Tours was not what we had anticipated. One reads about the kings of France who resided here, from Louis IX to François I. Plundering Visigoths, ravaging Normans, Catholics and Huguenots, even the Germans in 1870, all in their turn assailed the unfortunate city. We looked for half-ruined palaces and vine-covered, crumbling walls. The reality spread a different picture. Aside from the streets and houses of mediæval Tours, little remains of great historic interest. This large, busy industrial center produces so many articles that the list resembles a section from the new Tariff Act.
We enjoyed varying our châteaux excursions with rambles in the city. There are old gabled houses in the Rue du Change, where the overhanging stories rest on brackets richly carved. One loses all sense of direction in some of these intricate streets. The cathedral compelled us to linger longer than we had intended. The ages have given such a warm, rich gray to the stones that the usual atmosphere of frozen grandeur was absent. Our interest in Gothic glass and mediæval pillars was diverted by a wedding that was going on in the cathedral. One of the priests, who was assisting in the ceremonies, left his duties to offer us his services as guide; there is always a certain magnetic power to the American tip. Of course we climbed the Royal Staircase of the North Tower, even counting the number of steps. The fact that our numbers did not correspond is all that saves this part of our story from resembling a quotation from Baedeker. The panorama showed the city spread out in a plain between the Loire and the Cher. We grew to have an intimate feeling for these old cathedral towers. When returning along the Loire from our châteaux trips, it was always a beautiful sight to see them in the distance, clear-cut and luminous, or looking like majestic shadows in the haze of twilight.
The road swept us along the bank of the Loire Page 181
[CHAPTER XIII]
THE CHÂTEAUX OF TOURAINE
Tours made a convenient headquarters for our explorations in Touraine, where along the banks of the Loire and the Indre were enacted the most important events in French history from Charles VII to Henry IV. Every one would be interested in an historical course having for subjects these Renaissance homes of France's gallantry and beauty. One lingers, and imagines the scenes of magnificent revel, the court life of kings and queens when the artistic and architectural glory of France was at its zenith.
It was easy to plan our one-day trips so as to include on the same circuit several of the most famous châteaux. The first day we motored to Azay-le-Rideau, Chinon, Rigny-Ussé, and Langeais, in the order named. The distances were short, perhaps one hundred and twenty-five kilometers in all, so that we could go leisurely and yet return to Tours before dark.