Situated just at the entrance of the luxuriant garden of Touraine; full to overflowing of grapes and melons, and plums and peaches, of incredible size; on the banks of the river Indre, (here spanned by several pretty bridges,) rises the craggy hill, on the sides of which was built, at a period too remote to be ascertained even by a hand-book, the rugged, stony, impassable, confused, fossil-looking town, crowned at its extreme summit by the grimmest, strangest, oldest, and most inexplicably constructed castle that exists in France. Probably its like would be sought in vain in Europe. Such another series of towers, and spires, and long and high walls, terraces, battlements, stair-cases, and dungeons, was never brought together by the hand of man. The castle was constructed by order of a certain Count of Anjou, named Foulques Nera, to become--long after his valorous fame had passed away, or had merged into the reputation of an ogre--a ponderous plaything. The inn where our party stopped at Loches, is very characteristic of the place; for it is, though modernized and beautified outwardly, a maze of galleries, and corridors, and turrets, and secret stair-cases, and rooms with vaulted ceilings, so that the world of the present day seems shut out the moment the façade is lost sight of. It had an odd effect in such a place to see smart handmaids flitting about, and a chattering hostess coming out to welcome guests to her antique dwelling, which has all the trouble in the world to look young and inviting, in spite of the paint and frippery in which French taste has striven to disguise its feudal reality. We very soon arranged ourselves and our repast (with but little addition from the larder of our nevertheless civil hostess) on a sort of platform, on the walls of what is now a terrace, and was once no doubt a war-like spot, where if people “drank the red wine,” it was probably “through the helmet barred.” The hostess merrily uncorked our bottles of Loire wine, observing candidly that it was much better than her cellars produced; and, addressing herself to me, adroitly began a eulogy on the character of the English in general, remarking, that it was astonishing how many of my countrymen made her hotel their home for six months together. A ramble through the streets showed us that it was market day at Loches. From the lower range of rugged walls to the rocky summit where the castle toppled over--comprising the narrow, high street, which ascends through the whole length, winding and twisting like a snake pursued--was one mass of vegetables, fruit, and flowers, whose bright hues, and the gay colors of the vendors’ dresses, contrasted strangely with the lofty houses with overhanging roofs, frowning down on the groups that dared to disturb the solemn gloom which had been theirs for centuries.