ch indeed is still
partly enclosed within its court. You may walk round this eminence,
which, with the small houses of the village at its base, shuts in the
castle from behind. The enclosure is not defiantly guarded, however; for
a small, rough path, which you presently reach, leads up to an open
gate. This gate admits you to a vague and rather limited _parc_, which
covers the crest of the hill and through which you may walk into the
gardens of the castle. These gardens, of small extent, confront the dark
walls with their brilliant parterres and, covering the gradual slope of
the hill, form, as it were, the fourth side of the court. This is the
stateliest view of the structure, which looks to you sufficiently grim
and grey as, after asking leave of a neat young woman who sallies out to
learn your errand, you sit there on a garden bench and take the measure
of the three tall towers attached to this inner front and forming
severally the cage of a staircase. The huge bracketed cornice (one of
the features of Langeais), which is merely ornamental, as it is not
machicolated, though it looks so, is continued on the inner face as
well. The whole thing has a fine feudal air, though it was erected on
the ruins of feudalism.

The main event in the history of the castle is the marriage of Anne of
Brittany to her first husband, Charles VIII., which took place in its
great hall in 1491. Into this great hall we were introduced by the neat
young woman--into this great hall and into sundry other halls, winding
staircases, galleries, chambers. The cicerone of Langeais is in too
great a hurry; the fact is pointed out in the excellent Guide-Joanne.
This ill-dissimulated vice, however, is to be observed, in the country
of the Loire, in every one who carries a key. It is true that at
Langeais there is no great occasion to indulge in the tourist's weakness
of dawdling; for the apartments, though they contain many curious odds
and ends of antiquity, are not of first-rate interest. They are cold and
musty indeed, with that touching smell of old furniture, as all
apartments should be through which the insatiate American wanders in
the rear of a bored domestic, pausing to stare at a faded tapestry or to
read the name on the frame of some simpering portrait.

To return to Tours my companion and I had counted on a train which (as
is not uncommon in France) existed only in the "Indicateur des Chemins
de Fer;" and instead of waiting for another we