BLIND SIGHT-SEEING.

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FROM HOUSEHOLD WORDS.

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It was traveling on the railroad from Orleans to Amboise, that I first met Monsieur and Madame Faye, who were returning from Paris to Tours. There was a little battle, just as the train was starting, in consequence of late comers. The only wonder is how any Frenchman manages ever to be ready, considering the immense amount of talk and leave-taking which seem a part of their existence—and I, amongst others, put out my hand to help in an apparently infirm man, whose agitation seemed to prevent him from knowing where to take his seat. I pointed to that next to me, pulling his coat to force him into it, that we might not all be inconvenienced by his lingering. He bowed and smiled, and continued to talk to a female who followed him; and who began to stow away numerous baskets and bundles which she was tightly embracing, thanking us, all the time, for our politeness to her husband. In a few seconds they were stashed, and we then had leisure to remark the appearance of the new travelers. The gentleman was rather past middle age, good-looking, neatly dressed. He had a cheerful, pleasant countenance and soft, mild eyes, which he directed toward those to whom he spoke, although we afterward found they possessed no speculation. The lady was any thing but tidy in her style; indeed, so much the reverse as to be surprising in a Frenchwoman; but her story, when it was told me at our next meeting at Tours, explained the peculiarities which made her at first an object of somewhat disrespectful observation.

We soon became good friends. Monsieur Faye was blind, and had been so from childhood. His cousin, Mathurine, had proposed for him when they were both about five-and-twenty, and had, from that time, devoted her whole life to attend on him.

“I should not,” she said, “have asked him; but that my brother, who required my services because of his lameness, determined just then to marry; and, therefore, as I had a substitute with him, and poor dear Hector here was too modest to ask me, what else was to be done?”

I found, on further acquaintance, that Hector was a remarkable personage, in his way: a bit of a musician, a philosopher, an antiquary, and a great reader of, or rather listener to, history; for it was his little, lively, untiring wife, who read to him from morning till night; and sometimes, when he could not sleep, from night till morning.

I found Mathurine incessantly occupied with the well-being of Hector. She might have been pretty at the period of their union, probably some twenty years before; but her small, slight figure was rather awry, in consequence of having, for so long a time, served as a prop to her tall husband, who always leant on her shoulder as he walked. She seemed indeed altogether out of the perpendicular; her bonnet never sat straight, owning to its being pushed aside by his arm; her shawl had the end any where but in the middle; her gloves were generally ragged at the fingers, while I observed that his were carefully repaired—it being evident that my friends were obliged to practice economy; her shoes were shabby, with the strings often untied. “What would you have?” she once remarked laughingly. “I have no time to attend to these trifles; which, after all, don’t signify; for I am not a coquette, and he does not see me. I catch up the first thing that comes to hand, and he fancies I am quite a belle.”

Hector had the strangest voice I ever heard; it would begin contralto and run up to alto in an incredible manner when he was excited; and then fall down again to the gruffest bass, his little brisk wife’s treble accompanying so as, as she imagined, to soften the sharp effects he produced.

She had managed to learn several languages, in order to read to him the authors he admired in the original; and odd enough her versions were; but, as he perfectly comprehended the jargon they had studied together, her plan succeeded admirably.

Amongst Monsieur Faye’s peculiarities was that of being an inveterate sight-seer. There was no object of interest near the places he visited that he had not, as he said, seen; and no sooner did he hear a description of a castle or a cathedral than he became restless to make its acquaintance. I happened one day to speak of having, in former years, gone to the strange old castle of Loches, about thirty miles from Tours; and struck instantly with his usual desire for exploring, he proposed a journey to the spot, inviting me to be his guest and guide.

I have always observed that the French, although by no means what we call rich, are very generous, according to their means, and if they cannot do a thing in grand style, they do it equally well on a small scale. Hector had long wished to give a treat to his hostess and her family, and this he felt was a good opportunity. Our party, therefore, was formed of Madame Tricot, a black-eyed little widow; her sister Euphrosine and her young lover the militaire—just arrived on leave to visit his betrothed—and Achille, the widow’s eldest son; a sharp boy of thirteen, distinguished by his half-military college uniform, more perhaps than by the progress he was making in those studies which Madame Tricot felt sure would lead him to immortality; and which she herself superintended with unwearied zeal, forcing her refractory pupil to rise before daybreak every morning, and repeat his Greek and Latin lessons to her previous to school hours, although, when I questioned her with surprised awe, she replied by saying with a knowing nod:

“No, no, I do not understand all this; but Achille imagines I do; and, at all events, he is obliged by this means to learn his lessons. They are very severe at college, and he is such a gamin!”

