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 the loveliest of little towns, she is in the heart of a district which bears the finest fruit and has the best cooks in France; but she is not, and never has been, silent, since the days when Louis the Eleventh was crowned, and she gave wine freely to all who chose to be drunk and merry at her charge.

If she does not give her wine to-day, she sells it so cheaply—lying girt by vine-clad hills—that many of her sons are drunk and merry still. The sociable habit of setting a table in the open street prevails at Amboise. Around it labourers take their evening meal, to the accompaniment of song and sunburnt mirth. It sounds poetic and it looks picturesque,—like a picture by Teniers or Jan Steen,—but it is not a habit conducive to repose.

As far as I can judge,—after a month's experience,—the one thing no inhabitant of Amboise ever does is to go to bed. At midnight the river front is alive 147