Louis. Good as he had been, the father of his people as he was called (I believe he remitted several taxes), he was not good enough to pass muster at the Revolution, and the effigy I have just described is no more than a reproduction of the primitive statue, demolished at that period. Pass beneath it, into the court, and the sixteenth century closes round you; it is a pardonable flight of fancy to say that the expressive faces of an age in which human passions lay very near the surface seem to look out at you from the windows, from the balconies, from the thick foliage of the sculpture. The portion of the wing of Louis XII. that looks toward the court is supported on a deep arcade. On your right is the wing erected by Francis I., the reverse of the mass of building which you see on approaching the castle. This exquisite, this extravagant, this transcendent piece of architecture is the most joyous utterance of the French Renaissance. It is covered with an embroidery of sculpture in which every detail is worthy of the hand of a goldsmith. In the middle of it, or rather a little to the left, rises the famous winding staircase which even the ages which most misused it must vaguely have admired. It forms a kind of chiseled cylinder, with wide interstices, so that the stairs are open to the air. Every inch of this structure, of its balconies, its pillars, its great central columns, is wrought over with lovely images, strange and ingenious devices, prime among which is the great heraldic salamander of Francis I. The salamander is everywhere at Blois over the chimneys, over the doors, on the walls; this whole division of the castle bears the stamp of that eminently pictorial prince. The running cornice along the top of the front is like an unfolded, an elongated, bracelet. The windows of the attic are like shrines for saints. The gargoyles, the medallions, the statuettes, the festoons, are like the

sary

elaboration of some precious cabinet rather than the details of a building exposed to the weather and to the ages. In the interior there is a profusion of restoration, and it is all restoration in color. This has been, evidently, a work of great science and research, but it will easily strike you as overdone. The universal freshness is a discord, a false note; it seems to light up the dusky past with an unnatural glare. Begun in the reign of Louis Philippe, this terrible process the more terrible always the more you admit that it has been neceshas been carried so far that there is now scarcely a square inch of the interior that has the color of the past upon it. It is true that the place had been so coated over with modern abuse that something was needed to keep it alive; it is only, perhaps, a pity that the restorers, not content with saving its life, should have undertaken to restore its youth. The love of consistency, in such a business, is a dangerous lure. All the old apartments have been rechristened, as it were; the geography of the castle has been reëstablished. The guard-rooms, the bed-rooms, the closets, the oratories, have recovered their identity. Every spot connected with the murder of the Duke of Guise is pointed out by a small, shrill boy who takes you from room to room, and who has learned his lesson in perfection. The place is full of Catherine de' Medici, of Henry III., of memories, of ghosts, of echoes, of possible evocations and revivals. It is covered with crimson and gold; the fireplaces and the ceilings are magnificent; they look like expensive "sets" at the grand opera. I should have mentioned that below, in the court, the front of the wing of Gaston d'Orléans faces you as you enter, so that the place is a course of French history. Inferior in beauty and grace to the other portions of the castle, the wing is yet a nobler monument than the memory of Gaston deserves. The second of the

sons of Henry IV., who was no more fortunate as a father than as a husband, younger brother of Louis XIII., and father of the great Mademoiselle, the most celebrated, most ambitious, most self-complacent and most unsuccessful fille à marier in French history, passed in enforced retirement at the castle of Blois the close of a life of clumsy intrigues against Cardinal Richelieu, in which his rashness was only equaled by his pusillanimity and his ill-luck by his inaccessibility to correction, and which, after so many follies and shames, was properly summed up in the project, begun but not completed, of demolishing the beautiful habitation of his exile in order to erect a better one. With Gaston d'Orléans, however, who lived there without dignity, the history of the Château de Blois declines. Its interesting period is that of the wars of religion. It was the chief residence of Henry III., and the scene of the principal events of his weak, violent, immoral reign. It It has been restored more than enough, as I have said, by architects and decorators; the visitor, as he moves through its empty rooms, which are at once brilliant and ill-lighted (they have not been refurnished), undertakes a little restoration of his own. His imagination helps itself from the things that remain; he tries to see the life of the sixteenth century in its form and dress its turbulence, its passions, its loves and hates, its treacheries, falsities, touches of faith, its latitude of personal development, its presentation of the whole nature, its nobleness of costume, charm of speech, splendor of taste, unequaled picturesqueness. The picture is full of movement, of contrasted light and darkness, full altogether of abominations. Mixed up with them all is the great name of religion, so that the drama wants nothing to make it complete. What episode was ever more perfect dramatic occurrence

looked at as a than the murder

of the Duke of Guise? The insolent

prosperity of the victim; the weakness, the vices, the terrors, of the author of the deed; the perfect execution of the plot; the accumulation of horror in what followed it, give it, as a crime, a kind of immortal solidity. But we must not take the Château de Blois too hard; I went there, after all, by way of entertainment. If among these sinister memories, your visit should threaten to prove a tragedy, there is an excellent way of removing the impression. You may treat yourself, at Blois, to a very cheerful afterpiece. There is a charming industry practiced there, and practiced in charming conditions. Follow the bright

little quay, down the

river, till you get quite out of the town reach the point where the road beside the Loire becomes sinuous and attractive, turns the corner of diminutive headlands, and makes you wonder what is beyond. Let not your curiosity induce you, however, to pass by a modest white villa which overlooks the stream, inclosed in a fresh little court; for here dwells an artist an artist in faience. There is no sort of sign, and the place looks peculiarly private. But if you ring at the gate, you will not be turned away. You will, on the contrary, be ushered upstairs, into a parlor

there is nothing resembling a shop -encumbered with specimens of remarkably handsome pottery. The work is of the best, a careful reproduction of old forms, colors, devices; and the master of the establishment is one of those completely artistic types that are often found in France. His reception is as friendly as his work is ingenious, and I think it is not too much to say that you like the work the better because he has produced it. His vases, cups and jars, lamps, platters, plaques, with their deep, strong hues, their innumerable figures, their family likeness and wide variations, are scattered through his occupied rooms; they serve at once as his stock-in-trade and as household ornament. As we all know, this is an age

Edith M. Thomas.

