make an effort to preserve the frescoes in the crypt. The damp is ruining them; but there is enough left to set any archeologist wild. They seemed to me eleventh century work at the latest. The church itself is the finest bit of Romanesque I ever saw-as lofty as Loches, and far surpassing it in details. The capitals are wonderful-a stag-hunt, Balaam and his ass, and the judgment of Solomon, represented on them. The restoration has been most careful: the lost capitals are replaced by copies of those more or less unhurt, such copies being worked from plaster casts, which are still kept for reference in the crypt. England did not grow parish churches like that; but then Touraine is the exception, even in France.

We must see Talleyrand's Valençay; SO we hire a three-abreast Whitechapel with a brisk Breton pony almost wholly hidden under a load of harness. Villentrois, about half-way, is a striking ruin-a grand keep with flanking towers commanding three rich valleys. Then begins the long pull up through the forest; glade after glade opening on either hand, and here and there six avenues meeting at a cross. We pass the huge ponds-the Erckmann-Chatrian hatred of étangs does not seem to have extended here. Your Tourainer, even if he is a Red, will tell you they bring in much more as ponds than they would if drained and tilled. Here is the château; and soon we are being taken over it by a most magnificent and supercilious footman, who evidently thinks no one ought to come to Valençay in a dust-coat or a wide-awake. The place is disappointing, except to those who care about portraits of the Bonaparte and Restoration periods, and curious prints, a good many of them representing the heroes of American independence. The most interesting thing to me was a splendid copy of the great Napoleonic work on Egypt. The Talleyrand relics, the spring and

6

bandages of his club-foot, &c., are gone to Paris; and there is not grandeur enough in rooms or furniture to make up for the total absence of architectural beauty. The park is a flat upland down, not like St. Aignan, on a crest of rock overhanging the river, but sloping gently away in all directions. We hear of other châteaux not far off, dans un pays perdu,' says, coaxingly, the landlady of the low-roomed English-like inn. She wants us to stay a few days; and Valençay would be a very good centre for excursions. The town had that flavour of big house which is so often noted in England, and which was not at all perceptible at St. Aignan: the type of face struck me as singu larly un-' -Touraine-like; most of those we met had large features and blue or grey eyes.

The Prince-Cardinal is buried in a vault in the chapel of a conventschool, kept up by the family, and educating in its different class-rooms nearly all the children in the place. The old nun who went round with us pointed out as a great curiosity the painting on the apse and sidewalls representing arches, mouldings, &c. The deception is very complete. She was proud to say that the artists who did it got their twenty francs a day. It was no use turning a ray from Mr. Ruskin's lamp of truth upon her. Dexterous shading in stone colour and sepia pleased her better than the boldest carving.

We

From St. Aignan to Blois by next day's early dépêche. share the open coupé with the driver, who glorifies the sheepskin that he hands to us by the magnificent phrase, 'Messieurs, si vous voulez administrer cela sur VOS genoux.' This stamps him as a man worth talking to; and, as he is an old soldier, I soon get his views on things in general. The army was beaten, he thought, because the officers from La Flèche and St. Cyr ought to have served in the ranks; those young swells.

are too fond of their café." Then the country showed no self-sacrifice: 'on tenait beaucoup à sa vie; on était riche, confortable, aisé;' 'a labourer used to get forty sous, a workman four francs a day; so the working people were against the war from the first-it was just a trick of the Emperor. He'd had so many wars, that man. What did we want with the Mexican war? we were never asked. The fact is, les ministres ont roué la France (a phrase I often heard): they ought to have known that our army was not ready. We want a law to keep kings in order, and then we never need fear; les peuples veulent la paix. I named America as an instance to the contrary. Well, I don't know how they felt out there (said he), but in France I'm quite sure that not one in a thousand is soldat de bon cœur. As for moblots, who could expect young lads who had never fired a gun to do anything-in such a fearful winter too? Then the Generals were always being changed: why should D'Aurelle have been allowed to resign? Suppose every private had done the same? 'But you didn't mean war à outrance (said I), or these forests were just the places for ambuscades.'-'No: what could we do? The mayors gave in like whipped cars; the peasants often turned our Francs-tireurs away unhelped, when they'd been loading the Germans with good things the day be fore. They put up with anything from them, and never thought of grumbling; but if our fellows, worn out with cold and hunger, made a little free, they cried out that they were much worse than the enemy.' One thing he steadfastly believed: that, but for the armistice, the French would have beaten in the last battle near Blois.

