urned the fortress into a
beautiful habitation, which changed Chambord from a feudal stronghold
to a country seat, and which left its traces at Amboise, as it did
at Chaumont and at Blois. He found in France the highest and most
beautiful expression of the work of "the great unnamed race of
master-masons," he found the traditions of a national school of
painting, the work of Fouquet and the Clouets, but for these he cared
not; for him the only schools were those of Rome and Florence, and
tho by encouraging their imitation he weakened the vital sincerity of
French art, yet from his first exercise of royal power the consistency
always somewhat lacking in his politics was shown clearly and firmly
in his taste for art.

BLOIS[A]

[Footnote A: From "Castles and Chateaux of Old Touraine." By special
arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, L.C. Page &
Co. Copyright, 1908.]

BY FRANCIS MILTOUN

Blois, among all the other cities of the Loire, is the favorite with
the tourist. Here one first meets a great chateau of state; and
certainly the Chateau de Blois lives in one's memory more than any
other chateau in France.

Much has been written of Blois, its counts, its chateau, and its many
and famous hotels of the nobility, by writers of all opinions and
abilities, from those old chroniclers who wrote of the plots and
intrigues of other days to those critics of art and architecture who
have discovered--or think they have discovered--that Da Vinci designed
the famous spiral staircase.

From this one may well gather that Blois is the foremost chateau of
all the Loire in popularity and theatrical effect. Truly this is so,
but it is by no manner of means the most lovable; indeed, it is the
least lovable of all that great galaxy which begins at Blois and ends
at Nantes. It is a show-place and not much more, and partakes in
every form and feature--as one sees it to-day--of the attributes of a
museum, and such it really is.

All of its former gorgeousness is still there, and all the banalities
of the later period when Gaston of Orleans built his ugly wing, for
the "personally conducted" to marvel at, and honeymoon couples to
envy. The French are quite fond of visiting this shrine themselves,
but usually it is the young people and their mammas, and detached
couples of American and English birth that one most sees strolling
about the courts and apartments where formerly lords and ladies and
cavaliers moved