In passing through the castle grounds we paused on the yet traceable foundation of a little chapel of St. Martin, in which Joan of Arc went to pray after she had "given her message to the king." We asked the woman who was conducting us whether St. Martin was much venerated at Chinon. She replied: the Pope (Paul III.) he managed to de- | find it recorded in a window. Obstinate nounce the persecution of Protestants; skeptics, however, will find suggestiveness and that there was not a powerful op- in the resemblance of this miracle to those pressor or humbug of his time whom he most characteristic of St. Martin, who was did not impale. Calvin could not recog- developed into a stormy power. It does nize in him the great force of France, and look somewhat like a plagiarism from the naturally, for there was not a particle of Tours saint. the Puritan about Rabelais. His ideal reformed world is not Geneva with Servetus amid its fagots, but Thélème. Fontevrault in its end would appear rather to have justified the dogmas of Calvin than the visions of Rabelais: it is now a prison for eleven departments. Beside the dust of English kings and queens whose monuments fill its ancient cathedral--Henry II., Eleanor, Richard Coeur de Lion, Isabella-toil the violent and the vile, who remind us that the earth is yet far from the freedom and fraternity of the great man's Utopia. But amid the same beautiful forest, and beneath the same star-lit sky, one may still dwell with reverent love on the life and thought of the largehearted scholar, and still hope that the destinies of man will follow the dreams of his youth. "There used to be a pilgrimage from Chinon every year to his shrine at Tours. It is now discontinued-this year for the first time." "And why is that?" "There are always changes." So after some forty generations Chinon scores one for Mexme against Martin. The ancient church called after S. Mexme is now an academy, and so his sanctities and relics have been preserved in the neighboring Church of S. Étienne, the latter being a fine fifteenth-century structure. It contains, besides the Mexme window already mentioned, one representing Saint Radegonde, Queen of Clotaire, visiting the hermit John, whose cell, by-the-way, is now called by her name instead of his. (It is now a cattle shed.) The great saint of Chinon is S. Mexme (Maximus). It is hard, amid the Mexme mythology, to find a real man. He is said to have been a contemporary of St. Martin, and a story is told of how, on one occasion, when he hesitated to accede to that archbishop's request that he should go to Rome, the boat in which he was presently In this same church (S. Étienne) there crossing the Vienne was capsized by a vio- is a relic which has been preserved with lent gust of wind, and he sank. But it great veneration for centuries. It is callseemed to Mexme that just above his headed the "Chape de S. Mexme." This manthe water was suspended by the mantle of Martin. Martin then said: "Brother Maximus, do you still refuse to go to Rome?" Maximus had not now the heart to refuse the request, and being drawn up out of the water, threw himself at the feet of Martin, and promised to go wherever he should command. Which fable is simply a primitive way of transmitting from generation to generation the tradition that Chinon owes obedience to Tours. 66 tle is certainly of ancient Persian make, but it is probably seven centuries later than the death of Maximus. There is on it an inscription in Arabic which the writers of guide-books are careful not to disclose, there being nothing Christian about it, but the contrary. The words marked on the extreme edge, and hardly distinguishable from the marginal ornamentation, are these, Al Sulthan, al malee, al nassar." They mean, “Sultan, prince, protector." The old mantle was probably a prize brought back by one of the crusaders who went to the East under the inspiration of the enthusiasm which Urban II. excited by preaching from the steps of Marmoutier Abbey. It has preserved its colors wonderfully; its leopards and birds, red and yellow in alternate, might offer a good suggestion to a decorative artist. Besides the Arabic inscrip I had heard that there was an Arabic inscription, and it was in response to my demand that the sacristan unfolded the cloth so that I could find it. In another case in this vicinity, at the Church of S. Ours (Loches), the curé who exhibited to me a very precious relic did not know there was an inscription on it until it was pointed out to him. This was a girdle alleged to have been worn by the Virgin Mary. This relic is said to have been sent from Constantinople to Charles le Chauve in the ninth century, and there are preserved the names of fifteen royal personages who came to pay it special personages of high rank who were entitled to go and demand a sight of it. But the republic having reduced privileges of this kind, the curé at once consented to exhibit it to our party, one of whom made the discovery that there are letters on it. The curé was somewhat disconcerted by this discovery. The letters were not Arimaic, the language of Mary and Jesus, but Roman. The first is plainly I, the second N. The third is not so easy to make out, but I believe it to be M. In this case the inscription would probably stand for "Iesu Nazareni Mater." The girdle is woven of some fine substance that appeared to me vegetal. The inscription is at one end of it. The curé requested me to be careful in publishing anything about this discovcry, "since some might suppose that it is not really the ceinture of Our Lady." I told him that the inscription proved to my mind that the relic is older than I should otherwise have supposed; which is strictly true, the final letter being very antique, and something like )I(. The more important reflection did not occur to him, namely, how far the general credibility of relics might be affected, even in honest Catholic minds, by the fact that the devout inspections of the faithful through so many centuries had not revealed an inscription which to merely curious eyes appeared at the first glance. To return from this episode to Chinon. At every step through this old town one may remark the survival of Oriental influences. One of the antique inns in Chinon has for its sign "The Thousand and One Nights," and at every turn one meets with touches of Eastern architecture and decoration. I have already referred to the strange crucifix fountain in S. Mexme Church. On either side of this fountain there are life-size figures representing Mary Magdalen and St. Mary of Egypt, each holding a scroll relating in eight lines how she had been