“C’est le Chambertin de la Côte de Beaune,” said Monillefert, writing of its wine. Another neighbouring vineyard is that which surrounds the little village of Pernand. Its cru, called Charlemagne, has considerably more than a local reputation. Savigny-sous-Beaune is another place-name which means little unless it be on a wine-card. The little town is set about with sumptuous bourgeoise houses, and a local chateau bears the following inscription over its portal, “Les vins de Savigny sont nourrisants, theologiques et morbifuges.” They have been drunk by countless bon vivants through the ages, and the Ducs de Bourgogne were ever their greatest partisans. Mention of them appears frequently in the accounts written of public and private fêtes; almost as frequently, one may note, as the more celebrated “vin du Hospice.”

South from Beaune is Mersault, a tiny city of the Côte de Beaune. All about its clean-swept streets rise well-kept, pretentious dwellings, many of them the gabled variety so like the mediæval chateaux, though indeed they may date only from the last three-quarters of a century, or since the Revolution.

An old feudal castle—the typical feudal castle of romance—has been restored and remodelled, and now serves as Mersault’s Hôtel de Ville. All about is the smell of wine; barrels of it are on every curb, and running rivers of the lees course through every gutter.

Nolay, a trifle to the west, is scarcely known at all save as the name of a wine, and then it is not seen on every wine list of the popular restaurants. In the good old days it was the seat of a marquisat and was of course endowed with a seigneurial chateau. Nothing of sufficient magnitude, seemingly, exists to-day, and so one does not linger, but turns his attention immediately to the magnificent Chateau de La Rochepot, which virtually dominates the landscape for leagues around.

In contrast with the vast array of chateaux de commerce scattered all through the Côte d’Or—the “Golden Hillside” of the Romans—is the Chateau de La Rochepot, marvellous as to its site and most appealing from all points.

It was at Nolay that was born Lazare Carnot. It is the name of the grand homme who is almost alone Nolay’s sole claim to fame. His ancestor has his statue on the little Place, and his grandson—he who was President of the French Republic—is also glorified by a fine, but rather sentimentally conceived, monument.

Lazare Carnot was born in a humble little cottage of Nolay, and this cottage, after all, is perhaps the town’s most celebrated monument to the glorious name.

The ancient home of the Sires de la Roche, the Chateau de La Rochepot, to-day belongs to Captaine Carnot, the son of the former President, who, thoroughly and consistently, has begun its restoration on model lines.

The Sire de la Roche-Nolay, who planned the work, hired one by the name of Pot, it is said, to dig a well within the courtyard. The price demanded was so high that he was obliged to turn over the property itself in payment. It was by this means, says historic fact or legend, that the line of Pots, big and little, came into possession. This Philippe Pot, by his marriage, brought the property to the Montmorencys and himself to the high office of Counsellor of Anne de Beaujeau. He became seigneur of the lands here in 1428, and was afterwards better known as ambassador of the Duc de Bourgogne at London. His tomb was formerly in the Abbey of Citeaux, but has been transported to the Louvre.

After the Rochepots’ tenure the property came to the Sullys, and in 1629 to the family De Fargis. During the Revolution it was acquired as a part of the biens nationaux of the government, and in 1799 the donjon of the chateau was pulled down, the same which is to-day being rebuilt stone by stone on the same site.

The present noble edifice is after all nothing more than a completion of the admirably planned reconstruction of the fifteenth century; the restoration, or rebuilding, of to-day being but the following out of the plans of the original architect, a procedure which has seldom been attempted or accomplished elsewhere. It was done with the sixteenth century fountain of the Medicis in the Luxembourg Gardens (whose sculptures according to the original designs were only completed in 1839), but this is perhaps the only instance of a great mediæval chateau being thus carried to completion. The restorations of Carcassonne, Saint-Michel and Pierrefonds are in quite another category.

The Chateau La Rochepot was a development of the ancient Chastel-Rocca, which stood on the same site in the twelfth century, and which drew its name originally from its situation.

Épinac, just to the west of La Rochepot, is in the heart of a veritable “black country”; not the “black country” of the Midlands in England, but a more picturesque region, where the soot and grime of coal and its products mingle by turns with the brilliancy of foliage green and gold. In addition to drawing its fame from the mines roundabout, Épinac owes not a little of its distinction to its chateau, and a neighbouring Chateau de Sully which dates from the sixteenth century.

