_Admission is given every day except when the family is in residence, when the public can enter on Sundays and Thursdays only between 2 and 4. The charge is 1 franc for each person._ An avenue leads down to a formal garden enclosed by low walls and brilliant with flowers, which make a fitting foreground to this castle of pleasant memories, for there are no records or traditions of any treachery or murder here; instead, one finds accounts of brilliant fêtes and receptions, when the picturesque little château must have been a pageant of colour and beauty. An isolated tower on the right of the garden belongs to an earlier castle than that which exists now, and its walls have the mellowed tones which restoration has stolen from the beautiful building just beyond. The approach is by a bridge, for the whole of the castle stands in the River Cher on the site of a mill owned by the predecessors of the builder. Although erected in the sixteenth century, there are two drawbridges which isolate the castle from the banks, but its peaceful story does not suggest that they were ever needed. The elaborately ornamented roofs, the circular corner turrets, and the galleried bridge reflected in patches in the eddying water, make a most attractive picture, and one feels surprise that no one has imitated such an idea. It was in 1515 that Thomas Bohier is supposed to have begun the castle. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer of Normandy, and spent large sums of money on the building. The style was not altogether of the Renaissance, as one may see from the Gothic chapel he built. In 1524 he died in Italy, the country from whence he had drawn his ideas for his exquisite house in the Cher, which was still unfinished. Antoine, his eldest son, found himself in such a predicament through his father’s methods of finance that in 1535 he sold Chenonceaux to François I. Although the King seems to have only twice visited the castle, he went on with the buildings, and his high opinion of the place is on record. In 1546 he held a great hunting-party at the castle, and with him were Diane de Poitiers and the future Henri II., in whose affections the King’s mistress soon had the highest place. In 1547 Henri II. succeeded his father, and at once gave Chenonceaux to his lovely Diane, and it was she who built the bridge connecting the castle with the south bank of the river. [Illustration: THE CHATEAU OF CHENONCEAUX. One of the most attractive of the castles of Touraine. It is built in the River Cher, and was never the scene of any fighting.]