As I had seldom seen Achille occupied, in his leisure hours, in the absence of his mamma, in any other way than teazing a peculiarly uproarious parrot, whose discordant shrieks regularly awoke me from early slumber, I could easily believe that some difficulties lay in the way of the future hero’s advancement, had he been left entirely to his own plan of pursuing knowledge.

Seven persons, large and small, besides the driver, one fine October morning, filled the large rumbling vehicle which Madame Faye had engaged for our expedition to the old ruined castle of Loches; and very merry we all were as we saw the baskets of eatables stuffed under the seats, and wedged ourselves inside and out preparatory to setting forth, which we did at last in the midst of a shower of precautionary words from Madame Tricot, sent after the two staring, laughing, rosy-cheek maids who stood helping, and enjoying our prospect of a fête, and flirting with our smart driver up to the very last moment. At length we rattled away along the leafy avenue of the Boulevard Heurteloup, at Tours, and were soon on the long level road which conducts to the old town, which we made our goal.

Situated just at the entrance of the luxuriant garden of Touraine; full to overflowing of grapes and melons, and plums and peaches, of incredible size; on the banks of the river Indre, (here spanned by several pretty bridges,) rises the craggy hill, on the sides of which was built, at a period too remote to be ascertained even by a hand-book, the rugged, stony, impassable, confused, fossil-looking town, crowned at its extreme summit by the grimmest, strangest, oldest, and most inexplicably constructed castle that exists in France. Probably its like would be sought in vain in Europe. Such another series of towers, and spires, and long and high walls, terraces, battlements, stair-cases, and dungeons, was never brought together by the hand of man. The castle was constructed by order of a certain Count of Anjou, named Foulques Nera, to become—long after his valorous fame had passed away, or had merged into the reputation of an ogre—a ponderous plaything.

The inn where our party stopped at Loches, is very characteristic of the place; for it is, though modernized and beautified outwardly, a maze of galleries, and corridors, and turrets, and secret stair-cases, and rooms with vaulted ceilings, so that the world of the present day seems shut out the moment the façade is lost sight of. It had an odd effect in such a place to see smart handmaids flitting about, and a chattering hostess coming out to welcome guests to her antique dwelling, which has all the trouble in the world to look young and inviting, in spite of the paint and frippery in which French taste has striven to disguise its feudal reality.

We very soon arranged ourselves and our repast (with but little addition from the larder of our nevertheless civil hostess) on a sort of platform, on the walls of what is now a terrace, and was once no doubt a war-like spot, where if people “drank the red wine,” it was probably “through the helmet barred.” The hostess merrily uncorked our bottles of Loire wine, observing candidly that it was much better than her cellars produced; and, addressing herself to me, adroitly began a eulogy on the character of the English in general, remarking, that it was astonishing how many of my countrymen made her hotel their home for six months together.

A ramble through the streets showed us that it was market day at Loches. From the lower range of rugged walls to the rocky summit where the castle toppled over—comprising the narrow, high street, which ascends through the whole length, winding and twisting like a snake pursued—was one mass of vegetables, fruit, and flowers, whose bright hues, and the gay colors of the vendors’ dresses, contrasted strangely with the lofty houses with overhanging roofs, frowning down on the groups that dared to disturb the solemn gloom which had been theirs for centuries.

Monsieur Faye stopped every moment to talk to the market-women, to cheapen melons, and to accept bouquets from girls whose bright eyes he praised. On he went, chuckling that his defective sight had not been discovered: his little wife winking to us meantime with an air of entire satisfaction. Madame Tricot endeavored to excite Achille to study the guide pittoresque and make himself acquainted with the notable objects of the place. The lovers, who had doubtless much zeal in the same cause, proposed to him that they should all three mount the hill at a quick pace, and find out the points of view ready for us on arrival at the top. By a curious chance we never managed to find the couple again until our return; and Achille reported that he had not seen them since he observed them to have “joined their heads” over the tomb of Agnes Sorel, the chief lion of the spot.

