To-day most travellers are content to rush over its apartments, gaze at its great round tower, view the Loire, which is here quite at its best, from the battlements, and, after a brief admiration of the wonderfully sculptured portal of its chapel, make their way to Chenonceaux, or to the gay little metropolis of Tours. [Illustration: _Château d'Amboise_] No matter whither one turns his steps from Amboise, he will not soon forget this great fortress-château and the memories of the _petite bande_ of blondes and brunettes who followed in the wake of François Premier. Here, and at Blois, the recollections of this little band are strong in the minds of students of romance and history. Some one has said that along the corridors of Amboise one still may meet the wraiths of those who in former days went airily from one pleasure to another, but this of course depends upon the mood and sentiment of the visitor. Amboise has a very good imitation of the climate of the south, and the glitter of the Loire at midday in June is about as torrid a picture as one can paint in a northern clime. It is not that it is so very hot in degree, but that the lack of shade-trees along its quays gives Amboise a shimmering resemblance to a much warmer place than it really is. The Loire is none too ample here, and frets its way, as it does through most of its lower course, through banks of sand and pebbles in a more or less vain effort to look cool. Amboise is old, for, under the name of Ambatia, it existed in the fourth century, at which epoch St. Martin, the patron of Tours, threw down a pagan pyramidal temple here and established Christianity; and Clovis and Alaric held their celebrated meeting on the Ile St. Jean in 496. It was not long after this, according to the ancient writers, that some sort of a fortified château took form here. Louis-le-Bègue gave Amboise to the Counts of Anjou, and Hughes united the two independent seigneuries of the château and the bourg. After the Counts of Anjou succeeded the Counts of Berry, Charles VII., by appropriation, confiscation, seizure, or whatever you please to call it,--history is vague as to the real motive,--united Amboise to the possessions of the Crown in 1434. Louis XI. lived for a time at this strong fortress-château, before he turned his affections so devotedly to Plessis-les-Tours. Charles VIII. was born and died here, and it was he who added the Renaissance details, or at least the first of them, upon his return from Italy. Indeed, it is to him and to the nobles who followed in his train during his Italian travels that the introduction of the Renaissance into France is commonly attributed.