[The Loiret]

In 1815 the invading Prince Eckmühl, with his staff, installed himself in the château, when, after Waterloo, the Prussian and French armies were separated only by a barrier placed midway on the bridge at Orleans. It was here also that the Prussian army was disbanded, on the agreement of the council held at Angerville, near Orleans.

There are three other châteaux on the borders of the Loiret, which are of more than ordinary interest, so far as great country houses and their surroundings go, though their histories are not very striking, with perhaps the exception of the Château de la Fontaine, which has a remarkable garden, laid out by Lenôtre, the designer of the parks at Versailles.

Leaving Orleans by the right bank of the Loire, one first comes to La Chapelle-St. Mesmin. La Chapelle has a church dating from the eleventh century and a château which is to-day the maison de campagne of the Bishop of Orleans. On the opposite bank was the Abbaye de Micy, founded by Clovis at the time of his conversion. A stone cross, only, marks the site to-day.

St. Ay follows next, and is usually set down in the guide-books as "celebrated for good wines." This is not to be denied for a moment, and it is curious to note that the city bears the same name as the famous town in the champagne district, celebrated also for good wine, though of a different kind. The name of the Orléannais Ay is gained from a hermitage founded here by a holy man, who died in the sixth century. His tomb was discovered in 1860, under the choir of the church, which makes it a place of pilgrimage of no little local importance.

At Meung-sur-Loire one should cross the river to Cléry, five kilometres off, seldom if ever visited by casual travellers. But why? Simply because it is overlooked in that universal haste shown by most travellers—who are not students of art or architecture, or deep lovers of history—in making their way to more popular shrines. One will not regret the time taken to visit Cléry, which shared with Our Lady of Embrun the devotions of Louis XI.

Cléry's three thousand pastoral inhabitants of to-day would never give it distinction, and it is only the Maison de Louis XI. and the Basilique de Notre Dame which makes it worth while, but this is enough.

In "Quentin Durward" one reads of the time when the superstitious Louis was held in captivity by the Burgundian, Charles the Bold, and of how the French king made his devotions before the little image, worn in his hat, of the Virgin of Cléry; "the grossness of his superstition, none the less than his fickleness, leading him to believe Our Lady of Cléry to be quite a different person from the other object of his devotion, the Madonna of Embrun, a tiny mountain village in southwestern France.

"'Sweet Lady of Cléry,' he exclaimed, clasping his hands and beating his breast as he spoke, 'Blessed Mother of Mercy! thou who art omnipotent with omnipotence, have compassion with me, a sinner! It is true I have sometimes neglected you for thy blessed sister of Embrun; but I am a king, my power is great, my wealth boundless; and were it otherwise, I would double my gabelle on my subjects rather than not pay my debts to you both.'"