so different; and the little mole, used as a flower-garden, pushing out into the river from the great arch and hiding its importance. All these, with the river for a foreground, and the great trees on the two banks of the river, and a glimpse of gardens through the arches of the bridge, the lofty chimneys covered with ornament, the steep roofs with gilded crests-all these, under the beautiful sky of La Touraine, make the ensemble which we owe to three women-Catherine Briçonnet, Diane de Poitiers, and Catherine de Medicis. "It seems," says a French writer, as if women alone had hands light enough to touch this delicate work." 66 When we entered this enchanting abode, two summers ago, the air was warm and balmy, the roses were blooming, and the cherries were ripe. They gave us strawberries and cream in the little inn before we came to the end of the avenue, and Marie waited on us-rosy Marie, with black eyes and wooden sabots. They are all named Marie, the waitresses at these little French country inns, and they are all rosy, and have black eyes, and wear wooden sabots. We gave the cocher an extra pourboire, and he took us up the entire length of the avenue to the court of honor itself. When we entered the château we had a delightful surprise. Every thing was just as it had been left-if not when it was finished, at any rate a long time ago. There was the old furniture, and the old cabinets, glasses, enamels, and china; and the vaulted hall hung with armor, its walls covered with stamped cloth, its doors screened by tapestry curtains which drew aside, and its rich ceilings, with blue centres studded with stars. There was the very glass out of which Francis I. drank, and the mirror in which Mary Queen of Scots saw the faint image of that too fair face. Here was the initial of Diane de Poitiers plentifully introduced, combined with that of her royal lover; and beyond was the bedroom, with all its original furniture, which the unscrupulous Catherine de Medicis occupied when, on the death of the king, she despoiled Diane of her fair mansion. And then there was the bedroom of Catherine's heir, Louise de Lorraine, widow of Henry III., whose chamber is still hung with black; and there were the chambers successively occupied by the duchesses de Vendôme and all the Condés. There, too, was the salon where a later owner, Madame Dupin, assembled around her Voltaire, the exiled Bolingbroke, Rousseau, and many others of the literary men of the last century. There was also a curious collection of historical portraits of all the chief people who had ever lived in the château, including a portrait of Diane de Poitiers in the character of the goddess of whom she was a namesake, with a taffeta petticoat embroidered with fleurs-de-lis. The most remarkable circumstance connected with Chenonceaux is that it escaped the revolution and remains so perfect. The lady who occupied it at the time of my visit knew my fellow-traveler, and we were treated with the greatest kindness, and shown every thing of interest in the château from garret to cellars. The latter are formed in the piers on which the house stands, and the dimensions of these piers are such that in them, besides the prison and the baths of Catherine de Medicis, were two kitchens, a bakery, and a dining-room where there are seats at table for thirty domestics. II. THE CHÂTEAU OF AMBOISE. High above the surrounding country, on the edge of a beetling promontory, hangs the vast château of Amboise, stretching along, like a range of rocks, above the quiet town of Amboise, which nestles at its feet. You see it first from the railway which threads the valley of the Loire. As you approach the station for Amboise, at your feet lies the river, crossed by a suspension-bridge; beyond stretches the little city, with its boulevard-that characteristic feature of a French town-along the river bank; and over it all frowns a mass of mighty walls and grand, decapitated towers which might have been built by giants. There were giants in those days, for surely not in ours were piled those walls, a vast fortress placed at the gate of "La Touraine," a jealous sentinel to guard the entrance to that Garden of the Hesperides. Cæsar lodged there his Roman garrison when he warred against the Armoricans. Here the counts d'Anjou, and later the Plantagenets, jealously held their own, and sometimes that which was their neighbors'. These walls served under Charles VII. as the rampart of the national monarchy, menaced by English invasion. They have afforded protection to Catholic royalty. They have been the prison of illustrious victims of royal ingratitude, of powerful rebels, of prisoners of state, of vanquished enemies. No tales of love and joy are hinted to us by those old walls, which only tell of might, and grief, and blood. The grand tragedy of Blois, the splendid pomps of Chambord, the local color and character of Chaumont, the smiling elegance of Chenonceaux, are all wanting to those dull walls, which only speak of ages of brute strength. A dull Opher, serving one and another in turn, but always, like Opher, serving the stronger. From these walls came the bloody doom of those 12,000 Huguenot prisoners conceived in the celebrated "Conjuration d'Amboise," which had for its object to extricate the young King Francis II. from the clutches and influence of the Guises in A.D. 1560. The secret of the plot was betrayed to the Duc de Guise by one of