It seems that Charles the Seventh came to Loches to hunt, when he was visited by the disconsolate wife of the troubadour King René, of Anjou, who came to solicit his aid in favor of her imprisoned husband. Agnes was in her train—one of those dangerous maids of honor whose eyes have done such fatal mischief to the susceptible hearts of incautious monarchs—but when the duchess quitted Loches, her beautiful companion accompanied her not, she remained in the service of Mary d’Anjou, the wife of Charles the Seventh.

It would be curious to know in what chamber of this wild old castle the love tale was first told which has furnished France with a ceaseless romance. All that remains of Agnes now is her white marble tomb, on which she lies with her hands clasped on bare breast, her beautiful, delicate, and expressive head guarded by two winged kneeling cherubs, and her draperied feet supported by two lambs. The tomb: is in perfect preservation, and is one of the most exquisite morceaux in France. Agnes was the châtelaine of the castle, and loved to live here above all other places, although the munificence of her lover gave her the choice of several abodes.

Here, it is said that the ill-nurtured Prince Dauphin, afterward Louis the Eleventh, performed an act very much in conformity with his usual brutality. In one of these saloons he struck the beautiful favorite of his father; but he who could beat his own chosen little effigy of the Virgin Mary, because she refused some of his requests, might well begin his career by an outrage like this. Happy, no doubt, were both the angry beauty and her royal lover, when they saw the last drawbridge of the castle of Loches fall and shut out forever from their presence the gloomy prince, who disapproved of their luxuries, and who spurred his steed onward, nor stopped till he had reached the dominions of the Duke of Burgundy.

Louis came back eventually, however, to these walls, and either late repentance or a sense of justice caused him to respect the tomb of Agnes, which he refused to let the monks of Loches remove.

Monsieur Faye was very anxious to ascertain—for he was rather a phrenologist—the form of the celebrated beauty’s head, and felt it through the bars which protect the lovely marble statue to his heart’s content, discovering bumps which would have disclosed the whole of her character, had history been silent on the subject. There was, besides, not a cornice nor a balustrade in the building that he did not feel; his hand being guided by that of Mathurine. I was amazed at the accuracy of his notions of the places we inspected; and more so at the unwearied patience of his guide, who had no enjoyment which he did not feel, and who had acquired a habit of description so accurate that I felt at last inclined to let her see for the whole party.

The towers of the castle rise above a hundred and fifty feet from the gigantic rock upon which they are built. Some of them appear light and graceful at a distance, although really massive. The castle is divided into two unequal portions: in one is a huge church, the spires of which peer up between enclosing turrets in a way quite original; the other is chiefly composed of a huge tower, which looks like the spiteful ogre of a fairy tale, bending over a mountain and watching to snap up unwary knights or merchants who ventured near his stronghold. Century after century this grim old place has been the abode of personages famous in the romance of history. Joan of Arc came here on a visit; Anne of Brittany and her two husbands made it their favorite abode, and her oratory still exists, covered with ermine spots and cordelières in stone, which incrust the walls, and were very sensible to the touch of my blind friend. Mary Stuart here tuned her lute; and here, several ages before, our John Lackland feasted and reveled; here Philip Augustus came to receive the castle as a bribe for the assistance he was to render him against Cœur de Lion, who afterward besieged and took it. Here Jean of France resided, before the great battle which sent him the prisoner of the Black Prince to England, and in the fine Lady Chapel—whose delicate columns Monsieur Faye felt with his hands—was instituted a perpetual mass for the souls of the identical King John of France, and all the kings and dukes that had preceded him here. Here Francis the First and the fair and inappropriately named Diana, lived and loved a great part of their hours away.

When one sees the dark, dreary, gloomy, rugged walls, it is difficult to fancy Loches a dwelling for beauty and love; and it would require loads of bright tapestry and gilt furniture to fill up the black and blank nooks which yawn on all sides. In these chambers, however, once all was revel and luxury, as the court of the profligate Medici could testify: and the be-puffed and be-hooped ladies, and the be-slashed and be-jeweled lords, danced many a branle and pavane over the dungeons, where howled and groaned the victims of their tyranny and cruel luxury.

