This Is The Stateliest View Of The
Chateau, Which Looks To You Sufficiently Grim And Gray
As, After Asking Leave
Of a neat young woman who
sallies out to learn your errand, you sit there on a
garden bench and
Take the measure of the three tall
towers attached to this inner front and forming sever-
ally the cage of a staircase. The huge bracketed cor-
nice (one of the features of Langeais) which is merely
ornamental, as it is not machicolated, though it looks
so, is continued on the inner face as well. The whole
thing has a fine feudal air, though it was erected on
the rains of feudalism.
The main event in the history of the castle is the
marriage of Anne of Brittany to her first husband,
Charles VIII., which took place in its great hall in
1491. Into this great hall we were introduced by
the neat young woman, - into this great hall and
into sundry other halls, winding staircases, galleries,
chambers. The cicerone of Langeais is in too great a
hurry; the fact is pointed out in the excellent Guide-
Joanne. This ill-dissimulated vice, however, is to be
observed, in the country of the Loire, in every one
who carries a key. It is true that at Langeais there
is no great occasion to indulge in the tourist's weak-
ness of dawdling; for the apartments, though they
contain many curious odds and ends of, antiquity, are
not of first-rate interest. They are cold and musty,
indeed, with that touching smell of old furniture, as
all apartments should be through which the insatiate
American wanders in the rear of a bored domestic,
pausing to stare at a faded tapestry or to read the
name on the frame of some simpering portrait.
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