d we could ill
afford to sacrifice to accidents. One of the accidents, however, was
that the rain stopped before we got there, leaving behind it a moist
mildness of temperature and a cool and lowering sky which were in
perfect agreement with the grey old city. Loches is certainly one of the
greatest impressions of the traveller in central France--the largest
cluster of curious things that presents itself to his sight. It rises
above the valley of the Indre, the charming stream set in meadows and
sedges, which wanders through the province of Berry and through many of
the novels of Madame George Sand; lifting from the summit of a hill,
which it covers to the base, a confusion of terraces, ramparts, towers,
and spires. Having but little time, as I say, we scaled the hill amain
and wandered briskly through this labyrinth of antiquities. The rain had
decidedly stopped and, save that we had our train on our minds, we saw
Loches to the best advantage. We enjoyed that sensation with which the
conscientious tourist is--or ought to be--well acquainted and for which,
at any rate, he has a formula in his rough-and-ready language. We
"experienced," as they say (most irregular of verbs), an "agreeable
disappointment." We were surprised and delighted; we had for some reason
suspected that Loches was scarce good.

I hardly know what is best there: the strange and impressive little
collegial church, with its romanesque atrium or narthex, its doorways
covered with primitive sculpture of the richest kind, its treasure of a
so-called pagan altar embossed with fighting warriors, its three
pyramidal domes, so unexpected, so sinister, which I have not met
elsewhere in church architecture; or the huge square keep of the
eleventh century--the most cliff-like tower I remember, whose
immeasurable thickness I did not penetrate; or the subterranean
mysteries of two other less striking but not less historic dungeons,
into which a terribly imperative little cicerone introduced us, with the
aid of downward ladders, ropes, torches, warnings, extended hands, and
many fearful anecdotes--all in impervious darkness. These horrible
prisons of Loches, at an incredible distance below daylight, enlivened
the consciousness of Louis XI. and were for the most part, I believe,
constructed by him. One of the towers of the castle is garnished with
the hooks or supports of the celebrated iron cage in which he confined
the Cardinal La Balue, who survived so much longe