It is said that one of the towers descends as deep into the earth as it rises above it, and terrible are the approaches to these frightful spots. A tradition exists that one of the later governors of the castle, being curious to know the extent of these gloomy places, set forth one day on an exploring expedition, and found several passages closed by iron doors: these he had forced open, and found himself in new passages, cut in the depth of the rock on which the castle is built. Another door arrested his progress, which was also broken open, and he entered a long alley, still in the rock, which he followed for a considerable time, till at length it led him to a subterraneous chamber, where, seated on a huge block of stone, with his head leaning on his two hands, sat a very tall man. Monsieur de Pontbrillant, the enterprising governor, was amazed at this vision; but, scarcely had he looked upon it, when the current of air striking the figure, it fell away into dust at his feet. Beside the unfortunate prisoner stood a small wooden coffer, in which still remained several articles of linen, very fine, and carefully folded. The skull and bones of this corpse were long shown at the castle, and were looked upon with awe by those to whom this story was related: but who the prisoner was was never known. In more than one of the old castles of France are still to be traced these horrid dungeons, where captives of all ranks were confined immediately beneath the pleasure chambers of the lords and ladies.

The governor of Loches was always a very great man, which, perhaps, accounted for the fact of our having to wait a long time for the keys of the great tower, which a messenger had gone in search of at the present governor’s lodgings. While we waited in an outer court, we were civilly invited by the portress to walk into her parlor, and there we sat some time talking to her, and hearing the gossip of the place. Beside the large fire-place, guarded from the draught of the open door by a huge wooden screen, sat the grandmother of the establishment—generally a cherished member of the humblest family circle in France—who, old as she seemed, got up and made us a reverence, resuming her cosy seat by the fire, which was directly piled with enormous pine cones and sent up a resinous flame, the perfume of which spread through the room. Monsieur Faye was placed near her, and as she went on with her ceaseless knitting, she was soon busy in cheerful converse with her new acquaintance, while I was listening to a history of a lately escaped convict from this apparently secure retreat: the castle being the country prison.

“You see,” said the portress, “you would not have been obliged to wait so long for the keys but for this: we used, till three days ago, to keep them here, but since that event they are sent up to the governor’s house, and my husband, the guide, who shows you over the dungeons, is obliged to go and get them—but he will soon be back.”

“Do they keep prisoners in the dungeons now-a-days?” I asked.

I was told that the escaped culprit, who had robbed a hen-roost, had been put in a room above the dungeons—of which there are three stories beneath the ground level—and had contrived to hook up a plank, by which means he descended, with intent to rise the easier, having swung himself down till he could jump across a certain black abyss, which we afterward shuddered to see, and gain a broken stair-case where a door led to a corridor conducting to the outer court. With an iron nail he had displaced a huge stone in the steps, had crept through that, displaced a second in the same way, and thus arrived at the passage. Here he hid himself in a dark corner on the chance of the jailor-guide coming that way with visitors before long. As it happened, that event occurred, and the jailor was just preparing to light the candle which serves to illumine the gloom, having left the outer door open till the process was accomplished, when the ready adventurer lept from his hiding-place, overturned the guide, and amidst the screams and cries of the affrighted visitors, rushed out, with them, pell-mell into the outer world. As his blouse was the same costume as that worn by many of the affrighted strangers—for all ranks make the dungeons a lion—he passed unnoticed in the crowd, and excited no surprise as he “ran violently down the steep hill” with the rest and got fairly off. I could not regret that so ingenious and fearless a personage had baffled the vigilance of the guardians of Loches, but I felt a little nervous at the chance of a similar adventure occurring as we began our exploring expedition in the same quarter. I was assured, however, that there was no chance of such a thing, all the prisoners now detained, to the number of four, being at that moment smoking their pipes in a pleasant, sunny little court which we had to cross before we reached the low door which gave entrance to the dungeons.

There was nothing formidable in the aspect of these worthies, whose crimes were not of a deeper die than that of having got drunk and committed damage to the citizens in their cups; and we passed amongst them, returning the salutes they made with their night-caps, quite without alarm.

In the great court before this enormous and sinister-looking tower, one of the most splendid and the most worthless of the ancient governors of Loches paused before he entered, attended by three hundred gentlemen of high family, all probably “as wicked as himself,” and all bent on turning the good fortune of their friend and patron to the best account. This governor was the famous favorite of the infamous Henry the Third of France, the gorgeous Duke d’Epernon, and during the time he passed in these walls, the gold of the kingdom was no more spared by him than by his master. But a change arrived—two reigns had intervened—and a second time he visited these walls, more as a prisoner than a prince; he was then a gray-headed, gloomy, morose, miserable man, deserted by all the former companions of his profligacy whom the axe and the sword had spared, and here he came to hide himself from a court which his vices had disgraced.

