. Castles and chateaux of old Touraine and the Loire country. a court favourite of Louis XIII. It wasthe ambitious but unhappy career at court ofthis young gallant which ultimately resulted inhis death on the scaffold, and in the razing,by Richelieu, of his ancestral residence, thecastle of Cinq-Mars, to the heights of in-famy. The expression is a curious one, buthistory so records it. All that is left to-dayto remind one of the stronghold of the D Effiatsof Cinq-Mars are its two crumbling gate-towers with an arch between and a few frag-mentary foundation walls which follow thesummit of the cl
. Castles and chateaux of old Touraine and the Loire country. a court favourite of Louis XIII. It wasthe ambitious but unhappy career at court ofthis young gallant which ultimately resulted inhis death on the scaffold, and in the razing,by Richelieu, of his ancestral residence, thecastle of Cinq-Mars, to the heights of in-famy. The expression is a curious one, buthistory so records it. All that is left to-dayto remind one of the stronghold of the D Effiatsof Cinq-Mars are its two crumbling gate-towers with an arch between and a few frag-mentary foundation walls which follow thesummit of the cliff behind La Pile. The little town of not more than a coupleof thousand inhabitants nestles in a bend of theLoire, where there is so great a breadth thatit looks like a long-drawn-out lake. The lowhills, so characteristic of these parts, stretchthemselves on either bank, unbroken exceptwhere some little streamlet forces its way bya gentle ravine through the scrubby under-growth. Oaks and firs and huge limestonecliffs jut out from the top of the hillside on. Ruins o] Ctnq-Mars -fM Luynes and Langeais 229 the right bank and shelter the town which liesbelow. Cinq-Mars is a miniature metropolis, thoughnot a very progressive one at first sight; in-deed, beyond its long main street and its houses,which cluster about its grim, though beautiful,tenth and twelfth century church, there are fewsigns of even provincial importance. In reality Cinq-Mars is the centre of a largeand important wine industry, where you mayhear discussed, at the table dhote of its notvery readily found little inn, the poor priceswhich the usually abundant crop always native even bewails the fact that he is notblessed with a poor season or two and then hewould be able to sell his fine vintages for some-thing more than three sous a litre. By the timeit reaches Paris this vin de Touraine of com-merce has aggrandized itself so that it com-mands two francs fifty centimes on the Boule-vards, and a franc fif
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookpublisherbosto, bookyear1906
