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two thick, and pasted on the front of the cliff. The chimneys, built of brick or stone or a couple of pieces of drain tile, almost leaned against the wall, their smoke and soot making a black smudge on the rock above them. In some places little terraces and verandas were built out in front, with a winding flight of the narrowest stone steps leading up to them. Almost every house had a window in addition to its door, but we could not discover any other means of ventilation. We realized that this must be the ideal French home, for its very construction eliminated the possibility of courants d'air, as the Frenchman, in his dislike for verbal short cuts, calls draughts. And the Frenchman can discover-and flee from a courant d'air where an AngloSaxon would be panting for breath.

By the side of the village street a white-haired peasant woman sat, knitting busily. Her home consisted of two rooms in the rock, several feet below the surface of the road. There she lived alone, she said, in spite of her eighty-odd years. Her house had a door and a window, but the back of the rooms was as dark as a pocket. The tiny front yard. was filled with flowers; and, apparently delighted with my request for a rose, she dropped her knitting and hurried to cut a generous bouquet and tie it up tightly with a bit of string to present to me with a rheumatic curtsy.

M'dame meanwhile had vanished, to appear a few minutes later at the canoe with a couple of glorious strawberries as her souvenir of our town of cave-dwellers. M'sieur does not know to this day how she got them, but he has always suspected, from their superlative sweetness, that they were the plunder of a raid.

At Blois we had forearmed ourselves for our next big town by asking the name of the best hotel in

Tours.

We were directed to the Hotel de l'Univers, an inn well recommended by Mr. Henry James in his "A Little Tour in France," and described by some one (I forget who) as the best hotel in France (or Europe, or the world, or perhaps the town, I don't remember which). So it may be, for all we know, but we cannot be thankful enough that fortune lodged us in a more humble but vastly more interesting corner. At Chenonceaux two friends, met by chance, had told us they were stopping at a convent in Tours, which received a limited number of pensionnaires. We took the address, determined to lodge there too, if we might be admitted.

Landed in the lee of a floating bathhouse and swimming school, we hastened through narrow alleys to the indicated street. We rang a bell at the side of a great gate set in a blank wall, a latch clicked, a small door swung gently ajar, and we stepped into a small outer

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A DOORWAY AT CHENONCEAUX

she returned with another sister, an even littler woman with the most sharply crossed eyes I have ever seen, but so gently sweet and amiable and so responsive to our desire that we promptly lost our hearts. We repeated our plea as persuasively as we could.

"We would like to do it," she responded, eagerly sympathetic, "but it is not usual. Only the Mother Superior could allow it. She is in the country, at our other convent. But I will go there and ask her permission, if you will come back in two hours." Come back? Of course we would; and we did, to find her all flurried with the hurry and heat of her journey, but radiant at the success of her mission. Our room would be ready immediately.

M'sieur returned to the river for the luggage, while M'dame

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THE TOWER OF ST. MARTIN, FROM OUR GALLERY court. We were met by a little nun dressed all in white wool, and busily engaged on a bit of embroidery. With a very businesslike air she led us through another door into a larger court beyond, and began to point out the carved pillars and ceiling of the cloisters, and the other objects of interest which the convent afforded. Sightseers were evidently a recognized phenomenon.

Apologetically, M'sieur interrupted her descriptions

But M'sieur does not know what M'dame did-at least not so well as she, who sat in the shade of the beautiful fourteenth-century cloisters and watched the busy little sisters in their soft white robes fluttering like birds around the garden, and felt the sweet conventual peace settle down upon her like a benediction. Presently the world, in the person of M'sieur, broke in upon this cloistered

"We would like to have a room here calm, and the white-robed fluttering for a few days, if it is possible."

Without a quiver of an eyelash or a moment's pause of her needle, she shut the gates of Paradise in our faces with a laconic,

"Pas de messieurs-no gentlemen."

But we refused to be shut out quite so cavalierly, and began to explain that we were friends of the two American ladies who were already pensionnaires, and that we wanted very, very much to join them in so lovely a place. Our pleading had some effect, for, still embroidering, she went in search of some one higher in authority. In a moment

became agitated. Evidently curiosity was not left behind in the world along with the other weaknesses of the flesh. We were told that our room was ready, and several sisters gathered to accompany us thither. It was then that our acquaintance with Sister Geraldine began. Dear Sister Geraldine, our devoted friend and servant! I wish I could draw a picture of her that would do her justice. She was a lay sister, and wore dark blue instead of the white robes of the religieuses, but the same wide-frilled cap framed her strong, kind face. It was the face of a woman of the people,

long-nosed and wide-mouthed, but it had the clear beauty of perfect health, and the look from the warm brown eyes was infinitely sweet and tender. In physique she was a veritable Amazon, and it was evident that she was the porter of the

convent.

