BERRY (MAP) 313 LA TOUR, SANCERRE 317 CHÂTEAU DE GIEN facing 318 CHÂTEAU DE VALENÇAY facing 322 GATEWAY OF MEHUN-SUR-YEVRE facing 324 LE CARRIOR DORÉ, ROMORANTIN 325 ÉGLISE S. AIGNAN, COSNE 331 POUILLY-SUR-LOIRE facing 332 PORTE DU CROUX, NEVERS facing 334 [Illustration: ITINERARY OF THE LOIRE (MAP)] Castles and Châteaux of Old Touraine and the Loire Country CHAPTER I. A GENERAL SURVEY Any account of the Loire and of the towns along its banks must naturally have for its chief mention Touraine and the long line of splendid feudal and Renaissance châteaux which reflect themselves so gloriously in its current. The Loire possesses a certain fascination and charm which many other more commercially great rivers entirely lack, and, while the element of absolute novelty cannot perforce be claimed for it, it has the merit of appealing largely to the lover of the romantic and the picturesque. A French writer of a hundred years ago dedicated his work on Touraine to "Le Baron de Langeais, le Vicomte de Beaumont, le Marquis de Beauregard, le Comte de Fontenailles, le Comte de Jouffroy-Gonsans, le Duc de Luynes, le Comte de Vouvray, le Comte de Villeneuve, _et als._;" and he might have continued with a directory of all the descendants of the _noblesse_ of an earlier age, for he afterward grouped them under the general category of "_Propriétaires des fortresses et châteaux les plus remarquables--au point de vue historique ou architectural_." He was fortunate in being able, as he said, to have had access to their "_papiers de famille_," their souvenirs, and to have been able to interrogate them in person. Most of his facts and his gossip concerning the personalities of the later generations of those who inhabited these magnificent establishments have come down to us through later writers, and it is fortunate that this should be the case, since the present-day aspect of the châteaux is ever changing, and one who views them to-day is chagrined when he discovers, for instance, that an iron-trussed, red-tiled wash-house has been built on the banks of the Cosson before the magnificent château of Chambord, and that somewhere within the confines of the old castle at Loches a shopkeeper has hung out his shingle, announcing a newly discovered dungeon in his own basement, accidentally come upon when digging a well. Balzac, Rabelais, and Descartes are the leading literary celebrities of Tours, and Balzac's "Le Lys dans la Vallée" will give one a more delightful insight into the old life of the Tourangeaux than whole series of guide-books and shelves of dry histories.