Evening; and Loches.
"Here I am again!" as Jack-in-the-Box says. And we've done all the things I said we were going to. But I'm too full of Loches and too excited about Loches to tell you anything of yesterday's three castles, except to fling them an adjective or two, and pass on. Let me see, what adjective, since I've confined myself to one, shall I give Ussé? "Splendid," I think. "Interesting" is all I can afford for Luynes, though it deserves a lot more, if only for its history. And well-"magnificent" must do for Chinon. Perhaps it has the most beautiful view of all. But Loches-Loches! I had forgotten its existence till I dug it up for myself in Quentin Durward, and the guide-books, to which Aunt Mary is so faithful, don't do it any sort of justice. They don't tell you to go to see it, whatever else you must make up your mind to miss. Why, Aunt M.'s particular pet devoted almost as much space to the queer little rock village of Rochecorbon, whose lighted windows glared at us like cat's eyes away high up above the road, one dark evening (when we'd been belated after an excursion) getting back to Tours.
Luckily the Lightning Conductor appreciated Loches at its true value, and told me it was well worth making a short détour-as we must-to see. We had to go out of our way as far as a place called Cormery, but that was nothing, and yesterday morning early we started. It was the first sparkling blue-and-gold day we have had for a while; it seemed as if it must have come across to us from Provence, as a sample, to show what we might expect if we hurried on there. The air was like champagne-or Vouvray-and we spun along at our very best on the smooth, wide Route Nationale, our faces turned towards Provence as a graceful compliment for the gift of the weather.
We have a neat little trick of getting to places just in time for lunch, and we managed it at Loches, as usual. We'd hardly driven into the town before I fell in love with its quaintness; but I didn't fall in love with the hotel until I'd been surprised with a perfectly delicious déjeuner. Then I let myself go; and when I'd seen how pretty the old-fashioned bedrooms were, I begged to stay all night instead of going on. Brown seems to regard my requests as if they were those of royalty-commands; and he rearranged our programme accordingly. I'm writing in a green-and-pink damask bedroom now, but when I shut my eyes I can see the castle and the dungeons and-Madame César. Yes, I think I can find my way back for your benefit, and return on our own tracks.
First, like a promising preface to the ruined stronghold of the terrible Louis, we went through a massive gateway, flanked with towers, and climbed up a winding street of ancient, but not decrepit houses, to come out at last upon a plateau with the gigantic walls of the castle on our left. When I remembered who caused those outworks and walls to be put up, so high and grim and strong, and why, I felt a little "creep" run up my spine at sight of the enormous mass of stonework. "Who enters here leaves hope behind" might have been written over the gateway in the dreadful days when Loches was in its wicked prime. Those walls are colossal, like perpendicular cliffs. At a door in one of them we tinkled a bell, and presently, with loud unlocking of double doors, quite a pretty young girl appeared and invited us in. She was the daughter of the gardien, she told us. It was almost a shock to see something so fresh and young living in such a forbidding, torture-haunted den as Louis' Château of Loches. She was like one of the little bright-coloured winter blossoms springing out from a cranny of the grey walls. When she had lighted rather a smelly lantern, we prepared to follow into the "fastnesses" of the castle. If ever that good old double-dyed word could be appropriate, it is to Loches. I never thoroughly realised before the awful might of kings in feudal and mediæval days. To think that Louis XI. had the power to build such a place, and to hustle his enemies away for ever out of the sunshine, behind those tremendous walls, and bury them in the yard-square cells hollowed in the thickness of the stone! I used to wish I'd lived in those stirring times, but I changed my mind to-day-temporarily.
In the middle of the fortress is an enormous square, white keep, so heavy, solid, and imposing that it seems more like the slow work of Nature than of man. Down steep, winding steps in a tower, we followed our guide into the dungeons where that unspeakable Louis shut up the people he was afraid to leave in the world. Waving her lantern in the dusk, the girl showed us where the wretched prisoners had tried to keep themselves from madness by painting on the roof and walls. In one cell a bishop had cut into the solid wall a little altar, just where a slanting ray of sunshine stole through a grating and occasionally laid a small patch of light for a few minutes, only to snatch it away again. Several of the cells were just black holes scooped out of the rock, and there it seemed to have been Louis' delight to put some of the most important prisoners-men who had lived like princes, and had power over life and death in their own countries.