She at once made for our heavy valise, but M'sieur was before her, asserting that he would carry it. With one voice the sisters protested, while Sister Geraldine made ineffectual passes at the handle. M'sieur therewith took his stand astride the bag, his back against the wall, and returned but one answer to the anxious pleading which broke over him in waves. "The sac is too heavy for women," he iterated and reiterated, and finally bore the bone of contention in triumph to our room. At least five sisters escorted us, each eagerly catching up some bit of luggage. We made quite a little procession as we trailed across the large courtyard, through a door, up a flight of stairs, on tiptoe through the robing-room of the chapel, and so out into another little courtyard. In the center was a tiny garden all in bloom, and our joy was great when we found that it was practically all our own. A high wall almost separated it from another court nearly its counterpart, upon which the house occupied by the priest opened. Our own rooms (for we had two, a chamber and an antechamber!) were on the upper floor of the wing of the building which overlooked our court, and opened upon a gallery which ran around two sides. The rooms were quite bare, but spotlessly clean. On the walls were a few religious pictures and a crucifix, the polished floors were innocent of rugs, and the furniture was of the plainest. But a sense of rest settled upon our spirits as we entered, and the fresh linen sheets, woven by the sisters themselves, invited to sweet dreams.

We were welcomed by an old lay sister, to whom the room had evidently belonged before we came to turn her out. She hovered about, trying to find something else to do for our comfort, directed us to put our shoes out at night for cleaning, and, as a final service, shyly offered M'sieur one of her own beautifully laundered nightcaps, for fear of the much-dreaded courant d'air. M'sieur has never ceased to regret that he had not presence of mind to accept her offer in the spirit in which it was made, and wear the cap regardless of his own amour propre or M'dame's jeers. His regret was made more poignant the next morning, when he saw the good lay sister hurrying across the court with his boots, which he had not put out, secreted behind her back.

For four days we lived in the peaceful atmosphere of the convent. M'dame was forthwith adopted by Sister Geraldine, who spoiled her outrageously, and M'sieur scraped acquaintance with the priest, with whom he smoked sundry pipes in the garden and discussed canoes and the separation of Church and State. The school, which had been the main support of the convent, had been discontinued by the new law, and the sisters

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IN THE CONVENT GARDEN

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"WHERE THE GREAT RUIN OF THE ANCIENT FORTRESS SPREADS ITSELF

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were hard put to it for their living. Hence the pensionnaires, and hence our good luck.

The convent stands on the site of an abbey of the fourteenth century, some of the walls of which still remained in our corner of the building. It stands, moreover, in the shadow of the two great towers which are all that remain of the great Basilica of St. Martin, built just after Charlemagne's death as a memorial to his wife, Luitgard. The new Basilica of St. Martin stands just across the Rue Descartes, and from our gallery the two old towers and the statue of the saint on the new church formed a striking group. The statue was especially impressive during the progress of a thunder-storm, when the lightning illumined it at intervals and gave it an aweinspiring aspect of life and movement.

The next day we made an early start and visited both Azay-le-Rideau and Chinon. The former, in its present state, is worthy of very little notice. The exterior, indeed, is lovely; the Abbé Chevalier speaks of it as "perhaps the purest expression of the belle Renaissance française," but it is set low on the bank of the stagnant Indre, and its surroundings are unattractive and depressing. Inside it has been entirely modernized, cut up into little boxes of rooms, hideously papered. The State has recently purchased it and begun a very intelligent restoration, so future travelers may be more fortunate than we. We had déjeuner at the inn, and this also was a depressing experience. The house was ill kept, the service poor, and the food of the worst. It was the only poor hostelry we found in all our wanderings.

Chinon, on the other hand, was a joy. From the station we rode in a bus as far as we could, and then climbed endlessly up a steep narrow lane between cottages which clung, Heaven knows how, to the perpendicular hillside, to the summit, where the great ruin of the ancient fortress spreads itself. The vast dimensions of the place left us breathless. Wandering through the ruined walks and towers, it became quite easy to imagine an army and all the inhabitants of the

little town intrenched within this mighty stronghold. It seemed a place for mighty deeds and the clash of arms, and the memory of Charles VII's ragged, dissolute court making mock of majesty was a discordant note. But into this ignoble scene steps the pure bright figure of the Maid of France, the ugly vision fades, and a radiant glory shines within the old walls.

A little boy was our guide, and gravely in his clear child's French he told us what he knew of the history of Chinon. At the bottom of this well opened a secret passage from the town through which provisions were brought in time of siege. From this point another secret passage once led to the home of Agnes Sorel, the king's mistress. In this council hall (of which only the chimney and part of one wall remain) Jeanne d'Arc met the king and pleaded with him for France, and in this tower the brave child passed some weary weeks of waiting and examination before she was admitted to the royal presence.

Perhaps it was a desire to pay tribute to her sweet memory which led us to climb the crumbling stairway of her tower, to sit a while and to remember the divine inspiration and heroic courage which led her down the hard way of her self-appointed task to her cruel martyrdom. It is difficult to forgive France that monstrous act of ingratitude. The thought of the Maid stayed with us long after the great ruin was left behind.

It was at Tours that Louis XI, that pious, superstitious, treacherous, clever fiend, built his castle of Plessis-les-Tours, which has been made famous in "Quentin Durward." Its destruction has been so complete, and the relics of its unsavory greatness to be found on the spot are, according to report, so uninteresting, that we did not take the trouble to cross the river to see them. But we experienced no lack of grisly reminders of that merry monarch-for we went to Loches.

Tours was the end of Gray Brother's voyage, and we regretfully left him in harbor, while we journeyed by rail. Once more M'sieur ventures to assume the rôle of guide-book maker and record the note: "The trains on French rail

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