WALTER has been triumphing over me because, even after his unseemly behavior yesterday, M. La Tour has formed a sudden attachment for him which is so strong that he insisted upon staying over to go with us to Loches this afternoon. He says that we may miss some of the most interesting points there if left to the tender mercies of the guides, who often dwell upon the least important things. Our new acquaintance proved to be so altogether delightful as a _cicerone_, when he conducted us through the old streets of Tours this morning, that we are looking forward with pleasure to an afternoon in his good company. The old part of the town, M. La Tour tells us, was once a quite distinct ecclesiastical foundation, called Chateauneuf, of which every building, in a way, depended upon the Basilica of St. Martin. When the dreadful Fulk, the Black, set fire to it, in the tenth century, twenty-two churches and chapels are said to have been destroyed. Among those that have been restored are Notre Dame la Riche, once Notre Dame la Pauvre, and St. Saturnin, which formerly contained, among other handsome tombs, that of Thomas Bohier and his wife Katherine Briconnet, the couple who did so much for Chenonceaux. This ancient Chateauneuf, like the court end of so many old cities, has narrow, winding streets overtopped by high buildings. These twisting streets are so infinitely picturesque with their sudden turns and elbows that we are quite ready to overlook their inconvenience for the uses of our day, and trust that no modern vandalism, under the name of progress, may change and despoil these byways of their ancient charm. Wandering through the narrow, quaint streets of the old city, with their steep gabled and timbered houses, through whose grilled or half-opened gates we catch glimpses of tiled courtyards and irregular bits of stone carving, over which flowers throw a veil of rich bloom, we feel that we are living in an old world. Yet M. La Tour reminds us that beneath our feet lies a still older world, for as we follow what is evidently a wall of defence we come upon the remains of an ancient gateway and suddenly realize that beneath this Martinopolis, Chateauneuf and Tours of the fifth century, lie the temples, amphitheatres, and baths of the more ancient Urbs Turonum of the Romans. In the midst of our excursion into the past, Miss Cassandra suddenly brought us back to the present by exclaiming that she would like to go to some place where the Romans had never been. She has had quite enough of them in their own city and country, and now being in Touraine she says that she prefers to live among the French.