powder-magazine, and all the indignities imaginable
were heaped upon the chateau.

In 1814 Blois became the last capital of Napoleon's empire, and the
chateau walls sheltered the prisoners captured by the imperial army.

CHAMBORD[A]

[Footnote A: From "Old Touraine." Published by James Pott & Co.]

BY THEODORE ANDREA COOK

The road that leads from Blois to Chambord crosses the Loire by a fine
stone bridge, which the inscription sets forth to be the first public
work of Louis Philippe.

For some distance the rails of a small tramway followed the road by
which our carriage was slowly rolling toward the level plains of the
Cologne, but we gradually left such uncompromising signs of activity,
and came into a flat country of endless vineyards, with here and there
a small plaster tower showing its slated roof above the low green
clusters of the vines. We passed through several villages, whose
inhabitants that day seemed to have but one care upon their minds,
like the famous Scilly Islanders, to gain a precarious livelihood by
taking each other's washing. On every bush and briar fluttered the
household linen and the family apparel, of various textures and in
different states of despair; and with that strict observance of
utility which is the chief characteristic of the French peasant, the
inevitable blouses, of faded blue were blown into shapeless bundles
even along the railings of the churchyard tombs.

At last we came to an old moss-grown wall, and through a broken
gateway entered what is called the Park of Chambord. There is very
little of it to be seen now, the trees have been ruthlessly cut down
and mutilated, and of the wild boars, which Francis I. was so fond
of hunting there is left only the ghostly quarry that Thibault of
Champagne chases through the air, while the sound of his ghostly
horn echoes down the autumn night as the fantom pack sweeps by to
Montfrault.

It is impossible for the uninstructed mind to grasp the plan or method
of this mass of architecture; yet it is unsatisfactory to give it up,
with Mr. Henry James, "as an irresponsible, insoluble labyrinth."
M. Viollet-le-Duc, with a sympathetic denial of any extreme and
over-technical admiration, gives just that intelligible account of the
chateau which is a compromise between the unmeaning adulation of its
contemporary critics and the ignorance of the casual traveler.

"Chambord," says he, "must be taken for what it is; for an attempt in