As we roll onward up its narrow streets, the clouds lower and we are forced to take refuge under cover; but the rain does not last long and shortly we come out again, leaving the church and palace to our left, and noting as we move onward that while Carcassonne possessed few, if any, private houses of the nobility, these streets present many even to-day. Interesting façades rise around us at every turn, but with the castle before us we do not pause until under the shadow of its great gateway. I know of nothing in Europe more impressive of its kind than this entrance to the Château of Loches. It is absolutely unchanged by the flight of years. The moat, the drawbridge, the low-browed heavy portal, with the great square donjon rising above, inspire me with a greater respect for the power of that old King Louis, and, as I clang the bell, I wonder whether I may come out again once these portals close behind me,—a question I put to the bright-eyed French woman who smilingly admits me and as smilingly assures me that I may indeed go hence.
THE ENTRANCE TO THE CHÂTEAU OF LOCHES
From a photograph
Once inside, the great tower, which replaced an ancient Roman fortress in the eleventh century, rises one hundred and thirty feet before me in all its majesty. One does not see from here that it is but an empty shell, yet on entering it loses none of its impressiveness as one gazes upward through its vastness, noting where the floors were, and even from below descrying the many inscriptions carved by the weary prisoners of the King. I can distinctly see from here one deeply cut, "Help—God or man," which tells its own story.
In this donjon—except the floors—there is nothing which could be consumed by fire. Its walls are nine feet in thickness at their base and six at the summit. The interior shows a deep well which communicated by subterranean passages with all the feudal châteaux in the neighbourhood, and was used to re-victual the Castle in times of siege. That this great tower was the royal residence in feudal days can be seen by the divisions on the walls. Such prisoners as were here confined were of little importance as they possessed light and fresh air.
The little donjon adjoining the greater served as the residence of the Governor and communicated with the former tower by staircases in the thickness of the walls. It was in this section of the castle that history was made throughout so many centuries. We first hear of it when Foulques le Roux, Count of Anjou, acquired it by marriage in 879—but of all the lives lived out here before this date there is no tale remaining to us. It became the cradle of the Plantagenet race. John of England ceded the Castle to Philip Augustus in 1192, but Cœur de Lion on his return from captivity objecting, took it by storm; again it passed to France after a year's siege by Philip Augustus in 1205. Bells rang out for the wedding in this queer place of James V. of Scotland and Madeline of France, but that was after the days of Louis XI, and really nothing else holds the attention of the traveller here to-day save this King, sordid and devilishly horrible.
The great donjon does not contain the most famous and fearful of Louis's prisons. You must pass on to the right and enter the smaller towers to find the cages where he placed those high in his favour. Both in the round tower and the Martelet and every tower of the outer walls, you will find dungeon under dungeon, high up or far underground, where the sun never shines and where men learned to see in the black darkness, as the carvings and names testify, for, rest assured, Louis allowed no lights to his guests in Loches. Passing onward, the traveller enters the round tower built by Louis. It is still in very excellent condition. Here one finds all the original floors in place. Here are the guard-rooms and many prisons,—used as such by the town to-day,—amongst them the great conical chamber where hung the famous iron and wooden cage of Cardinal Balue—an invention of his own, in which for conspiracy with Charles le Téméraire he spent eleven years, though some authorities state that it was but three. The tower is shaped like a vast cistern with a conical top, its walls are circular and there are slit-like apertures, through which the wind moans, and the sunlight could never come save in stray shafts, making the shadows deeper by contrast.
