"The month of April had arrived. The great cathedral of Chartres was hung with white, and the king was standing barefooted in the nave. The religious ceremonies, which were for the purpose of praying for an heir to the throne of France, were just finishing, when Henri, in the midst of the general silence, heard what seemed to him a stifled laugh. He turned around to see if Chicot were there, for he thought no one else would have dared to laugh at such a time. It was not, however, Chicot who had laughed at the sight of the two chemises of the Holy Virgin, which were said to have such a prolific power, and which were just being drawn from their golden box; but it was a cavalier who had just stopped at the door of the church, and who was making his way with his muddy boots through the crowd of courtiers in their penitents' robes and sacks. Seeing the king turn, he stopped for a moment, and Henri, irritated at seeing him arrive thus, threw an angry glance at him. The newcomer, however, continued to advance until he reached the velvet chair of M. le Duc d'Anjou, by which he knelt down." * * * * * But a step from Chartres, on the Loire,--though Orleans, the "City of the Maid," comes between,--is Blois. In "Le Vicomte de Bragelonne," the last of the D'Artagnan series, the action comes down to later times, to that of the young king Louis XIV. In its opening lines its scene is laid in that wonderfully ornate and impressive Château of Blois, which so many have used as a background for all manner of writing. Dumas, with his usual directness, wasting no words on mere description, and only considering it as an accessory to his romance, refers briefly to this magnificent building--the combined product of the houses whose arms bore the hedgehog and the salamander. "Toward the middle of the month of May, 1660, when the sun was fast absorbing the dew from the _ravenelles_ of the Château of Blois, a little cavalcade entered the city by the bridge, without producing any effect upon the passengers of the quai-side, except a movement of the tongue to express, in the purest French then spoken in France (Touraine has ever spoken the purest tongue, as all know), 'There is Monsieur returning from the hunt.'... It should have been a trifling source of pride to the city of Blois that Gaston of Orleans had chosen it as his residence, and held his court in the ancient château of its states." It was in the Castle of the States of Blois that Louis XIV. received that unexpected visit from "His Majesty Charles II., King of England, Scotland, and Ireland," of which Dumas writes in the second of the D'Artagnan series. "'How strange it is you are here,' said Louis. 'I only knew of your embarkation at Brighthelmstone, and your landing in Normandy.'...