The ancient Salle des Gardes of the château, with the windows giving on the balcony overlooking the river, became later the Logis du Roi. From this great chamber one passes on to the terrace near the foot of the Grosse Tour, called the Tour des Minimes. It is this tower which contains the "_escalier des voitures_." The entrance is through an elegant portico leading to the upper stories. Above another portico, leading from the terrace to the garden, is to be seen the emblem of Louis XII., the porcupine, so common at Blois. In the fosse, which still remains on the garden side, was the universally installed _jeu-de-paume_, a favourite amusement throughout the courts of Europe in the middle ages. At the base of the château are clustered numerous old houses of the sixteenth century, but on the river-front these have been replaced with pretentious houses, cafés, automobile garages, and other modern buildings. Near the Quai des Violettes are a series of subterranean chambers known as the Greniers de César, dating from the sixteenth century. [Illustration: _Cipher of Anne de Bretagne, Hôtel de Ville, Amboise_] Even at this late day one can almost picture the great characters in the drama of other times who stalked majestically through the apartments, and over the very flagstones of the courts and terraces which one treads to-day; Catherine de Medici with her ruffs and velvets; Henri de Guise with all his wiles; Condé the proud; the second François, youthful but wise; his girl queen, loving and sad; and myriads more of all ranks and of all shades of morality,--all resplendent in the velvets and gold of the costume of their time. Near the château is the Clos Luce, a Gothic habitation in whose oratory died Leonardo da Vinci, on May 2, 1519. Immediately back of the château is the Forêt d'Amboise, the scene of many gay hunting parties when the court was here or at Chenonceaux, which one reaches by traversing the forest route. On the edge of this forest is Chanteloup, remembered by most folk on account of its atrocious Chinese-like pagoda, built of the débris of the Château de la Bourdaisière, by the Duc de Choiseul, in memory of the attentions he received from the nobles and bourgeois of the ville upon the fall of his ministry and his disgrace at the hands of Louis XV. and La Du Barry. It is a curious form to be chosen when one had such beautiful examples of architectural art near by, only equalled, perhaps, in atrociousness by the "Royal Pavilion" of England's George IV. La Bourdaisière, near Amboise, of which only the site remains, if not one of the chief tourist attractions of the château country, has at least a sentimental interest of abounding importance for all who recall the details of the life of "La Belle Gabrielle."