I find prices have risen, though at Contres fair white wine costs only 4d. a bottle (it sells for 80 francs the piece), and a little leg of mutton may still be bought for 30 sous.

Cows used to cost 80 francs-they now fetch 300; and with horses the increase is much the same. We are on the edge of the Sologne, where land is fabulously cheap, and where Imperial farming experiments were being carried on. We pass a good many new model farms with splendid outbuildings, all on that that grand

scale which the French affect. The most cheering thing in France is to find that the peasant has not lost heart (in some places I hear he has, and is emigrating): he is hoeing his vines as usual, and weeding his rye, and cutting his splendid crops of trèfle; and his newspapers are urging on him the need of working doubly hard, and of neglecting no appliances to increase the yield. This is not bad in a country saccagé de fond en comble (as my driver expressed it), and now suffering from the terrible plague of civil war. "What about Paris?' Hereupon driver grows mysterious, and buttons up his horse-hide overcoat. He is no reactionist, or he would burst out into an angry torrent of tas de gueux, égout de toute l'Europe,' and so forth; he is not a Red, for he spoke admiringly of the Périgords as one of the 'trèsgrandes familles de la France, who need not cut up each of their estates because they've half-a-dozen different properties in the family. He has a notion that Thiers is like the rest, anxious to make a good thing out of governing France; and that if the Commune can govern without jobbery, they'll be doing what the country wants.

But here is Blois, at the end of a long, straight, tree-bordered road, with its huge castle on the left, its cathedral, seminary, and big barrack on the right. Here are signs enough of war: the road-side trees are spared, as they are almost everywhere; but there are a few gutted houses, and plenty of shotmarks; and the splendid bridge has its middle arch still patched up with timber. This fatuous trick

of ruining their own bridges did the French no good, and the Germans no harm. Here, after the cowards had surrendered a place so defensible as Blois, in spite of all Gambetta could do by tearing his hair and threatening to shoot the man who had hoisted the white flag, they lost the chance of retaking it simply because they had broken their bridge. Lecanu, prefect of the Loire and Cher, a little more energetic than most prefects, and Count Pourcet, commander of the 25th corps, were sent by Gambetta to try a coup-de-main on Blois. They marched from St. Aignan on the 26th of January, and took the suburb of Vienne at the point of the bayonet. The Germans were driven across the river; but they had time to burn the woodwork, and so to place the broken arch between themselves and their pursuers.

Up the steep streets-some of them actually flights of steps-and past the old wooden houses to the cathedral: a poor Renaissance affair -said to be by Mansard, whose Gothic was much like that of Wren. A corner wall near it is formed into a monstrous dial, with latitude and longitude lines; retard sur Paris, avance sur Tours; a calendar of great feasts, marked by the lengthening or shortening of the mid-day shadow, according to the season; and much more information, with the motto Transit hora, manent opera. The Jesuits have been here; and if the French had learnt a tithe as diligently as their instructors taught, Goethe would not have described them as 'folks who wear moustaches and know nothing of geography,' nor would generals of division during this war have asked helplessly 'What's the name of this place?' when they stumbled unawares upon the key to a whole system of strategic movements.

