the heart.  But Mr. Molloy claims for Amboise something rarer in France than loveliness or romance, something which no French town has ever yet been known to possess,—­a slumberous and soul-satisfying silence.  “We dropped under the very walls of the Castle,” he writes, “without seeing a soul.  It was a strange contrast to Blois in its absolute stillness.  There was no sound but the noise of waters rushing through the arches of the bridge.  It might have been the palace of the Sleeping Beauty, but was only one of the retrospective cities that had no concern with the present.”

Quiet brooded over the ivied towers and ancient water front.  Tranquillity, unconcern, a gentle and courteous aloofness surrounded and soothed the intrepid travellers.  When, in the early morning, the crew pushed off in their frail boat, less than a dozen citizens assembled to watch the start.  Even the peril of the performance (and there are few things more likely to draw a crowd than the chance of seeing four fellow mortals drown) failed to awaken curiosity.  Nine men stood silent on the shore when the outrigger shot into the swirling river, and it is the opinion of the chronicler that Amboise “did not often witness such a gathering.”  Nine quiet men were, for Amboise, something in the nature of a mob.

It must be remembered that Mr. Molloy’s book is not a new one; but then Touraine is neither new nor mutable.  Nothing changes in its beautiful old towns, the page of whose history has been turned for centuries.  What if motors now whirl in a white dust through the heart of France?  They do not affect the lives of the villages through which they pass.  The simple and primitive desire of the motorist is to be fed and to move on, to be fed again and to move on again, to sleep and to start afresh.  That unavoidable waiting between trains which now and then compelled an old-time tourist to look at a cathedral or a chateau, by way of diverting an empty hour, no longer retards progress.  The motorist needs never wait.  As soon as he has eaten, he can go,—­a privilege of which be gladly avails himself.  A month at Amboise taught us that, at the feeding-hour, motors came flocking like fowls, and then, like fowls, dispersed.  They were disagreeable while they lasted, but they never lasted long.  Replete with a five-course luncheon, their fagged and grimy occupants sped on to distant towns and dinner.

But why should we, who knew well that there is not, and never has been, a quiet corner in all France, have listened to a traveller’s tale, and believed in a silent Amboise?  Is there no limit to human credulity?  Does experience count for nothing in the Bourbon-like policy of our lives?  It is to England we must go if we seek for silence, that gentle, pervasive silence which wraps us in a mantle of content.  It was in Porlock that Coleridge wrote “Kubla Khan,” transported, Heaven knows whither, by virtue of the hushed repose that consecrates the sleepiest hamlet in Great Britain.  It was at Stoke Pogis that Gray composed his “Elegy.”  He could never have written—­