76
A LITTLE TOUR IN FRANCE.
not of first-rate interest. They are cold and musty,
indeed, with that touching smell of old furniture, as
all apartments should be through which the insatiate
American wanders in the rear of a bored domestic,
pausing to stare at a faded tapestry or to read the
name on the frame of some simpering portrait.
To return to Tours my companion and I had counted
on a train which (as is not uncommon in France)
existed only in the "Indicateur des Chemins de Fer;"
and instead of waiting for another we engaged a vehicle
to take us home. A sorry carriole or patache it proved
to be, with the accessories of a lumbering white mare
and a little wizened, ancient peasant, who had put on,
in honor of the occasion, a new blouse of extraordinary
stiffness and blueness. We hired the trap of an energetic
woman who put it "to" with her own hands; women
in Touraine and the Blésois appearing to have the
best of it in the business of letting vehicles, as well as
in many other industries. There is, in fact, no branch
of human activity in which one is not liable, in France,
to find a woman engaged. Women, indeed, are not
priests; but priests are, more or less, women. They
are not in the army, it may be said; but then they are
the army. They are very formidable. In France one
must count with the women. The drive back from
Langeais to Tours was long, slow, cold; we had an
occasional spatter of rain. But the road passes most
of the way close to the Loire, and there was some-
thing in our jog-trot through the darkening land, beside
the flowing river, which it was very possible to enjoy.