not merely accept the sun, but flashed it back gratefully from the
white, gracious, carven houses, that were like a natural part of it.
As he passed below, fancy would sometimes credit the outlook from
their lofty gables with felicities of combination beyond possibility.
What prospects of mountain and sea-shore from those aerial window-
seats!

And still, as in some sumptuous tapestry, the architecture, the
landscape, were but a setting for the human figures: these palatial
abodes, never out of sight, high on the river bank, challenged
continual speculation as to their inhabitants--how they moved, read
poetry and romance, or wrote the memoirs which were like romance,
passed through all the hourly changes of their all- [79]
accomplished, intimate life. The Loire was the river pre-eminently
of the monarchy, of the court; and the fleeting human interests, fact
or fancy, which gave its utmost value to the liveliness of the
natural scene, found a centre in the movements of Catherine and her
sons, still roving, after the eccentric habit inherited from Francis
the First, from one "house of pleasure" to another, in the pursuit at
once of amusement and of that political intrigue which was the
serious business of their lives. Like some fantastic company of
strolling players amid the hushed excitement of a little town, the
royal family, with all its own small rivalries, would be housed for
the night under the same roof with some of its greater enemies--Henri
de Guise, Conde, "The Admiral," all alike taken by surprise--but
courteously, and therefore ineffectively. And Gaston, come thus by
chance so close to them, had the sense not so much of nearness to the
springs of great events, as of the likeness of the whole matter to a
stage-play with its ingeniously contrived encounters, or the
assortments of a game of chance.