Oh, do you remember wily Cardinal Balue? I've been refreshing my memory of him in Quentin Durward, hating him dreadfully; but I did have a spasm of pity when I saw the big, well-like place where he was suspended for so many years, like an imprisoned canary, in a wooden cage, because he betrayed Louis' secrets to the Duke of Burgundy. Henry James says, in a fascinating Tauchnitz volume I bought in Tours (A Little Tour in France), that Cardinal Balue "survived much longer than might have been expected this extraordinary mixture of seclusion and exposure." Isn't that just the cunningest way of expressing it?
Last of all we went up to the top of a high tower in the midst of the Château, and there, as if we'd been on the mast-head of a ship, we had a bird's-eye view of the pretty white town, with the Indre murmuring by in sedgy meadows outside. There were some wonderful old cuttings in the stone, made by the soldiers who acted as sentinels and prisoners' guards; and Aunt Mary Kodaked me as I sat studying them. We could spy, across the plateau of the castle, the tomb of Agnes Sorel, and decided to go to it; but we left the poor girl till so late, finally, that we could only see her glimmering white in effigy of marble, with a sweetly resigned face, modest, folded hands, and a dear little soft sitting-down lamb to rest her pretty feet on. She had, besides, two very pretty young angels to watch over her and wake her up when it should be time.
I'm sure it would have taken at least three such angels to wake me up, until I had "slept out," after our long afternoon in the castle, and later in the town. I went to bed early and slept ten hours. We hadn't to start immediately, as our drive for the day wasn't long, so I proposed to Aunt Mary that we should breakfast in our rooms and then go out for a morning walk. The breakfast idea appealed to her; not so the walk, and accordingly I had to go alone. I had no plan except perhaps to buy a souvenir or two; but in the crooked street leading up to the castle I met Brown. He was reading a notice on the great gateway, directing strangers to some excavations lately made. He took off his cap at sight of me, and I asked him if he thought the excavations would be worth seeing. He had heard that they were, and I said that I should be glad if he would show me how to go to the place. I didn't like wandering about by myself. Everything is so horrid that one does by oneself in a strange country, and then if Brown isn't useful in one way he always proves to be in another. So he obeyed, of course, walking not too close, as if to let me see that he recognized the distance between us. I've often noticed him do that if we have to go anywhere together on foot, and I think it's rather nice of him, don't you? Just a little pathetic too, maybe. Anyhow, it seems that way to me, for he really ought to have been a gentleman. It's such a waste of good material, the Lord using him up for a chauffeur when any common stuff would have done for that.
Well, we went on a short distance until we saw a tiny cottage in a wild-looking garden at the foot of the huge fortress walls. We rang a gate-bell, when another notice told us we'd got to the right place, and a little, smiling woman came out to welcome us. "Oh, yes!" said she volubly. She would show us the excavations, and we would find them as interesting as anything we could see in Loches. Already it was easy to see that in her, at least, we had found something interesting. She had the nicest, brightest old face, and she poured out upon us a kind of benign dew of conversation. She introduced herself as Madame César; always talking and explaining, she lighted a candle, led us to the mouth of an egg-shaped subterranean path, and bowed us down. She went, too, down the steep steps, telling how this passage and many ramifications of it had been discovered only recently, most of the excavations having been the work of her husband. It was supposed that an underground gallery led a long way from Loches to some distant spot, so that people could come and go to the castle unseen, and so that the fortress could secretly receive provisions if it were besieged. All sorts of things had been found in the passages-rosaries, and old, old books, and coins, and queer playing-cards; and some of the best of the relics she had in her own cottage. We stopped to see them afterwards, and she reeled forth yards of history in the most fascinating and vivacious manner, accompanied by dramatic gestures, almost worthy of Sara Bernhardt. I suppose she must have been down in the excavations oftener than she could remember, but you would have thought it was perfectly new to her, and she was seeing it for the first time. She gave us a rose each to remember her by, and oh!-wasn't it comic, or tragic? which you will-she quite misunderstood things, and suggested that I should put Brown's rose in his leathery buttonhole. He and I both pretended not to hear, but I felt embarrassed for a minute. Nevertheless, I wouldn't have missed Madame César and her excavations for a good deal.