Chenonceaux has two other architectural monuments which are often overlooked under the spell of the more magnificent château. In the village is a small Renaissance church--in which the Renaissance never rose to any very great heights--which is here far more effective and beautiful than usually are Renaissance churches of any magnitude. There is also a sixteenth-century stone house in the same style and even more successful as an expression of the art of the time. It is readily found by inquiry, and is known as the "Maison des Pages de François I." CHAPTER IX. LOCHES Much may be written of Loches, of its storied past, of its present-day quaintness, and of its wealth of architectural monuments. Its church is certainly the most curious religious edifice in all France, judging from a cross-section of the vaults and walls. More than all else, however, Loches is associated in our minds with the memory of Agnes Sorel. Within the walls of the old collegiate church the lovely mistress of Charles VII. was buried in 1450; but later her remains and tomb were removed to one of the towers of the ancient castle of Loches, where they now are. She had amply endowed the church, but they would no longer give shelter to her remains, so her bones were removed five hundred years later. The statue which surmounts her tomb, as seen to-day, represents the "gentille Agnes" in all her loveliness, with folded hands on breast, a kneeling angel at her head and a couchant lamb at her feet,--a reminder of her innocence, said Henry James, but surely he nodded when he said it. Lovely she was, and good in her way, but innocent she was not, as we have come to know the word. [Illustration: _Loches_] It is fitting to recall that Charles VII. was not the only monarch who sang her praises, for it was François I. who, many years later, wrote those lines beginning: "Gentille Agnes, plus de loz tu mérites." Whether one comes to Loches by road or by rail, the first impression is the same; he enters at once into a sleepy, old-world town which has practically nothing of modernity about it except the electric lights. There is but one way to realize the immense wealth of architectural monuments centred at Loches, and that is to see the city for the first time, as, perhaps, François Premier saw it when he journeyed from Amboise, and came upon it from the heights of the forest of Loches. The city has not grown much since that day. Then it had three thousand eight hundred souls, and now it has five thousand. Here, in the Forêt de Loches, Henry II. of England built a monastery,--yet to be seen,--known as the Chartreuse du Liget, in repentance, or, perhaps, as a penance for the murder of Becket. Over the doorway of this monastery was graven: ANGLORUM HENRICUS REX THOMÆ COEDE CRUENTUS, LIGETICOS FUNDAT CARTUSIA MONAKOS.