Marie de Medicis, the prisoner of her son at Blois, also arrived here, in night and silence, escaped from her captivity, and entreated shelter of the old favorite, who had been suspected of knowing more than was honest of the murder of her husband, Henry the Fourth.

It is a strange reflection, and one that might well intrude while one stands before the door of the great tower of Loches, waiting till its rusty key turns in the lock, how unequal is the fate of those who have acted remarkable parts in the drama of the world. In spite of the mutations of fortune, mortification, neglect, disgrace or discontent, in spite of the overthrow of ambition, the wreck of hope, the struggles and turmoils, that d’Epernon had gone through, he could not get rid of the burden of life till the age of eighty-eight, when he died in the Castle of Loches, unregretted, and at once forgotten.

A story is told relating to him, which proves that men are not to be frightened by tyranny and power out of their natural wit and sarcasm. While this favorite of the contemptible king was in the enjoyment of his greatest favor, the public criers were accustomed to carry about a huge book, which they announced as “The high acts and deeds of valor and virtue of the most noble Duke d’Epernon.” These books, eagerly purchased, were found to contain blank paper. I fear that these historical recollections did not occur to Achille as he descended the rugged steps, green, and slimy, and steep, which led, from stage to stage, to the hideous dark holes in which these heroes of middle-age romance were accustomed to place their vassals or equals, as the case might be, when once in the power of their vengeance. Our guide, the jailor, was a good deal interrupted in his customary story of the place by indignation at the devastation committed on his steps and apartments by the late fugitive. Not attempting to smother the indignation awakened in his bosom, as he reviewed the ruin caused by the nail of the man of expedients, he mixed up his historical records with allusions to the damage in something like the following terms:

“Here you see the dungeon where the great monarch Louis the Eleventh (confound his impudence!) confined his minister Cardinal Balue in an iron cage—(I wish there was one here now and Jacques le Pochard was in it!) This is the place where the Grand Duke Sforza was lodged, and you may see where he painted the walls all round to amuse himself—here, where the flame of my candle touches the roof—(it’ll take me a whole day to mend the bottom of that door—the villain!) This is the dungeon where criminals were fastened to that iron bar in the middle of the chamber, and were only able to move from one end to the other by slipping a link of their chain along—mind the step! it leads through the dark passage to the next flight. (I had no idea the rascal had done so much harm to my steps! if ever I catch him again, I’ll flay him!—the brigand!)”

Nothing could equal the delight of my blind friend, at finding that he could touch the damp roofs of these horrible boudoirs for the favorites of princes with his hand, and that he could make out the patterns sketched by the unlucky Duke of Milan on the walls of the chamber with three rows of bars to the window, through which the duke found light enough to pursue his passion for art.

We had seen or felt all at last, and I was glad to return to the last corridor leading to daylight, when suddenly our guide exclaimed that he had left the key in the lock outside, and that some miscreant in the court had shut the door upon us. This was startling intelligence, and we began to feel any thing but satisfaction in the adventure, while our guide, placing his lips to the huge, gaping key-hole—through which a long line of sunlight streamed, as if in mockery—roared lustily to those without. Presently we heard suppressed tittering, and, after a minute or two of altercation between the old man’s voice and that of a young girl on the other side, the key was replaced, turned, and we hastily emerged to day and freedom.

“I ought to have known,” said the old grandfather, laughing, in spite of his anger, as a pretty, saucy-looking girl of twelve bounded across the court and took refuge in the porter’s lodge, “that that young hussy would never let an opportunity slip of playing me a trick—brigande!”

Achille seemed more amused with this last episode than any of our adventures; and it was with much gayety, and highly satisfied, that we descended the stony street, no longer filled with sellers and buyers, for the market was over. We had been four hours exploring! and nothing interrupted the stillness of the dreary old town but the ringing laughter of our young companions, and the pleasant exclamations of the whole party.

It was beyond midnight when we drove merrily up to the Boulevard Heurteloup, and found the same two watchful maidens on the look-out for our return. They did not appear to have been dull in our absence, nor did they seem afraid of solitude, probably feeling secure in the opportune presence of the sentinels on guard, whose measured tread still sounded along the avenue leading to the rail-road station hard by. Monsieur Faye remarked that we were fortunate in a moonlight night, and observed that he had seldom seen the stars so bright as they had been all the way from Loches.