going down into the cellar to fetch your wine is entirely avoided. Château-Regnault is a small town built upon a number of serpentine and rapid declivities, bordered by ill-pitched and tottering houses, which appear to lean against one another to keep themselves upright. A large round tower, situated upon the talus of some old fortifications, enveloped here and there in green patches of ivy, redeems, to a certain extent, the appearance of the town. From Château-Regnault to Tours there is nothing remarkable. Earth in the middle, and trees on each side, forming those long yellow bands, which lose themselves in the distance, and which, in the language of the wagoners, are termed _rubans de queue_, are all that is to be seen: then, on a sudden, the road dives down a couple of pretty steep hills, and in a few minutes you perceive the town of Tours, rendered famous by its prunes, Rabelais, and de Balzac. The Bridge of Tours is very celebrated, and possesses in itself nothing exceedingly remarkable; but the appearance of the town is lovely. On my arrival, the sky, with a few flakes of snow floating negligently over its surface, was tinged with the sweetest blue; a white line, similar to that traced by a diamond upon glass, cut the limpid surface of the Loire, and was formed by a tiny cascade proceeding from one of the sand-banks so frequent in the bed of this river. In the clear air, Saint Gatien reared its brown profile and Gothic spires, ornamented with balls and roundings similar to those of the steeples of the Kremlin, giving to the city a most romantically Muscovite air; a few other towers and spires, belonging to churches the names of which I do not know, completed the picture; while numerous vessels, with their white sails, floated, like so many sleeping swans, upon the azure bosom of the stream. I should have liked to have paid a visit to the house of Tristan l'Ermite, the terrible gossip of Louis XI., which is still in a marvellous state of preservation, with its horribly significant ornaments, composed of coils of rope, entwined with other instruments of torture; but I had not time; I was obliged to content myself with the _Grande Rue_, which must be the pride of the inhabitants of Tours, and which aspires to the rank of another _Rue de Rivoli_. Châtellerault, which enjoys a high reputation for the article of cutlery, possesses nothing particular except a bridge, ornamented at each extremity with old towers, which present a most charmingly feudal and romantic appearance. As for its manufactory of arms, it is a large white mass, with a multitude of windows. Of Poitiers, having passed through it in a beating rain, and a night as dark as pitch, I can say nothing, except that it is paved in the most execrable manner possible. At break of day, the coach was traversing a country wooded with trees of an apple green planted in a soil of the brightest red, and producing a very singular effect. The houses were covered with tiles ridged after the Italian fashion; these tiles, too, were staring red, a colour which appears very strange to eyes accustomed to the brown and sooty roofs of the houses of Paris. From a piece of eccentricity, of which I forget the motive, the builders of those parts commence at the roofs of the houses; the walls and foundations follow. They place the framework upon four strong beams, and the tilers perform their portion of the work before the masons. It is about this...