth, she is here, on this spot.”

Thus musing, I leaned against a walnut-tree, beneath which I have rested from that day to this whenever I return to my dear valley.  Beneath that tree, the confidant of my thoughts, I ask myself what changes there are in me since last I stood there.

My heart deceived me not—­she lived there; the first castle that I saw on the slope of a hill was the dwelling that held her.  As I sat beneath my nut-tree, the mid-day sun was sparkling on the slates of her roof and the panes of her windows.  Her cambric dress made the white line which I saw among the vines of an arbor.  She was, as you know already without as yet knowing anything, the Lily of this valley, where she grew for heaven, filling it with the fragrance of her virtues.  Love, infinite love, without other sustenance than the vision, dimly seen, of which my soul was full, was there, expressed to me by that long ribbon of water flowing in the sunshine between the grass-green banks, by the lines of the poplars adorning with their mobile laces that vale of love, by the oak-woods coming down between the vineyards to the shore, which the river curved and rounded as it chose, and by those dim varying horizons as they fled confusedly away.

If you would see nature beautiful and virgin as a bride, go there of a spring morning.  If you would still the bleeding wounds of your heart, return in the last days of autumn.  In the spring, Love beats his wings beneath the broad blue sky; in the autumn, we think of those who are no more.  The lungs diseased breathe in a blessed purity; the eyes will rest on golden copses which impart to the soul their peaceful stillness.  At this moment, when I stood there for the first time, the mills upon the brooksides gave a voice to the quivering valley; the poplars were laughing as they swayed; not a cloud was in the sky; the birds sang, the crickets chirped,—­all was melody.  Do not ask me again why I love Touraine.  I love it, not as we love our cradle, not as we love the oasis in a desert; I love it as an artist loves art; I love it less than I love you; but without Touraine, perhaps I might not now be living.