In the Valentré at Cahors the architect scorned the aid of relief bays, and grew five vast piers from the river-bed; not a courteous thing to do, seeing that the word river in French is a lady-word, “La rivière”--the very sound of it is a sweet compliment to the youthful waywardness of running water. Yet French bridge-masters have sinned against rivers as frequently as we English. If the Valentré had one pier less, how ample and noble the design would be! Even now the design is so virile, so masculine, that we ought to speak of this bridge as we do of a great soldier. The feeble word “it” does not belong to the Pont Valentré. “He” and “him” and “his” are the right pronouns. According to many writers he is the finest military bridge in the world, but comparisons are difficult and risky: they are affected too much by a writer’s moods. One thing is certain--that the Valentré has no superior in his own line. His most celebrated rivals, two bridges at Toledo, in Spain, have a feminine grace; they are too courtly to be typical soldiers. There is another Spanish bridge that ranks high as a fortified work: it dates from the fourteenth century, and, in sixteen pointed arches, crosses the Duero at Zamora. Brangwyn prefers the Toledo bridges, the Alcántara and the Puente de San Martin, because they are lofty as well as spacious, while Zamora Bridge is long and low, like a good many Spanish bridges, both Roman and mediæval.[122] [Illustration: THE ALCÁNTARA AT TOLEDO, SHOWING THE MOORISH GATEWAY TOWER AT THE TOWN END OF THE BRIDGE] 7. The Alcántara at Toledo. From every point of view this bridge makes a good picture, but I like her best when she is seen from a level only a little below the footway. Then I look down at the upward flight of her architecture, and watch how a luminous patterning of shadow enriches the suave yet austere masonry. Somehow I think of a courtly abbess whose half-smile is a discipline feared by everybody. In no other way can I describe the technical inspiration that makes this bridge very uncommon. Looking down again, I see that the Spanish masons--or shall we call them Hispano-Moresque?--were as thrifty as the Frenchmen at Cahors; across the breadth of the bigger arch, and below the springing, there are seven holes, from which the centring was scaffolded. Technically the arches are inferior to those of the Pont Valentré, because their rings are not sufficiently rimmed and extra-dossed, so they lie too close into the body of the spandrils. The pier is designed very well, it has a distinction of its own and forms on each side of the roadway a narrowing shelter-place with four angles. Lower down, near the Moorish adaptation from a Roman triumphal arch, a long recess carried by five brackets varies the line of each parapet, in which there is no pretension, no swagger, no balustraded bombast. On the town side the bridge is guarded by a Moorish gate-tower, while across the river is a gateway dating from the time of Charles the Fifth.