With our Quentin Durward in our hands, we read of Plessis-les-Tours as the novelist pictured it for us in the light of romance. Of course Sir Walter never saw this château, but like many other places that he was not able to visit, it was described to him by his friend and neighbor, Mr. James Skene, Laird of Rubislaw, who while travelling in France kept an accurate diary, enlivened by a number of clever drawings, all of which he placed at the novelist's disposal. From this journal, says Lockhart, Sir Walter took the substance of the original introduction to Quentin Durward. As Mr. James Skene is said to have given his friend most accurate descriptions of the buildings and grounds, it is safe to conclude that the château has been entirely remodelled since the days when the young Scottish archer listened to the voice of the Countess Isabelle, as she sang to the accompaniment of her lute while he acted as sentinel in the "spacious latticed gallery" of the château. It is needless to say that we failed to discover the spacious gallery or the maze of stairs, vaults, and galleries above and under ground which are described as leading to it. Nor did we see any traces of the fleur-de-lis, ermines, and porcupines which are said to have adorned the walls at a later date. Indeed the empty, unfurnished rooms and halls, guiltless of paintings or tapestries, were so dismal that we hurried through them. As if to add an additional note of discord to the inharmonious interior, a "vaccination museum" has been established in one of the ancient rooms. We stopped a moment to look at the numerous caricatures of the new method of preventing the ravages of smallpox; one, that especially entertained Walter, represented the medical faculty as a donkey in glasses charged upon by vaccine in the form of a furious cow.
We hoped to find in the grounds some compensation for the cheerlessness of the interior of the castle; but here again we were doomed to disappointment. The vast lawn and extensive parterres, which caused the park of Plessis-les-Tours to be spoken of as the Garden of France, have long since disappeared, and all that we could find was a grass-grown yard with some neglected flower beds, surrounded by a hedge of fusane, a kind of laurel with a small white flower that grows here in great profusion. We made an effort to see, or to fancy that we saw, an underground passage that was pointed out to us as that which once led to the dungeon upon whose stone foundation was placed the iron cage in which Cardinal la Balue was confined. Of the series of fosses which once enclosed the château we found some remains, but of the solid ramparts flanked by towers, where a band of archers were once posted by night and day, and of the bristling chevaux-de-frise nothing was to be seen. Walter wishes you to tell Allen that the greatest disappointment of all is that there is no oak forest anywhere near Plessis from whose boughs the victims of Louis were wont to hang "like so many acorns," one of Scott's bits of realism that appealed to his boyish imagination.
We were glad to turn our backs upon the modern brick building which occupies the site of the ancient stronghold of Plessis and to drive home by a farm called La Rabatière, whose fifteenth century building is said to have been the manor house of Olivier le Daim, familiarly called Olivier le Diable, the barber-minister of Louis. Our driver, who is somewhat of an historian, and like a loyal Tournageau is proud of the associations of his town, good and bad alike, was delighted to show us this old home of Olivier who was, he informed us, the executioner of his master's enemies of high degree, while Tristan l'Hermite attended to those of less distinction, having, as Louis warned Quentin, "For him whose tongue wagged too freely an amulet for the throat which never failed to work a certain cure." The house of Tristan, our cocher told us, we should find in one of the narrow streets of the old part of Tours, which we have not yet explored.
VI
LANGEAIS AND AZAY-LE-RIDEAU
Pension B——, Tours, September 3rd.
When we started toward Langeais this afternoon we were pleased to think that our way was much the same as that which Félix took in search of his "Lily of the Valley." The Loire lay before us just as he described it,—"a long watery ribbon which glistens in the sun between two green banks, the rows of poplars which deck this vale of love with moving tracery, the oak woods reaching forward between the vineyards on the hillsides which are rounded by the river into constant variety, the soft outlines crossing each other and fading to the horizon."
