Frame this with such details as the surrounding country supplies, the Cher on one side, the Loire on the other, and the fertile hills of St. Cyr, of Ballon, and of Joué, and one has a picture worthy of the greatest painter of any time. Louis XI. died at Plessis, after having lived there many years. Louis XII. made of it a _rendezvous de chasse_, but François II. confided its care to a governor and would never live in it. Louis XIV. gave the governorship as a hereditary perquisite to the widow of the Seigneur de Sausac. In 1778 it was used as a sort of retreat for the indigent, though happily enough Touraine was never overburdened with this class of humanity. Under Louis XV. a Mademoiselle Deneux, a momentary rival of La Pompadour and Du Barry, found a retreat here. Later it became a _maison de correction_, and finally a _dépôt militaire_. At the time of the Revolution it was declared to be national property, and on the _nineteenth Nivoise, Year IV._, Citizen Cormeri, justice of the peace at Tours, fixed its value at one hundred and thirty-one thousand francs. To-day it is as bare and uncouth as a mere barracks or as a disused flour-mill, and its ruins are visited partly because of their former historical glories, as recalled by students of French history, and partly because of the glamour which was shed over it, for English readers, by Scott. Sixty years ago a French writer deplored the fact that, on leaving these scanty remains of a so long gone past, he observed a notice nailed to a pillar of the _porte-cochère_ reading: LA FERME DU PLESSIS O LOUER OU A VENDRE To-day some sort of a division and rearrangement of the property has been made, but the result is no less mournful and sad, and thus a glorious page of the annals of France has become blurred. It is interesting to recall what manner of persons composed the household of Louis XI. when he resided at Plessis-les-Tours. Commines, his historian, has said that habitually it consisted of a chancellor, a _juge de l'hôtel_, a private secretary, and a treasurer, each having under him various employees. In addition there was a master of the pantry, a cupbearer, a _chef de bouche_ and a _chef de cuisine_, a _fruitier_, a master of the horse, a quartermaster or master-at-arms, and, in immediate control of these domestic servants, a _seneschal_ or _grand maître_. In many respects the household was not luxuriously conducted, for the parsimonious Louis lived fully up to the false maxim: "_Qui peu donne, beaucoup recueille._" Louis himself was fond of doing what the modern housewife would call "messing about in the kitchen." He did not dabble at cookery as a pastime, or that sort of thing; but rather he kept an eagle eye on the whole conduct of the affairs of the household. One day, coming to the kitchen _en négligé_, he saw a small boy turning a spit before the fire. "And what might you be called?" said he, patting the lad on the shoulder.