the conspirators, and its leader, La Renaudie, seized and hung on noble, grave face; the head is supported by a gibbet on the centre of the bridge. The remainder of the conspirators were dispersed and every where seized; the castle walls were decorated with the hanging bodies of the criminals, and the courts and streets of the town streamed with blood, until the wearied headsman, resigning his axe, consigned the remainder to other executioners, who drowned them in the Loire. Joseph the carpenter; and behind, bending grief-stricken over the body of their Lord, stand the three Marys, all young and beautiful, and with a certain resemblance between them not expected from the Scripture story. This resemblance is accounted for when you learn the origin of the monument. It was erected to the memory of a chamberlain of Francis I. by his three daughters, Such was the extent of the carnage that who had been in turn mistresses of the the court was driven from Amboise by the king! and the figures are portraits: Joseph stench of the dead bodies! You read all this the carpenter is a portrait of the father, in the guide-book; and Amboise comes in while the three Marys and Joseph of Arisight, and the train stops, and you are jog-mathea are portraits of the daughters and ging across the long bridge toward the little the king himself! town. Above and below ripples the pretty river. The banks are verdant, the views beautiful; a sunset glow, perhaps, is over every thing, and the breath of the grape flowers of spring, or the new-mown hay of summer, or the purple vintage of autumn is in the air, and you look up and see the walls of which you have just read, and ask yourself if it is only in unchristian lands where "the heathen in bis blindness bows down to wood and stone." Away to the right a slender spire pierces the air. It surmounts the chapel of the castle, and is finished with the gilded symbol which tells of the bloody end of Him who founded the sweet religion of humanity. Here Catherine de Medicis worshiped his memory, and doubtless prayed for, and believed that she received, the baptism of a double portion of his spirit. To the left is the balcony where she stood with her three sons, afterward kings Francis II., Charles IX., and Henry III., and with Mary Queen of Scots witnessed, in full court costume, the execution of the Huguenots. If you arrive at Amboise rather late in the day, there may not be time to see the castle thoroughly before the hour of closing, which is about six o'clock, when every body dines. But the vacant hour before the dinner at the homely but comfortable inn is gotten ready may be profitably spent in visiting the village church. It is interesting both from its age (having been built in the thirteenth century) and as a specimen of French Gothic restoration. English restorations," being usually done piecemeal, as contributions are received from individuals, are apt to give rather a patchy effect to the scene of their operations. French restorations, being largely undertaken by the government, at any rate avoid this peculiarity. Perhaps the most interesting thing of its kind is preserved in this church in the curious monument, executed in terra cotta, and colored like life, representing an "entombment." The figures are of the size of life. The feet of the dead Christ are supported by Joseph of Arimathea, a grand figure, richly robed in Easteru fashion, and with a From the village it is a steep ascent up to the castle, and on the way the little chapel, to which allusion has been made, is a most picturesque object. It is perched on a projecting square pedestal of rock which rises sheer from the town, from a level only a little higher than the flat river-bank, many feet into the air. The chapel is a little bijou; and whereas the castle is bare of ornament, and has suffered by the alterations consequent on the different uses to which it has been put, the chapel is a perfect museum of intricate carving in stone, frail as lace-work, and yet as perfect now as when it came from the workman's chisel-if chisel indeed were used on any thing so delicate. The chapel is dedicated to St. Hubert, and over the door-way is carved his miraculous meeting with a stag with a cross growing from between its horns. The walls are covered with panels adorned with foliage of the most delicate sculpture. The roof is groined, and has hanging pendants carved with grotesques, reminding one somewhat of the chapel of Henry VII. at Westminster. Singular and grotesque figures are intermingled with the foliage, and yet with a refinement of treatment that suits such a miniature church. The chapel was "restored" in the reign of Louis Philippe, when modern stained glass windows were introduced, but, it is said, much of the carving was left untouched. Old or new, it seems the perfection of workmanship of its kind, and reminds one of carvings in ivory. The chapel is on a level with the courtyard of the castle, and the intervening space is planted with flowers and shrubbery, and forms a magnificent terrace on a level with the top of the bastions of the fortress; and you can walk along the edge of the wall of the fortifications and look over down the chimneys of the town below, and away across the valley of the Loire, painted with the shadows of drifting clouds. The view is so fine and so extended that Louis Philippe had built a great, round, ugly pavilion, which crowns the great tower