inevitable blouses, of faded blue were blown into shapeless bundles
even along the railings of the churchyard tombs.

At last we came to an old moss-grown wall, and through a broken
gateway entered what is called the Park of Chambord. There is very
little of it to be seen now, the trees have been ruthlessly cut down
and mutilated, and of the wild boars, which Francis I. was so fond
of hunting there is left only the ghostly quarry that Thibault of
Champagne chases through the air, while the sound of his ghostly
horn echoes down the autumn night as the fantom pack sweeps by to
Montfrault.

It is impossible for the uninstructed mind to grasp the plan or method
of this mass of architecture; yet it is unsatisfactory to give it up,
with Mr. Henry James, "as an irresponsible, insoluble labyrinth."
M. Viollet-le-Duc, with a sympathetic denial of any extreme and
over-technical admiration, gives just that intelligible account of the
château which is a compromise between the unmeaning adulation of its
contemporary critics and the ignorance of the casual traveler.

"Chambord," says he, "must be taken for what it is; for an attempt in
which the architect sought to reconcile the methods of two opposite
principles, to unite in one building the fortified castle of the
Middle Ages and the pleasure-palace of the sixteenth century." Granted
that the attempt was an absurd one, it must be remembered that the
Renaissance was but just beginning in France; Gothic art seemed out
of date, yet none other had established itself to take its place. In
literature, in morals, as in architecture, this particular phase in
the civilization of the time has already become evident even in the
course of these small wanderings in a single province, and if only