If the modern founders of "garden-cities" would only go as far back as the time of Richelieu they would find a good example to follow in the little Touraine town, the _chef-lieu_ of the Commune, which bears the name of Richelieu. When Armand du Plessis first became the seigneur of this "_little land_" he resolutely set about to make of the property a town which should dignify his name. Accordingly he built, at his own expense, after the plans of Lemercier, "a city, regular, vast, and luxurious." At the same time the cardinal-minister replaced the paternal manor with a château elaborately and prodigally royal. Richelieu was a sort of "petit Versailles," which was to be to Chinon what the real Versailles was to the capital. To-day, as in other days, it is a "_ville vaste, régulière et luxueuse_," but it is unfinished. One great street only has been completed on its original lines, and it is exactly 450 metres long. Originally the town was to have the dimensions of but six hundred by four hundred metres; modest enough in size, but of the greatest luxury. The cardinal had no desire to make it more grand, but even what he had planned was not to be. Its one great street is bordered with imposing buildings, but their tenants to-day have not the least resemblance to the courtiers of the cardinal who formerly occupied them. Richelieu disappeared in the course of time, and work on his hobby stopped, or at least changed radically in its plan. Secondary streets were laid out, of less grandeur, and peopled with houses without character, low in stature, and unimposing. The plan of a _ville seigneuriale_ gave way to a _ville de labeur_. Other habitations grew up until to-day twenty-five hundred souls find their living on the spot where once was intended to be only a life of luxury. Of the monuments with which Richelieu would have ornamented his town there remains a curious market-hall and a church in the pure Jesuitic style of architecture, lacking nothing of pretence and grandeur. Not much can be said for the vast Église Notre Dame de Richelieu, a heavy Italian structure, built from the plans of Lemercier. However satisfying and beautiful the style may be in Italy, it is manifestly, in all great works of church-building in the north, unsuitable and uncouth. There was also a château as well, a great Mansart affair with an overpowering dome. Practically this remains to-day, but, like all else in the town, it is but a promise of greater things which were expected to materialize, but never did. At the bottom of a little valley, in a fertile plain, lies Fontevrault, or what there is left of it, for the old abbey is now nothing more than a matter-of-fact "_maison de détention_" for criminals. The abbey of yesterday is the prison of to-day.