They are very good Catholics here; but their services are as drony as they were at Le Mans and at Tours. There is a business look

about it all, which would be very disgusting to a warm neophyte ac customed to our Bayswater St. Mary of the Angels. The priests sit while the psalms are chanted, and one (who every now and then pulls out a dirty blue pocket-handkerchief) makes his cold an excuse for not even taking off his biretta during the Gloria. At the altar for the dead is a piece of sculpture of the Westminster Abbey school: a woman kneels as if to Death, who is pointing his lean finger at her, while a cherub creeps under his robe and steals his scythe. Below is the oftparaded quotation from Maccabees, sancta ergo et salubris excogitatio pro defunctis orare.' But for the lovely view from its terrace of the bright river and suburb and sunny town, the cathedral would be hardly worth a visit.

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Of the château, part was built by Louis XII., part by Francis I., and part by Gaston Duke of Orleans, brother of Louis XIII., who, banished here, was allowed to Mansardise one whole side of the building. His portion I found was still used as an ambulance. The whole castle had been given up for this purpose; sixty beds were still lying about in the salle d'états.

Francis liked Blois; and his grand winding staircase, with open-work sides, is one of the finest in France. But what was Blois to one who already 'rêvait Chambord et Fontainebleau?' The salamander and the cyphers of Francis and Queen Claude are repeated oftener on this staircase than even Louis XII.'s porcupine is on the entrance gate; and the young brown-faced guide, who goes over his lesson as if he was wound up fresh every time, takes care to impress on you that of all the cyphers and other panel ornaments there are not two alike.

Anyone who has to do with fitting up modern Gothic interiors should come to Blois. The guard-rooms, audience-rooms, king's and queen's rooms, are all perfectly restored;

6

and somehow, with less gilding and more dull red and olive green, they look far more 'real' than our attempts at medieval colouring. Rossetti would delight in some of these walls covered with large quaint leaves and flowers. Of course the royal bedrooms are very rich: in Catherine de Médicis' room there is a door leading to the dungeons, for her to go and listen to what the prisoners were saying.' The whole place still reeks of the murder of Le Balafré. They show you the closet in the thickness of the wall where his murderers were hidden; the oratory in which two monks were set to pray for the King's success in a great and secret matter' while the killing was going on; the passage along which Guise crawled out of the little room where he was struck, into the King's bedroom, and there died. 'Il est encore plus grand mort que vivant,' said Henry, as he kicked his fallen enemy. Don't forget to see, opposite the winding staircase, the little chapel, all painted and gilt a year or two ago. Mansard spared it; but the great dininghall he ruthlessly pulled down to set up his own Palladian monstrosity. The museum has plenty of pictures, and, of course, a bust of Papin, as the true inventor of the steam-engine. On our way down we look into St. Nicholas's Church, much finer than the cathedral, but spoiled. Fancy a splendid portail, with its tympanum replaced by a flat oak board with a big angel's head in the middle of it, just like what you expect in St. Andrew's, Holborn. What a contrast, inside, between the grand pillars and the mean little prints of Our Lord's Stations fastened on them! it seems as if the present worship was like a very shrivelled kernel in such a glorious shell.

We don't stay long in the town; for we have to walk to Chambord to-night; and, in spite of Murray, the houses in Blois are not so old as the Angers and Rouen and Chester houses are. So off we start

along a bye-road as winding as any in Cornwall. It is Sunday evening; but here and there the women are weeding. Some men are loading barrels on a long, narrow, high-wheeled wine-cart, as if Sunday was for rich folks; and one old peasant is ploughing a very small triangle of land, his wife following with the seed. Most of the cottages seem quite empty; but the 'cafés,' as all the drinking-shops call themselves, are all choke-full. Where most of the women are I don't know, though in one village I see a little horse-play going on between some big girls and lads. We come upon plenty of villages, because we are following the course of a little river; but not once do I see, what would be so common in England or Germany, mother and father and children taking a walk together or sitting down in a family party. No: it is the drinking-shop which is ruining French family life in country places far more than the novels of the Satanic school; and the taste for drinking has been brought in by the army. Since this has grown so vastly, for every missionary of Silenus who used to go about doing mischief there are now nine or ten. But Touraine is sober compared with drunken Normandy and more drunken Brittany.

