Like The Castle
Of Blois It Has Been Injured And Defaced By Base Uses,
But, Unlike The Castle Of Blois, It Has Not Been Com-
Pletely Restored.
"It is very, very dirty, but very
curious," - it is in these terms that I heard it described
by an English lady, who was generally to be found
engaged upon a tattered Tauchnitz in the little _salon
de lecture_ of the hotel at Tours.
The description is
not inaccurate; but it should be said that if part of
the dirtiness of Amboise is the result of its having
served for years as a barrack and as a prison, part of
it comes from the presence of restoring stone-masons,
who have woven over a considerable portion of it a
mask of scaffolding. There is a good deal of neatness
as well, and the restoration of some of the parts seems
finished. This process, at Amboise, consists for the
most part of simply removing the vulgar excrescences
of the last two centuries.
The interior is virtually a blank, the old apart-
ments having been chopped up into small modern
rooms; it will have to be completely reconstructed. A
worthy woman, with a military profile and that sharp,
positive manner which the goodwives who show you
through the chateaux of Touraine are rather apt to
have, and in whose high respectability, to say nothing
of the frill of her cap and the cut of her thick brown
dress, my companions and I thought we discovered
the particular note, or _nuance_, of Orleanism, - a com-
petent, appreciative, peremptory person, I say, - at-
tended us through the particularly delightful hour we
spent upon the ramparts of Amboise.
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