There is another fine thing at Tours which is not particularly delicate,but which makes a great impression,the very interesting old church of Saint Julian,lurking in a crooked corner at the right of the Rue Royale,near the point at which this indifferent thoroughfare emerges,with its little cry of admiration,on the bank of the Loire.Saint Julian stands today in a kind of neglected hollow,where it is much shut in by houses;but in the year 1225,when the edifice was begun,the site was doubtless,as the architects say,more eligible.At present,indeed,when once you have caught a glimpse of the stout,serious Romanesque tower,which is not high,but strong,you feel that the building has something to say,and that you must stop to listen to it.Within,it has a vast and splendid nave,of immense height,the nave of a cathedral,with a shallow choir and transepts,and some admirable old glass.I spent half an hour there one morning,listening to what the church had to say,in perfect solitude.Not a worshipper entered,not even an old man with a broom.I have always thought there is a *** in fine buildings;and Saint Julian,with its noble nave,is of the gender of the name of its patron.
It was that same morning,I think,that I went in search of the old houses of Tours;for the town contains several goodly specimens of the domestic architecture of the past.The dwelling to which the average AngloSaxon will most promptly direct his steps,and the only one I have space to mention,is the socalled Maison de Tristan l'Hermite,a gentleman whom the readers of "Quentin Durward"will not have forgotten,the hangmaninordinary to the great King Louis XI.
Unfortunately the house of Tristan is not the house of Tristan at all;this illusion has been cruelly dispelled.
There are no illusions left,at all,in the good city of Tours,with regard to Louis XI.His terrible castle of Plessis,the picture of which sends a shiver through the youthful reader of Scott,has been reduced to suburban insignificance;and the residence of his triste compere,on the front of which a festooned rope figures as a motive for decoration,is observed to have been erected in the succeeding century.The Maison de Tristan may be visited for itself,however,if not for Walter Scott;it is an exceedingly picturesque old facade,to which you pick your way through a narrow and tortuous street,a street terminating,a little beyond it,in the walk beside the river.An elegant Gothic doorway is let into the rustyred brickwork,and strange little beasts crouch at the angles of the windows,which are surmounted by a tall graduated gable,pierced with a small orifice,where the large surface of brick,lifted out of the shadow of the street,looks yellow and faded.The whole thing is disfigured and decayed;but it is a capital subject for a sketch in colors.Only I must wish the sketcher better luck or a better temper than my own.If he ring the bell to be admitted to see the court,which I believe is more sketchable still,let him have patience to wait till the bell is answered.He can do the outside while they are coming.