He was a small, wiry man, about forty years of age, with a bright young face, dark eyes, and iron-gray hair. We were reclining in a field, under a clump of pines, on a height overlooking Lake Champlain. Near by were the dull-red brick buildings of the University of Vermont. Burlington, blooming with flowers and embowered in trees, sloped away below us. Beyond the town, the lake, a broad plain of liquid blue, slept in the June sunshine, and in the farther distance towered the picturesque Adirondacks.

"It is certainly true," said Tompkins, turning upon his side so as to face me, and propping his head with his hand, while his elbow rested on the ground. "Don't you remember, I used to insist that they were peculiar, when we were here in college?"

I remembered it very distinctly, and so informed my old classmate.

"I always said," he continued, "that I could not do my best in New England, because there is no sentiment in the atmosphere, and the people are so peculiar."

"You have been living in Chicago?" I remarked inquiringly.

"That has been my residence ever since we were graduated; that is, for about seventeen years," he replied.

"You are in business there, I believe?" I questioned.

Tompkins admitted that he was, but did not name the particular line.

"Halloo ! he suddenly called out, rising to his feet, and looking toward the little brown road near us. I looked in the same direction, and saw a plainly dressed elderly couple on foot, apparently out for a walk. Tompkins went hastily toward them, helped the lady over the fence, the gentleman following, and a moment later I was introduced to Mr. and Mrs. Pember, of Chicago.

Tompkins gathered some large stones, pulled a board off the fence in rather a reckless manner, and fixed a seat for the couple where they could lean against a tree. When they were provided for, I reclined again, but Tompkins stood before us, talking and gesticulating.

"This," said he, "is the identical place, Mrs. Pember. Here you can see

the beauties I have so often described. Before you are the town and the lake, and beyond them the mountains of Northern New York; and (if you will please to turn your head) that great blue wall behind you, twenty miles away, is composed of the highest mountains in Vermont. The mountains in front of you are the Adirondacks, and those behind you are the Green Mountains. You are at the central point of this magnificent Champlain Valley; and you are comfortably seated here beneath the shade, on this the loveliest day of summer. Dear friends, I congratulate you," and Tompkins shook hands with Mr. and Mrs. Pember.

"And there, Timothy," observed the old gentleman, pointing at the University buildings with his cane, "is actually where you went to college."

"It was in those memorable and classic halls, as my classmate here can testify," replied Tompkins. "And here we roamed in 'Academus' sacred shade,' and a good deal beyond it. We went fishing and boating during term time, and made long trips to the mountains in the vacations. In the mean time, this wonderful valley was photographed upon the white and spotless sensorium of my youthful soul."

"Going, going, going!" cried Mrs. Pember, with a light, rippling laugh, glancing at me. "That is the way I stop Mr. Tompkins when he gets too flowery."

Tompkins looked at me and reddened. "I own up," he remarked, "I am an auctioneer in Chicago."

I hastened to say that I felt sure he was a good one, and added, in the kindest way I could, that I had just been wondering how he had become such a good talker.

"Is it a good deal of a come-down?" asked Tompkins, with a mixture of frankness and embarrassment.

I replied that the world was not what we had imagined in our college days,

and that the calling of an auctioneer was honorable.

A general conversation followed, in the course of which it appeared that Tompkins had boarded at the home of the Pembers for several years. They evidently looked upon him almost as their own son. They were traveling with him during his summer rest.

"This is a queer world," observed Tompkins, dropping down beside me, and lying flat on his back, with his hands under his head. "I came to college from a back neighborhood over in York State, and up to the day I was graduated, and for a long time afterward, I thought I must be President of the United States, or a Presbyterian minister, or a great poet, or something remarkable, and here I am an auctioneer."

Occasional remarks were made by the rest of us for a while, but soon the talking was mainly done by Tompkins.

Said he, "Since I was graduated, I never was back here but once before, and that was four years ago next August. I was traveling this way then, and reached here Saturday evening. I was in the pork business at that time, as a clerk, and had to stop off here to see a man for the firm. I put up at the best hotel, feeling as comfortable and indif ferent as I ever did in my life. There was not the shadow of an idea in my mind of what was going to happen. On Sunday morning I walked about town, and it began to come down on me."

"What, the town?" asked Mrs. Pember.

"No; the strangest and most unaccountable feeling I ever had in my life," answered Tompkins. "It was thirteen years since I had said good-by to college. It had long ago become apparent to me that the ideas with which I had graduated were visionary and impracti cable. I comprehended that the college professors were not the great men I had once thought them, and that a college president was merely a human being. I