The Maison de Tristan,I say,may be visited for itself;but I hardly know what the remnants of PlessislesTours may be visited for.To reach them you wander through crooked suburban lanes,down the course of the Loire,to a rough,undesirable,incongruous spot,where a small,crude building of red brick is pointed out to you by your cabman (if you happen to drive)as the romantic abode of a superstitious king,and where a strong odor of pigsties and other unclean things so prostrates you for the moment that you have no energy to protest against the obvious fiction.You enter a yard encumbered with rubbish and a defiant dog,and an old woman emerges from a shabby lodge and assures you that you are indeed in an historic place.The red brick building,which looks like a small factory,rises on the ruins of the favorite residence of the dreadful Louis.It is now occupied by a company of nightscavengers,whose huge carts are drawn up in a row before it.I know not whether this be what is called the irony of fate;at any rate,the effect of it is to accentuate strongly the fact (and through the most susceptible of our senses)that there is no honor for the authors of great wrongs.The dreadful Louis is reduced simply to an offence to the nostrils.The old woman shows you a few fragments,several dark,damp,muchencumbered vaults,denominated dungeons,and an old tower staircase,in good condition.There are the outlines of the old moat;there is also the outline of the old guardroom,which is now a stable;and there are other vague outlines and inconsequent lumps,which I have forgotten.
You need all your imagination,and even then you cannot make out that Plessis was a castle of large extent,though the old woman,as your eye wanders over the neighboring potagers,talks a good deal about the gardens and the park.The place looks mean and flat;and as you drive away you scarcely know whether to be glad or sorry that all those bristling horrors have been reduced to the commonplace.
A certain flatness of impression awaits you also,Ithink,at Marmoutier,which is the other indisuensable excursion in the near neighborhood of Tours.The remains of this famous abbey lie on the other bank of the stream,about a mile and a half from the town.
You follow the edge of the big brown river;of a fine afternoon you will be glad to go further still.The abbey has gone the way of most abbeys;but the place is a restoration as well as a ruin,inasmuch as the sisters of the Sacred Heart have erected a terribly modern convent here.A large Gothic doorway,in a high fragment of ancient wall,admits you to a gardenlike enclosure,of great extent,from which you are further introduced into an extraordinarily tidy little parlor,where two good nuns sit at work.One of these came out with me,and showed me over the place,a very definite little woman,with pointed features,an intensely distinct enunciation,and those pretty manners which (for whatever other teachings it may be responsible)the Catholic church so often instils into its functionaries.I have never seen a woman who had got her lesson better than this little trotting,murmuring,edifying nun.The interest,of Marmoutier today is not so much an interest of vision,so to speak,as an interest of reflection,that is,if you choose to reflect (for instance)upon the wondrous legend of the seven sleepers (you may see where they lie in a row),who lived together they were brothers and cousins in primitive piety,in the sanctuary constructed by the blessed Saint Martin (emulous of his precursor,Saint Gatianus),in the face of the hillside that overhung the Loire,and who,twentyfive years after his death,yielded up their seven souls at the same moment,and enjoyed the curious privilege of retaining in their faces,in spite of this process,the rosy tints of life.The abbey of Marmoutier,which sprung from the grottos in the cliff to which Saint Gatianus and Saint Martin retired to pray,was therefore the creation of the latter worthy,as the other great abbey,in the town proper,was the monument of his repose.The cliff is still there;and a winding staircase,in the latest taste,enables you conveniently to explore its recesses.These sacred niches are scooped out of the rock,and will give you an impression if you cannot do without one.
You will feel them to be sufficiently venerable when you learn that the particular pigeonhole of Saint Gatianus,the first Christian missionary to Gaul,dates from the third century.They have been dealt with as the Catholic church deals with most of such places today;polished and furnished up;labelled and ticketed,edited,with notes,in short,like an old book.The process is a mistake,the early editions had more sanctity.The modern buildings (of the Sacred Heart),on which you look down from these points of vantage,are in the vulgar taste which seems doomed to stamp itself on all new Catholic work;but there was nevertheless a great sweetness in the scene.The afternoon was lovely,and it was flushing to a close.The large garden stretched beneath us,blooming with fruit and wine and succulent vegetables,and beyond it flowed the shining river.The air was still,the shadows were long,and the place,after all,was full of memories,most of which might pass for virtuous.It certainly was better than PlessislesTours.
