"Which is," as Walter says, "a delicate and extremely polite manner of referring to his imprisonment in one of those infernal iron cages at Loches." (Pray notice that the language is Walter's, not mine.)
On our way to the café we passed by the statue of Rabelais, and although this was not a market day, to M. La Tour's infinite regret, there were some booths in the busy little square and a number of traffickers. The face of the humorist who loved his kind, even if he often made game of them, looked down upon the gay, chattering, bargain-making crowd in the square beneath him, with an expression half satirical, half laughing and wholly benevolent.
There is some uncertainty as to the date of the birth of Maître François at Chinon, and he may or may not have lived in either of the old houses pointed out as his, but he certainly belonged to this part of the country, and we are grateful to his fellow-townsmen for honoring him so fittingly.
In the centre of the little square a fountain, surrounded by acacia trees, was playing, and beyond was the welcome Hôtel de France opening its doors to us. After we had ordered our luncheon, Walter suddenly remembered the chauffeur, and started to hunt him up and tell him where to meet us with the automobile, and I joined him for the pleasure of another stroll through the town. M. La Tour, who accompanied us, again regretted that this was not a market day, when the peasants come in from the surrounding country, and we could then see just such a noisy merry crowd as Rabelais described when Couillatris goes to Chinon, which he calls "that noble, antique city, the first in the world," to buy oxen, cows and sheep, pigs, geese and capons, dead and alive, and all manner of country produce. An antique city Chinon appeared to us, above all that we had seen; and to add to this impression we met a number of peasant women and black-eyed girls with the picturesque lace caps of this province, veiling but not concealing their fine dark hair.
After a luncheon that more than answered our expectations, we strolled about the old town, through its narrow winding streets and by the Place Jeanne d'Arc, with its remarkable statue which represents the Maid riding roughshod over the prostrate bodies of her foes; her horse has all four feet off the ground, his means of support, a bronze rod as a sort of fifth or middle leg, being more practical than artistic. "The rider's position in the saddle," as Archie says, "would turn any circus performer green with envy." An altogether atrocious piece of sculpture is this, with an element of grotesqueness in its conception quite unworthy of one of the most serious characters in all history, the Maid to whom, as Carlyle says, "all maidens upon earth should bend."