If the middle part of its course is not very interesting, the Loire removes that reproach between Orleans and its mouth. Its waters, and those of some of its shorter tributaries, reflect the towers and crenellated walls of some of the most remarkable and interesting of all the _chateaux_ of France. Blois, the scene of the murders of the Duc de Guise (who had instigated the Massacre of St. Bartholomew) and of his brother the Cardinal of Lorraine; Amboise, with its great tower, containing a spiral roadway for carriages and the courtyard in which Mary Stuart had, in 1560, been the swooning witness of a most appalling massacre of 1200 Huguenot prisoners, the Duc de Guise refusing to listen to her entreaties that they should be spared; Chenonceaux, the scene of many a royal hunting party, and the possession for a time of Diane de Poitiers, and Chaumont, which Catherine de Medici obliged Diane to take in exchange; Langeais, where rich furnishings of the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance bring one into the very atmosphere of the poignard and of deadly intrigue; and Angers, with its seventeen round towers, begun by Philippe Auguste, are all eloquent of the romantic age of French history, of human passion, of love, hate, and despair. [Illustration: CHATEAU GAILLARD AND A LOOP OF THE SEINE.] It would not be easy to think offhand of any river of similar length and importance whose course shows such amazing dilatoriness as that of the Seine. The statue of a nymph placed at its source by the city of Paris is only 250 miles from the sea in a direct line, but the river seems to have an unconquerable desire to postpone the hour when it is swallowed up by the English Channel, and by turning out of its normal direction, northwards or southwards, every few miles it has dug for itself a channel 482 miles in length. Such sinuosities on the course of a great river might be called undignified, if one could not point to that part of the course of the Moselle that lies between Treves and Coblentz, and to the Ebro in the middle part of its journey between Saragossa and the sea. The increased friction at the numerous sharp curves prevents the flood-waters from getting away with the rapidity the Parisians sometimes desire, and this is partly responsible for the serious damage done in the capital when circumstances combine to send down an abnormal quantity of water from the higher tributaries. In January 1910 the height of the river above the normal was 24 feet, and the racing waters swirled against the keystones of the bridges. But if the Seine misbehaves itself at intervals,[12] its average flow is so steady that its navigability is greater than the other important rivers. This excellent quality is due to the fact that about three-quarters of the basin (an area of some 30,000 square miles) is formed of permeable deposits, and consequently a vast absorption is constantly taking place. The waters subtracted in this way are given