We wondered why so many feeble, old people were sitting about in the house and grounds, until the gardienne told us, that, the château having been restored to the Orleans family in 1872, they had established here a retreat and home for their old retainers.
"Well, I am thankful that some good deeds are done here to help to wash away the dark stains from the history of the château!" exclaimed Miss Cassandra. "But how do they manage to sleep with the ghosts of all these good men who have been murdered here haunting the place at night?"
Walter reminded her that the just were supposed to rest quietly in their graves, and that it was those of uneasy conscience who walked o' nights.
"Then Catherine must be walking most of the time. We certainly should see her if we could wait here until after dark."
When I translated our Quaker lady's remarks to the guide she laughed and rejoined, with a merry twinkle in her eye, that if "Her Majesty had to walk in all the palaces that had known her evil deeds she would be kept busy and would only have a night now and again for Amboise; beside which this château was blessed, having been dedicated to good works, and after all were not the Guises more involved in the massacre of the Huguenots here than Catherine?"
Miss Cassandra reluctantly acknowledged that perhaps they were, but for her part she makes no excuses for Catherine, and refuses to believe that she was ever an innocent baby. She declares that this insatiable daughter of the Médici, like Minerva, sprang full grown into being, equipped for wickedness as the goddess was with knowledge.
With a clink of silver and a cheerful "Au revoir, Mesdames et Monsieur," we parted from our pleasant little guide. As we turned to look back at Amboise from the bridge, some heavy clouds hung over the castle, making it look grim and gray, more like the fortress-prison that it had proved to so many hundreds of brave, unfortunate Frenchmen than the cheerful château, basking in the sunshine, that we had seen this morning.
We motored home, in a fine drizzle of rain, through a gray landscape; and surely no landscape can be more perfectly gray than that of France when it is pleased to put on sombre tints, and no other could have been as well suited to the shade of our thoughts.
Lydia, by way of reviving our drooping spirits, I fancy, as she is not usually given to conundrums or puzzles, suddenly propounded a series of brain-racking questions. "Who first said, 'Let us fly and save our bacon;' and 'He would make three bites of a cherry;' and 'Appetite comes with eating;' and 'It is meat, drink, and cloth to us;' and——"
"Stop!" cried Miss Cassandra, "and give us time to think, but I am quite sure that it was Beau Brummel who made three bites of a cherry, or a strawberry, or some other small fruit."