Page:C N and A M Williamson - The Lightning Conductor.djvu/120

 lights who used to visit Chenonceaux when it belonged to Monsieur and Madame Dupin; but those days were comparatively modern, so I don't take much interest. Nothing at Chenonceaux seems worth while unless it happened before the days of Charles the Ninth.

Tours looked at first sight very sedate and grey, after Chenonceaux, for the airy picture of the castle had kept floating before my eyes during our run. It seems to me we are always on the other side of the river from things, and have to get to them by crossing long bridges. We did it again at Tours, and it was particularly long, and very fine. But it was evening, and dim and bitterly cold; and I'm afraid I shouldn't have paid as much attention to it as I did if Brown hadn't said that Balzac called it "one of the finest monuments of France." And then in a minute, at the entrance to the town, we saw two ghostly white statues glimmering in a wide, green place, "There, miss, are the two tutelary geniuses of this part of France," said Brown; "Rabelais and Descartes." By that time we had flashed past, but I screwed my neck round to look back at them till I got a "crick" in it. Have you ever noticed that most of the things people tell you to look at, or that you particularly want to see in life, are always behind your back or on one side, as if to give you the greatest possible trouble? It seems as if there must be a "moral in it," as Alice's Duchess would have said.

Tours appeared that evening (I have a motive for the emphasis) to consist of one long, straight street;