To Reach Them You
Wander Through Crooked Suburban Lanes, Down The
Course Of The Loire, To A Rough, Undesirable, Incon-
Gruous spot, where a small, crude building of red
brick is pointed out to you by your cabman (if you
Happen to drive) as the romantic abode of a super-
stitious king, and where a strong odor of pigsties and
other unclean things so prostrates you for the moment
that you have no energy to protest against the obvious
fiction. You enter a yard encumbered with rubbish
and a defiant dog, and an old woman emerges from a
shabby lodge and assures you that you are indeed in
an historic place. The red brick building, which looks
like a small factory, rises on the ruins of the favorite
residence of the dreadful Louis. It is now occupied
by a company of night-scavengers, whose huge carts
are drawn up in a row before it. I know not whether
this be what is called the irony of fate; at any rate,
the effect of it is to accentuate strongly the fact (and
through the most susceptible of our senses) that there
is no honor for the authors of great wrongs. The
dreadful Louis is reduced simply to an offence to the
nostrils. The old woman shows you a few fragments,
- several dark, damp, much-encumbered vaults, de-
nominated dungeons, and an old tower staircase,
in good condition. There are the outlines of the old
moat; there is also the outline of the old guard-room,
which is now a stable; and there are other vague out-
lines and inconsequent lumps, which I have forgotten.
You need all your imagination, and even then you
cannot make out that Plessis was a castle of large ex-
tent, though the old woman, as your eye wanders over
the neighboring _potagers,_ talks a good deal about the
gardens and the park.
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