cleansed of many sins by bathing in this fountain. The figure of the Egyptian Mary as here presented is very peculiar, the colors being such as are employed in Persia to represent their conventional saints or demonesses. The hair is brightly golden. The whole figure is rather that of a female dervish than a Christian saint. It appears that about the time when this picture was painted, and before the time of Rabelais, some women dwelt in the caves of this region, and were called sibyls. One of these was the model from which Rabelais drew his "sibyl of Panzoust," and the painter of this fresco may have had a similar figure in his mind. These sibyls, however, were acting out Eastern notions. The companion picture to this is a wonderful fresco of the Last Judgment, which is also thoroughly Eastern. It is one of the finest pictures of its kind that I have ever seen, and has been admirably restored by M. Galembert. Its main archæological interest rests in an arch-fiend more majestic than usual, and rarely found in any pictures uninfluenced by the Persian representations of Ahriman. But there is another interest derived from the theory that the forms and faces of this fresco, which are numerous, and of the size of life, are portraits of persons connected with the court of Louis XI. They have not yet been identified. It appears to be pretty certain that the paintings were made in the time of Louis XI., AZAY-LE-RIDEAU, though I suspect they must have been copies from previously existing works. I thought one of the evangelists, seated near the throned Christ as judges, bore a resemblance to Louis XI. himself; and have no doubt that in all his administration of human affairs that remarkable king believed himself to be acting in the spirit of this tremendous scene. Possibly he may have regarded his remorseless agent Tristan l'Hermite in the light of a serious and dignified Satan like this one of the picture, who has one claw on a tonsured head, which he ushers into the mouth of hell. After pondering this picture one may call at Azay-le-Rideau, and in that château, fairer than any dream that can be dreamed out of Touraine, he will see that kings undertook to give their favorites paradise. It was a paradise as Oriental as the Hades into which their enemies were shoved-a Moslem heaven, with voluptuous houris therein. These exquisite palaces of luxury, of which the most beautiful are Azay-le-Rideau and Chenonceaux, are pictorial illustrations in a yet unwritten history of France, which will tell how it has always been ruled by fascinating women. But next one may go to Loches, and there descend by aid of candles into dungeons stretching through nether stories, where, adjacent to the princely paradise, was the abode of the lost. Between these the medieval king sat, believing himself to be a god. His dispensations of reward and punishment were chiefly irrespective of any actual good or evil done, but related chiefly to things pleasant or unpleasant to himself. Louis XI. at least made the paradise or the cachet depend on service or treachery to the state. much must be said for him. declared the confession to be only another ruse of the devils that possessed them, and had poor Grandier burned in the public square. The terrible story has been 66 told with force and pathos by Alfred de Vigny in his novel Cinq-Mars. It was with satisfaction that I remembered how speedily retribution fell upon Barré. He tried to resist the reaction by getting up possessions," and then exorcising them here at Chinon, but it all ended in his being exorcised himself. He was degraded, and Chinon set free of him, after which there were no more possessions. The French revolutionists of the last century had long memories, and they dismantled this old church, which is now turned into a wine-shop. Had Rabelais lived in our century, he might have fixed there his Oracle of the Holy Bottle, and given us the talk of the friendly peasants, who have no doubt there often rehearsed the tragedy in which Barré bore the part of heavy villain. But I will forget him, and as the sun shines fair on my last glimpse of the great castle and the towers of Étienne-the summer saint, whom no winter can martyr-will go off singing with Pantagruel: AROUND THE YEAR. LOVE came to me in the Spring-time, With the soft, sweet April showers; Her breath was the breath of the woodland, So And her lap was filled with flowers. However, there is one pious-looking edifice in Chinon which, to my eyes, was invested with more horrors than any oubliette. It was the remains of that ancient church of Saint Jacques whose canon was the infamous Judge Barré, who presided at the trial of Urbain Grandier for bewitching the nuns of the neighboring Abbey of Loudun. It was he who, when the abbess and the other conspirators came into the court in their chemisettes, with cords around their necks, and confessed that they had pretended they were bewitched in order to ruin the noble young monk (because the abbess loved him, and was jealous of his sweetheart!), Her step was a song in the silence; As she danced through the fragrant twilight And the Spring glided on to the Summer But the Autumn came with its shadows, And Summer and Spring were not. But her beauty and grace had fled; 'Mid the snows of March I left her, With a cypress wreath at her head. SALINE TYPES. but when the latter desires to erect thereon a life-saving station or light-house, a convenient owner, or one who purports to be such, never fails to put in an appearance, and howl lustily for his pound of flesh. Among those, however, who reside upon the mainland, and who frequent this strip of beach, it is looked upon entirely as neutral ground, where neither man nor government possesses any other right than that of might, and as a locality where the minor canons of morality may be stretched without breakage to an almost unlimited tension. Wrecks which occur on these beaches are often stripped with a bewildering celerity. At this moment many a fine bottle of brandy and Champagne reposes at the bottom of these sounds, the moorings-to mark the recovery of which at a propitious moment-having gone adrift, and left the original package to be accidentally stumbled upon by a coming generation. The writer upon one occasion drank from goblets at a little weather-beaten cottage on these shores the very finest quality of Château d'Yquema wine so choice as to be attainable, at its best, more by favor than by the purchasing power of money. On another occasion, subsequent to the wreck on the sands of a schooner loaded with sugar, the writer called upon one of the most austere pietists of a neighboring |