One May Believe That To This Day A Consider-
Able Part Of The Foundations Of The Great Abbey Is
Buried In The Soil Of Tours.
The two surviving towers,
which are dissimilar in shape, are enormous; with
those of the cathedral they form the great landmarks
of the town.
One of them bears the name of the Tour
de l'Horloge; the other, the so-called Tour Charle-
magne, was erected (two centuries after her death)
over the tomb of Luitgarde, wife of the great Em-
peror, who died at Tours in 800. I do not pretend to
understand in what relation these very mighty and
effectually detached masses of masonry stood to each
other, but in their gray elevation and loneliness they
are striking and suggestive to-day; holding their hoary
heads far above the modern life of the town, and
looking sad and conscious, as they had outlived all
uses. I know not what is supposed to have become
of the bones of the blessed saint during the various
scenes of confusion in which they may have got mis-
laid; but a mystic connection with his wonder-working
relics may be perceived in a strange little sanctuary
on the left of the street, which opens in front of the
Tour Charlemagne, - the rugged base of which, by
the way, inhabited like a cave, with a diminutive
doorway, in which, as I passed, an old woman stood
cleaning a pot, and a little dark window decorated
with homely flowers, would be appreciated by a
painter in search of "bits." The present shrine of
Saint Martin is enclosed (provisionally, I suppose) in
a very modem structure of timber, where in a dusky
cellar, to which you descend by a wooden staircase
adorned with votive tablets and paper roses, is placed
a tabernacle surrounded by twinkling tapers and pros-
trate worshippers. Even this crepuscular vault, how-
ever, fails, I think, to attain solemnity; for the whole
place is strangely vulgar and garish. The Catholic
church, as churches go to-day, is certainly the most
spectacular; but it must feel that it has a great fund
of impressiveness to draw upon when it opens such
sordid little shops of sanctity as this. It is impos-
sible not to be struck with the grotesqueness of such
an establishment, as the last link in the chain of a
great ecclesiastical tradition.
In the same street, on the other side, a little below,
is something better worth your visit than the shrine
of Saint Martin. Knock at a high door in a white
wall (there is a cross above it), and a fresh-faced
sister of the convent of the Petit Saint Martin will
let you into the charming little cloister, or rather
fragment of a cloister. Only one side of this exqui-
site structure remains, but the whole place is effective.
In front of the beautiful arcade, which is terribly
bruised and obliterated, is one of those walks of inter-
laced _tilleuls_ which are so frequent in Touraine, and
into which the green light filters so softly through a
lattice of clipped twigs.
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