The fact is universal solidarity is as much the law of collective Europe as it was of the house that Jack built' and its belongings. How much, I wonder, of France's present position is due to us. My doctor at Tours, when I said, 'How could you all have put up with that man for twenty years?' replied, 'Does not England count for something among the causes which kept him where he was? Think of your Times, and its toadying, and its Arabian Nights' account of Compiègne; and your Queen, too, kissing him and receiving him as a brother. He got a vast amount of moral support from you.' So it is; and if newspaper scribes at all realised this, they

would be a good deal more careful than they are how they fill up their columns. Better have (as Fors Clavigera advises) a newspaper of facts only, 'old and well-sifted facts,' than one which befools us and does harm to other nations. Anyhow, French drinking comes of the French army; and the army grew so big because we placarded our determination never to interfere, happen what might, if only Belgium was let alone; and it grew so vicious and undisciplined because it was managed by a selfish charlatan; and, since we were always patting that charlatan on the back, you see we may be found guilty on two counts of the present increase in French intemperance. It is a bad sign-one of the many bad signs which the nation shows. I saw plenty of it, for all the railways were blocked with troops of all arms moving Paris-wards; and I don't think under the Empire they could have had more wine and petits verres than they had under M. Thiers. 'Nous sommes un triste monde,' said an old friend at Tours. All this Paris trouble is because we feel we've lost dignity, and are blindly striving nous retremper. Look at the papers of last autumn. Every body made game of everything-of the war, of the enemy, and then byand-by of the Emperor, laughing like mad fools after Sedan, though almost every one had lost a relation.' And then he took down a file of Paris Journal, and Gaulois, and Figaro, which he kept as a curiosity, and read me some of the lies upon which people were fed: One of the Prussian armies is pursued by Bazaine, but sedulously avoids a battle. .. Weissembourg, Wörth, Forbach, dazzled Europe looks at as the three most glorious pages of our military epic. . . . Of the splendid army of Prince Frederic Charles there are only a few remnants left.

...

The Berliners have assailed Bismark's house crying "Bread! bread!" the servants came to the

My

windows and shouted, "If you want bread, go to Paris and get it.' And so on through the whole set. friend is fond of showing up the esprit Parisien and the fanfaronnade of Victor Hugo. "They want to lord it over France! Tas de canaille; et cent fois plus canaille parcequ'ils font cela avec les Prussiens à St.-Denis.' No Communist he, and certainly no Versaillese; for even then, when Thiers had got no farther than registering a solemn vow that nothing should induce him to bombard Paris yet the very next day began to shell the PorteMaillot and the Champs Elysées, he was loud in denouncing the blind cruelty of this upstart Assembly.' I tell you what,' he whispered, with a flash in his old eyes, 'it's Bismark putting on the screw. dreads nothing but republicanism, but he is really afraid of that. And you'll see he won't let Thiers. accept or offer terms. I know what their republic will come to.'

He

We are near Chambord, past the rye and the old mossy vine stumps, and in the long straight parkavenue. The frogs are noisy; we can scarcely hear that nightingale, which does not seem to mind them in the least. And here is the château, so strange in the moonlight; and here the welcome little inn, where we are soon eating matelotte and omelette and lots of other good things, which somehow never give aftertrouble, as an English supper is sure to do.

And the beds, so plump and clean when shall we introduce that best of French customs, the yearly ripping open and cleaning of the beds in the hot sun? I believe there are English beds that have come down uncleaned as heirlooms; now and then a clean 'tick' is put on, but the inside remains, and people are born and die on it.

At Chambord, the gardien, who sells photographs and engravings, and points out how they got stained when the Prussians came

for I hid them in a cellar,'