Through that golden land which lies between the Loir and the Loire we drifted through a long summer afternoon, and came at evening to a noble bridge that crossed a wide, tranquil river, beyond which rose the towers of ancient Tours, capital of Touraine. The Touraine was a favorite place for kings, who built their magnificent country palaces in all directions. There are more than fifty châteaux within easy driving distance of Tours. We did not, by any means, intend to visit all of the châteaux, for château visiting from a diversion may easily degenerate into labor. We had planned especially, however, to see Chinon, where Joan of Arc went to meet the king to ask for soldiers. This is not on the Loire, but on a tributary a little south of it, the Vienne, with the castle crowning the long hill, or ridge, above the town. Some time during the afternoon we came to the outskirts of the ancient place, and looked up to the ruined battlements and towers where occurred that meeting which meant the liberation of France. The château to-day is the ruin of what originally was three châteaux, built at different times, but closely strung together, so that in ruin they are scarcely divided. The oldest, Coudray, was built in the tenth century, and still shows three towers standing, in one of which Joan of Arc lived during her stay at Chinon. The middle château was built a hundred years later, on the site of a Roman fort, and it was in one of its rooms, a fragment of which still remains, that Charles VII received the shepherd-girl from Domremy. The Château of St. George was built in the twelfth century, by Henry II of England, who died there in 1189. Though built two hundred years later than Coudray, nothing remains of it to-day but some foundations. Chinon is a much more extensive ruin than we had expected. Even what remains must be nearly a quarter of a mile in length, and its vast crumbling walls and crenelated towers make it strikingly picturesque. But its ruin is complete, none the less. Once through the entrance tower, and you are under nothing but the sky, with your feet on the grass; there is no longer a shelter there, even for a fugitive king. You wander about viewing it scarcely more than as a ruin, at first, a place for painting, for seclusion, for dreaming in the sun. Then all at once you are facing a wall in which, half-way up, where once was the second story, there is a restored fireplace and a tablet which tells you that in this room Charles VII received Joan of Arc. It is not a room now; it is just a wall, a fragment, with vines matting its ruined edges. You cross a stone foot-bridge to the tower where Joan lived, and that also is open to the sky and bare and desolate. While, beyond it, there was a little chapel where she prayed, but that is gone. There are other fragments and other towers, but they merely serve as a setting for those which the intimate presence of Joan made sacred.