"It was in Blois that I first rummaged among these shops, whose attractions are almost a rival to those of the castle, though this is certainly one of the most interesting in France. The traveller will remember the long flight of stone steps which climbs the steep hill in the centre of the town. Near the foot of this hill there is a well-furnished book-shop; its windows display old editions and rich bindings, and tempt one to enter and inquire for antiquities. Here I found a quantity of old notarial documents and diplomas of college or university, all more or less recently cleared out from some town hall, or unearthed from neighbouring castle, and sold by a careless owner, as no longer valuable to him. This was the case with most of the parchments I found at Blois; they had been acquired within a few years from the castle of Madon, and from a former proprietor of the neighbouring castle of Chaumont (the calvus mons of mediæval time), and most of them pertained to the affairs of the seigneurie de Chaumont. Contracts, executions, sales of vineyards and houses, legal decisions, actes de vente, loans on mortgages, the marriage contract of a M. Lubin,—these were the chief documents that I found and purchased."
The traveller may not expect to come upon duplicates of these treasures again, but the incident only points to the fact that much documentary history still lies more or less deeply buried.
CHAPTER VI.
TOURAINE: THE GARDEN SPOT OF FRANCE
"C'est une grande dame, une princesse altière,
Chacun de ses châteaux, marqué du sceau royal,
Lui fait une toilette en dentelle de pierre
Et son splendide fleuve un miroir de cristal."
It is difficult to write appreciatively of Touraine without echoing the words of some one who has gone before, and it is likely that those who come after will find the task no easier.
Truly, as a seventeenth-century geographer has said: "Here is the most delicious and the most agreeable province of the kingdom. It has been named the garden of France because of the softness of its climate, the affability of its people, and the ease of its life."
The poets who have sung the praises of Touraine are many, Ronsard, Remy Belleau, Du Bellay, and for prose authors we have at the head, Rabelais, La Fontaine, Balzac, and Alfred de Vigny. Merely to enumerate them all would be impossible, but they furnish a fund of quotable material for the traveller when he is writing home, and are equally useful to the maker of guide-books.
One false note on Touraine, only, has ever rung out in the world of literature, and that was from Stendahl, who said: "La Belle Touraine n'existe pas!" The pages of Alfred de Vigny and Balzac answer this emphatically, and to the contrary, and every returning traveller apparently sides with them and not with Stendahl.
How can one not love its prairies, gently sloping to the caressing Loire, its rolling hills and dainty ravines? The broad blue Loire is always vague and tranquil here, at least one seems always to see it so, but the beauty of Touraine is, after all, a quiet beauty which must be seen to be appreciated, and lived with to be loved.