to the left, and has windows all around. It was in a salon attached to this pavilion that Louis Napoleon, then President of the French republic, accorded his pardon to Abd-el-Kader, who had for many years been held a prisoner in this château. They show you the graves of those Arabs who died here before their captivity was ended. A great disappointment awaits the tourist who expects in the interior of the château of Amboise all of the interest which its vast and frowning exterior seems to hold secret. Modern uses have called for fancied modern improvements. Partitions have been run up, walls have been knocked down, windows have been pierced, and ancient chimneys bricked up or demolished to make way for modern mantels, and whitewash and wallpaper have done the rest. Still it is interesting to go through the rooms, as we did, under the guidance of the architect to whom the imperial government had intrusted the restoring of this ancient château to all its pristine grandeur. Most wonderful is it to learn how much time and study is spent in verifying every part, and how the scene of every action which history records as taking place here is studied, till, by comparing fact with fact, the past is made out from this present with all the accuracy, at least, of the results of comparative anatomy. Nor is all that is ancient absent. The most interesting feature, and one that is unique, remains. This is the great south tower. It is nearly fifty feet in diameter and nearly a hundred feet high. It was anciently the main and almost the only mode of access to the château. Entered from the town below, a hundred and seventy steps lead up to the level of the court-yard. As you mount you see that the ceiling over your head is vaulted in stone, and in turn supports the steps of the stairs. Ever mounting, screw fashion, you twist around a core, in itself a respectable-sized round tower, standing in the centre of the great one. As the vault is always twisting, and the bays of the vaulting necessarily from this fact are much wider on the outside than next the core, the construction of the whole, it will be seen, was not such an easy matter. The groins spring from corbels oddly carved with grotesques and caricatures. Monks figure here largely and in all positions, some amusing, some grotesque, and some indecent. They are represented suffering, among other things, from colic and toothache and all the ills that flesh is heir to, the sculptors having been left-as there has been such a cry to leave the "art workmen" of our day-"to work out their own designs," and having found their masters better pleased with a laugh over these grotesques than with the finest treatment of pure ornament. At the other end of the château is another great tower, also some fifty feet in diameter, and in this tower Louis Philippe made a winding way by which vehicles could mount from the town below through a tunnel cut in the rock. This great tower anciently bathed its feet in the Loire, the intervening strip of town and quay now existing being a modern encroachment. When the bodies of executed prisoners had hung till life was extinct from the iron railings of the balcony of this tower, by a cut of a sword they fell into the river-a burial as brief as the trial and execution which had preceded it. It will be seen that the general plan of the château of Amboise may be briefly described as two vast round towers, connected by a long building, of which the walls are ancient, but of which the interior has been modernized. The whole stands on a fortified promontory, the entire face of which is walled up, so that the amount of masonry and sheer wall rising above the town is immense. Leonardo da Vinci spent the last years of his life at Amboise, died there, and was buried in an ancient church attached to the castle. The church was destroyed in the revolution, and all trace of the tomb of Leonardo was lost. When we had seen all that there was of special interest relating to the château and the excavations connected with the restorations in progress, the young architect in charge suddenly, just as we were about to take leave of him, unlocked and threw open the door of a closet, and exclaimed, "Voila! Leonardo da Vinci!" There, on a shelf, lay a skull and a little heap of bones. It was the skull and bones of the painter of “The Last Supper." The workmen, in excavating, had come upon his tomb, not only nearly perfect in itself, but preserving nearly perfect its inscription, recording the name and age of the great master. The government was preparing a new and more suitable tomb, in which the remains were soon to be laid with imposing ceremonies. Meantime they were kept in this closet. In place of the skull I see the drawn curtain when it first reveals to the expectant crowd the work of years-"The Supper of the Lord." I see the wonder and approval of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and all his court, save one-see that one, whose face all recognize as that of Judas, striving to hide it and his shame and hate. Then I see the painter, in his hour of triumph and revenge, standing beside his picture in repentant tears! Let us lay on this vacant shrine the homage of lips from a land which, when Leonardo lived, was only an unpenetrated, just discovered, savage wild, and close the door upon these dry bones, and turn the key. Then we wander back, out again upon the terrace, and look down upon the