Although the conduct of Ferdinand was in this instance pusillanimous and cruel, it was next to an impossibility that he could have effected his escape. He was surrounded by guards and spies of every description, under the superintendence of M. Darberg, Auditor of the Council of State, and without whose leave no admittance could be obtained. Twenty-five horse gendarmes regularly mounted guard about the castle, and every person found in its vicinity without a regular passport, was confined and strictly examined.
At a small distance, is the residence of Marshal Victor, Duc de Belluno, whom I met walking in the grounds. I was very civilly permitted to enter, on sending a message desiring permission, as a traveller, to see it. It stands at the entrance of the village of Ménard, and was once the favourite residence of Madame de Pompadour, the mistress of Louis XV. The river Loire winds beautifully beneath the terrace. The grounds are of a vast extent, and tastefully laid out. Over the entrance, the workmen were then placing the arms of the Marshal, finely executed in stone.
The country is thickly enclosed on each side of the river, varied with hill and dale, clothed with vineyards. The villages and small towns along the banks, as far as Orléans, are numerous and invariably picturesque. Nothing can be more beautiful than the natural festoons which are formed by the long shoots of the vines as they project over the road. The peasants and the vignerons live in the midst of their vineyards; their dwellings are excavations in chalky strata of the solid rock, which afford them warm and dry habitations; some of them were so covered with the vines that the entrance was scarcely visible, and the comparison of them to so many birds nests is not badly imagined. The hedges were covered with wild thyme and rosemary; and the clematis interwoven with honeysuckles and other fragrant flowers, richly perfumed the air. The grapes in Touraine and Orléanois are not abundant this year, but the wine that is expected to be made, will, it is supposed, from the dryness of the summer, be of an excellent quality.
The town of Orléans is memorable for the siege it sustained against the English in 1428, when the maid of Orléans acquired so much renown, and whose barbarous execution at Rouen, cannot be remembered without feelings of horror and indignation, and must ever remain a stain on the memory of that brave soldier the Duke of Bedford. The transactions subsequent to that event, led to the almost entire expulsion of the English from France; and those glittering conquests which were an object of more glory than interest, and had been purchased at such an expense of blood and treasure, were from that time lost to the English nation.