“And all the air a solemn stillness holds,”

in the vicinity of a French village.

But Amboise!  Who would go to rural England, live on ham and eggs, and sleep in a bed harder than Pharaoh’s heart, if it were possible that a silent Amboise awaited him?  The fair fresh vegetables of France, her ripe red strawberries and glowing cherries, her crisp salads and her caressing mattresses lured us no less than the vision of a bloodstained castle, and the wide sweep of the Loire flashing through the joyous landscape of Touraine.  In the matter of beauty, Amboise outstrips all praise.  In the matter of romance, she leaves nothing to be desired.  Her splendid old Chateau—­half palace and half fortress—­towers over the river which mirrors its glory and perpetuates its shame.  She is a storehouse of historic memories, she is the loveliest of little towns, she is in the heart of a district which bears the finest fruit and has the best cooks in France; but she is not, and never has been, silent, since the days when Louis the Eleventh was crowned, and she gave wine freely to all who chose to be drunk and merry at her charge.

If she does not give her wine to-day, she sells it so cheaply—­lying girt by vine-clad hills—­that many of her sons are drunk and merry still.  The sociable habit of setting a table in the open street prevails at Amboise.  Around it labourers take their evening meal, to the accompaniment of song and sunburnt mirth.  It sounds poetic and it looks picturesque,—­like a picture by Teniers or Jan Steen,—­but it is not a habit conducive to repose.

As far as I can judge,—­after a month’s experience,—­the one thing no inhabitant of Amboise ever does is to go to bed.  At midnight the river front is alive with cheerful and strident voices.  The French countryman habitually speaks to his neighbour as if he were half a mile away; and when a score of countrymen are conversing in this key, the air rings with their clamour.  They sing in the same lusty fashion; not through closed lips, as is the custom of English singers, but rolling out the notes with volcanic energy from the deep craters of their throats.  When our admirable waiter—­who is also our best friend—­frees his soul in song as he is setting the table, the walls of the dining-room quiver and vibrate.  By five o’clock in the morning every one except ourselves is on foot and out of doors.  We might as well be, for it is custom, not sleep, which keeps us in our beds.  The hay wagons are rolling over the bridge, the farmhands are going to work, the waiter, in an easy undress, is exchanging voluble greetings with his many acquaintances, the life of the town has begun.