The Objects In Themselves Are Not
Especially Graceful; But The Constant Repetition Of The
Figure On The Walls And Ceiling Produces An Effect Of
Richness, In Spite Of The Modern Whitewash With Which,
If I Remember Rightly, They Have Been Endued.
The
little streets of Loches wander crookedly down the hill,
and are full of charming pictorial "bits:" an old
Town-
gate, passing under a mediaeval tower, which is orna-
mented by Gothic windows and the empty niches of
statues; a meagre but delicate _hotel de ville_, of the
Renaissance, nestling close beside it; a curious _chancel-
lerie_ of the middle of the sixteenth century, with
mythological figures and a Latin inscription on the
front, - both of these latter buildings being rather un-
expected features of the huddled and precipitous little
town. Loches has a suburb on the other side of the
Indre, which we had contented ourselves with looking
down at from the heights, while we wondered whether,
even if it had not been getting late and our train were
more accommodating, we should care to take our way
across the bridge and look up that bust, in terra-cotta,
of Francis I., which is the principal ornament of the
Chateau de Sansac and the faubourg of Beaulieu. I
think we decided that we should not; that we were
already quite well enough acquainted with the nasal
profile of that monarch.
XI.
I know not whether the exact limits of an excur-
sion, as distinguished from a journey, have ever been
fixed; at any rate, it seemed none of my business, at
Tours, to settle the question.
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