Identifier: cu31924014197978 (find matches)
Title: Castles and chateaux of old Touraine and the Loire country
Year: 1906 (1900s)
Authors: Mansfield, Milburg Francisco, 1871-
Subjects: Castles
Publisher: Boston, L. C. Page
Contributing Library: Cornell University Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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volumes, but only a per-sonal view of them will bring home to one themanners and customs of one of the most luxu-rious periods of life in the France of otherdays. CHAPTEE II. THE OBLEANNAIS Op the many travelled English and Ameri-cans who go to Paris, how few visit the Loirevalley with its glorious array of mediaeval andRenaissance chateaux. No part of France, ex-cept Paris, is so accessible, and none is so com-fortably travelled, whether by road or by rail. At Orleans one is at the very gateway ofthis splendid, bountiful region, the lower val-ley of the Loire. Here the river first takeson a complexion which previously it hadlacked, for it is only when the Loire becomesthe boundary-line between the north and thesouth that one comes to realize its full im-portance. The Orleannais, like many another provinceof mid-France, is a region where plenty awaitsrich and poor alike. Not wholly given over toagriculture, nor yet wholly to manufacturing,it is without that restless activity of the 30
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The Orleannais 31 frankly industrial centres of the north. Inspite of this, though, the Orleannais is notidle. Orleans is the obvious pointe de depart forall the wonderland of the Renaissance whichis to follow, but itself and its immediate sur-roundings have not the importance for thevisitor, in spite of the vivid historical chapterswhich have been written here in the past, thatmany another less famous city possesses. Bythis is meant that the existing monuments ofhistory are by no means as numerous or splen-did here as one might suppose. Not that theyare entirely lacking, but rather that they areof a different species altogether from thatarray of magnificently planned chateaux whichline the banks of the Loire below. To one coming from the north the entranceto the Orleannais will be emphatically marked.It is the first experience of an atmospherewhich, if not characteristically or climaticallyof the south, is at least reminiscent thereof,with a luminosity which the provinces of oldFranc

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