iature Touraine in the heart of
Touraine--all its flowers and fruits and all the characteristic beauty
of the land are fully represented. Here are grapes of every district,
figs and peaches and pears of every kind; melons are grown out of doors
as easily as licorice plants, Spanish broom, Italian oleanders, and
jessamines from the Azores. The Loire lies at your feet. You look down
from the terrace upon the ever-changing river nearly two hundred feet
below; and in the evening the breeze brings a fresh scent of the sea,
with the fragrance of far-off flowers gathered upon its way. Some cloud
wandering in space, changing its color and form at every moment as
it crosses the pure blue of the sky, can alter every detail in the
widespread wonderful landscape in a thousand ways, from every point
of view. The eye embraces first of all the south bank of the Loire,
stretching away as far as Amboise, then Tours with its suburbs and
buildings, and the Plessis rising out of the fertile plain; further
away, between Vouvray and Saint-Symphorien, you see a sort of crescent
of gray cliff full of sunny vineyards; the only limits to your view are
the low, rich hills along the Cher, a bluish line of horizon broken by
many a chateau and the wooded masses of many a park. Out to the west you
lose yourself in the immense river, where vessels come and go, spreading
their white sails to the winds which seldom fail them in the wide
Loire basin. A prince might build a summer palace at La Grenadiere,
but certainly it will always be the home of a poet's desire, and the
sweetest of retreats for two young lovers--for this vintage house,
which belongs to a substantial burgess of Tours, has charms for every
imagination, for the humblest and dullest as well as for the most
impassioned and lofty. No one can dwell there without feeling that
happiness is in the air, without a glimpse of all that is meant by a
peaceful life without care or ambition. There is that in the air and the
sound of the river that sets you dreaming; the sands have a language,
and are joyous or dreary, golden or wan; and the owner of the vineyard
may sit motionless amid perennial flowers and tempting fruit, and feel
all the stir of the world about him.

If an Englishman takes the house for the summer, he is asked a thousand
francs for six months, the produce of the vineyard not included. If
the tenant wishes for the orchard fruit, the rent is doubled; for the
vintage, it is doubled agai