Page:The life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton (IA b21778401).pdf/37

Rh loungers, houses with tall mansarde roofs, and the large railway station that connects Tours with the outer world. The river, once crossed by a single long stone bridge, has now two suspension bridges and a railway bridge, and the river-holms, formerly strips of sand, are now grown to double their size, covered with trees and defended by stone dykes.

I remember passing over the river on foot when it was frozen, but with the increased population that no longer happens. Still there are vestiges of the old establishments. The Boule d'Or with its Golden Ball, and the Pheasant Hotel, both in the Rue Royale, still remain. You still read, "Maison Piernadine recommended for is elegance, is good taste, is new fashions of the first choice." Madame Fisterre, the maker of admirable apple-puffs, has disappeared and has left no sign. This was, as my be supposed, one of my first childish visits. We young ones enjoyed ourselves very much at the Château de Beauséjour, eating grapes in the garden, putting our Noah's ark animals under the box hedges, picking snail-shells and cowslips in the lanes, playing with the dogs—three black pointers of splendid breed, much admired by the Duke of Cumberland when he afterwards saw them in Richmond Park, named Juno, Jupiter, and Ponto. Charlotte Ling, the old nurse, daughter of the lodge-keeper at Barham House, could not stand the absence of beef and beer and the presence of kickshaws and dandelion salad, and after Aunt Georgina Baker had paid us a visit, she returned with her to Old England. A favourite amusement of us children was swarming up the tails of our father's horses, three in number, and one—a horse of Mecklenburg breed—was as tame as an Arab. the first story Aunt Georgina used to tell of me was of my lying on my back in a broiling sun, and exclaiming, "How I love a bright burning sun!" (Nature speaking in early years). Occasional drawbacks were violent storms of thunder and lightning, when we children were hustled out of our little cots under the roof, and taken to the drawing-room, lest the lightning should strike us, and the daily necessity of learning the alphabet and so forth, multiplication table, and our prayers.

I was intended for that wretched being, the infant phenomenon, and so began Latin at three and Greek at four. Things are better now. Our father used to go out wild-boar hunting in the Forêt d'Amboise, where is the château in which Abd-el-Kadir was imprisoned by the French Government from 1847 to 1852, when he was set free by Napoleon III., at the entreaties of Lord Londonderry. (It is said that his Majesty entered his prison in person and set him free. Abd-el-Kadir, at Damascus, often expressed his