was next to an impossibility that he could have
effected his escape. He was surrounded by guards and spies of every
description, under the superintendence of M. Darberg, Auditor of the
Council of State, and without whose leave no admittance could be
obtained. Twenty-five horse gendarmes regularly mounted guard about
the castle, and every person found in its vicinity without a regular
passport, was confined and strictly examined.

At a small distance, is the residence of Marshal Victor, Duc de
Belluno, whom I met walking in the grounds. I was very civilly
permitted to enter, on sending a message desiring permission, as a
traveller, to see it. It stands at the entrance of the village of
Menard, and was once the favourite residence of Madame de Pompadour,
the mistress of Louis XV. The river Loire winds beautifully beneath
the terrace. The grounds are of a vast extent, and tastefully laid
out. Over the entrance, the workmen were then placing the arms of the
Marshal, finely executed in stone.

The country is thickly enclosed on each side of the river, varied with
hill and dale, clothed with vineyards. The villages and small towns
along the banks, as far as Orleans, are numerous and invariably
picturesque. Nothing can be more beautiful than the natural festoons
which are formed by the long shoots of the vines as they project over
the road. The peasants and the vignerons live in the midst of their
vineyards; their dwellings are excavations in chalky strata of the
solid rock, which afford them warm and dry habitations; some of them
were so covered with the vines that the entrance was scarcely visible,
and the comparison of them to so many birds nests is not badly
imagined. The hedges were covered with wild thyme and rosemary; and
the clematis interwoven with honeysuckles and other fragrant flowers,
richly perfumed the air. The grapes in Touraine and Orleanois are not
abundant this year, but the wine that is expected to be made, will,
it is supposed, from the dryness of the summer, be of an excellent
quality.

The town of Orleans is memorable for the siege it sustained against
the English in 1428, when the maid of Orleans acquired so much renown,
and whose barbarous execution at Rouen, cannot be remembered without
feelings of horror and indignation, and must ever remain a stain on
the memory of that brave soldier the Duke of Bedford. The transactions
subsequent to that event, led to the almost entire expulsion of the
Englis