goodly valley of the Loire, stretching afar, while our guide points out the distant wonders of the view. A THE STRICKEN HEART. A ROMANCE OF THE ANDES. FRENCH traveler who, in the pursuit of his studies in natural science, and influenced also, probably, in some degree by love of novelty and adventure, recently made the journey across the continent of South America from Peru to the mouth of the Amazon, gives, in his account of the tour, a narrative of one of the incidents that occurred substantially as follows: After traversing one of the chains, or cordilleras, of the Andes by a frightful pass, he came into a wild region, quite sparsely populated; and as, of course, in such a country there are no public facilities of any kind for the accommodation of travelers, our adventurer was obliged to trust to such chances of private hospitality as he could find for food and shelter at night. He spent one night in a small cabin-like dwelling, which, besides being the residence of the family occupying it, served the purpose of what in New England would be called a country store. Mr. Marcoy-for that was the name of our traveler-did not find his accommodations very comfortable. In fact, he found them very uncomfortable; and in the morning, on resuming the journey, his guide, to relieve somewhat his evident dissatisfaction and discontent, promised him much better quarters for the next night. It would be, he said, not at such a miserable grocery as the last, but at the hacienda of a real lady, that they would lodge. It was a lady, however, he added, that, for some mysterious reason, lived in the most absolute retirement and seclusion. She was a native of Lima, and had come some time before to establish herself on this estate, which she inherited from her parents. She lived there, he said, in perfect solitude. She always kept herself during the day secluded in her apartments, and whenever she went out-which was only at night she was always closely veiled. But in respect to the cause of her separating herself thus mysteriously from the world, the guide knew nothing. Of course the traveler-especially as he was of an age and a temperament to appreciate the romance of such a story as thisbegan at once to feel some curiosity and interest in respect to this mystery, and he was more than usually impatient that day to arrive at his journey's end. At length, toward nightfall, the hacienda came in sight. It was a white house, with pretty green blinds of the Spanish fashion, and was pleasantly situated among trees, upon a rising ground, at a short distance from the banks of the river Occocamba, along the course of which Mr. Marcoy's journey lay. As the traveler and his guide drove up to the house two persons, attracted perhaps by the sound of the horses' footsteps, made their appearance at the door. They seemed to be servants. One was an elderly man, his hair already gray; the other was a somewhat gayly dressed young peasant woman, who, as the traveler imagined from her air and appearance, might be a lady's - maid. Mr. Marcoy at once inferred that she was the attendant of the mysterious resident of the hacienda. She gazed at the traveler, as he approached the door, with a pleased look of interest and curiosity. The man asked the stranger, when he saw him preparing to dismount, what he desired. Mr. Marcoy stated his case, saying that he was a traveler passing through that part of the country, and had come to the hacienda in hopes that he could have shelter there for the night. He made his statement in a somewhat full and deliberate manner, and spoke in a pretty audible voice, and in his most agreeable tone and manner, in hopes to make a favorable impression upon the mysterious lady, in case it should happen, as he imagined might very possibly be the case, that she was concealed behind the blind of some window within hearing. Whether he was correct in these surmises may not be very certain; but at any rate, after some farther parleying, the maid went into the house, and soon returned, saying, with an air of cordiality and pleasure, that he could stay. She also said something in an under-tone to the man, who then went at once to aid the guide in taking care of the horses. Accordingly, after delivering his horse into his guide's hands, Mr. Marcoy followed the maid into the house. She led him into a kind of salon, which was plainly but comfortably furnished, and was ornamented with pictures of saints and other religious subjects, and also with images of different kinds having the same pious expression or character. The peasant girl, with pleased and somewhat curious and even almost roguish looks, welcomed him to the apartment, and invited him to take a seat upon the sofa, saying that he could remain there, unless he chose to amuse himself and while away the time, while she was preparing his repast, by walking in the garden. He decided at once that he would walk in the garden. On entering the garden he began sauntering to and fro along the walks and among the beds of flowers, and while pretending to be observing only the sky, the mountains, and the horizon, and admiring the beauties of the surrounding scenery, he was covertly taking a survey of the building, with a view of discovering, if he could, the probable situation of the rooms of the mysterious lady. He also began to examine with a botanical eye the plants and flowers which were growing in the beds and borders, trying at the |