engaged a vehicle to take
us home. A sorry _carriole_ or _patache_ it proved to be, with the
accessories of a lumbering white mare and a little wizened, ancient
peasant, who had put on, in honour of the occasion, a new blouse of
extraordinary stiffness and blueness. We hired the trap of an energetic
woman, who put it "to" with her own hands; women in Touraine and the
Blesois appearing to have the best of it in the business of letting
vehicles, as well as in many other industries. There is, in fact, no
branch of human activity in which one is not liable, in France, to find
a woman engaged. Women, indeed, are not priests; but priests are, more
or less, women. They are not in the army, it may be said but then they
_are_ the army. They are very formidable. In France one must count with
the women. The drive back from Langeais to Tours was long, slow, cold;
we had an occasional spatter of rain. But the road passes most of the
way close to the Loire, and there was something in our jog-trot through
the darkening land, beside the flowing river, which it was very possible
to enjoy.

[Illustration]

Chapter x

[Loches]

The consequence of my leaving to the last my little mention of Loches is
that space and opportunity fail me; and yet a brief and hurried account
of that extraordinary spot would after all be in best agreement with my
visit. We snatched a fearful joy, my companion and I, the afternoon we
took the train for Loches. The weather this time had been terribly
against us: again and again a day that promised fair became hopelessly
foul after lunch. At last we determined that if we could not make this
excursion in the sunshine we would make it with the aid of our
umbrellas. We grasped them firmly and started for the station, where we
were detained an unconscionable time by the evolutions, outside, of
certain trains laden with liberated (and exhilarated) conscripts, who,
their term of service ended, were about to be restored to civil life.
The trains in Touraine are provoking; they

[Illustration: LOCHES]

serve as little as possible for excursions. If they convey you one way
at the right hour, it is on the condition of bringing you back at the
wrong; they either allow you far too little time to examine the castle
or the ruin, or they leave you planted in front of it for periods that
outlast curiosity. They are perverse, capricious, exasperating. It was a
question of our having but an hour or two at Loches, an