Page:C N and A M Williamson - The Lightning Conductor.djvu/108

 ask. He's wonderful that way. He always knows what you are feeling, as if you had telegraphed him the news. And there before us lay the little town of Amboise, sprinkled along the river-bank as if each house were a votive offering on the shrine of the Château towering above on its plateau of rock.

I couldn't make out the architecture at first. The castle was just a vast, dazzling complication of enormous round towers, bastions, terraces, balconies, and crenellations. Oh, those balconies! Instantly I could see poor little fainting Queen Mary held up by wicked Catherine de Medici—the record wickedest mother-in-law of history—to watch the execution of the Huguenots. And then the row of heads hanging from the balcony afterwards, like terrible red gargoyles! When we went into the Château later the custodian, or whatever you call him, showed us where the fine ironwork was stained and rusted with the Huguenots' blood.

I was very angry with Aunt Mary because she kept her nose in her Baedeker, and preferred reading about the castle to seeing it when she had the chance. I have my opinion of people who won't take their Baedeker in doses either before or after meals of sight-seeing; but Aunt Mary spreads it so thick over hers that what's underneath is lost.

We drove to a nice little hotel tucked away at the foot of the Chateau, for déjeuner, and to get rid of our luggage, for we'd have to stop at Amboise till the four new tyres (which Brown now wired for) should arrive from Paris. We had so many courses that I grew quite impatient, for I wanted to be off to