The Chateau de Sully is a magnificent edifice built in 1567 for the Maréchal de Saulx-Tavannes, and is to-day classed by the French government as a “monument historique.” It was built from the plans of Ribbonnier, a celebrated architect of Langres in the sixteenth century, and terminated only in the reign of Henri IV. It is an excellent type of the French Renaissance of the latter half of the sixteenth century. In form it is a vast rectangle with square pavilions, or towers, at each angle set diagonally. Though varied, its architecture is sober to a degree, particularly with respect to the rez-de-chaussée.

The inner court of this admirable chateau is surrounded by an arcaded gallery whose rounded arches are separated by a double colonnette. The gardens are of the “jardin anglais” variety, so affected by the French at the time of the completion of the chateau, and are cut and crossed by many arms of the ornamental water which entirely surrounds the property.

After the tenure of the family of Tavannes, the property passed to those of Rabutin and Montaigu, and, for the last century, has been owned by the MacMahons. There are some fragments lying about which belong to another edifice which dates from the thirteenth century, but not enough to give the stones the distinction of being called even a ruined chateau.

Épinac’s chateau dates from at least two centuries before the Chateau de Sully, and is a resurrection of an old chateau-fort. Two great heavy towers remain to-day as the chief architectural features, beside an extent of main building through whose walls are cut a series of splendid Gothic window frames. Tradition has it that these towers were originally much more lofty, but at the period when barons, whether rightly or wrongly, held their sway over their peers and anyone else who might be around, if the local seigneur was beaten at a tourney, the penalty he paid was to cut the towers of his castle down one-half. This seems a good enough tale to tack to a mediæval castle, as good as a ghost tale, and as satisfactory as if it were a recorded fact of history, instead of mere legend.

Originally these towers of the Chateau d’Épinac were of such an overwhelming height that they could be seen a hundred leagues around—this is local tradition again, and this time it is probably exaggeration. Three hundred miles is a long bird’s-eye view indeed! Anyway a local couplet reads thus, and is seemingly justifiable:

Épinac, too, is noted for its bottles, the fat-bellied, ample litres in which ripe old Burgundy is sold. “Dame Jeans” and “flacons” are here made by millions, which is only another way of referring to demijohns and bottles. Of their variety of shapes and sizes one may judge by the song the workers sing as they ply their trade:

The glass industry of Épinac, if not as old as its chateau, at least dates from the very earliest days of the art.

Retracing one’s steps some forty kilometres to Chalon-sur-Saône one comes midway to Chagny. The railroad guides chiefly make mention of Chagny as a junction where one is awakened at uncomfortable hours in the night to change cars. Some of us who have passed frequently that way can call attention to the fact that Chagny possesses, among other wonders, certain architectural glories which are worthy of consideration by even the hurried twentieth century traveller.

Here is a fine twelfth century Roman tower, a former dependency of some civic establishment, but now serving as the clocher of the church, a svelt but all imposing square broad-based tower of the local manor from which the seigneur of other days, even though he was not a “grand seigneur,” stretched forth his velvet-clad iron hand in mighty benediction over his good men and true.

Besides this there is a monstrosity of a cupola of the modern chateau which is hideous and prominent enough to be remarked from miles around.

Clearly, then, Chagny is much more than a railway junction. No one who stops more than a passing hour here will regret it, although its historic shrines are not many nor beautiful to any high degree.

CHAPTER XI

MÂCON, CLUNY AND THE CHAROLLAIS

Lying just to the westward is the Charollais, whose capital, Charolles, the ancient fortress of the Comtes de Charolles, is surrounded by a veritable girdle of castles and donjons, the nearest two kilometres beyond the town. They formed in their prime an outer line of defence behind which the counts lived in comparative safety. Montersine, the nearest of these works, a vast rectangular donjon with echauguettes, must certainly have been the most formidable. Within ten leagues are the chateaux of Lugny, Rambeauteau and Corcheval—one of the most ancient of the Charollais. There are also Terreaux-à-Verostres, the Renaissance Chaumont at Saint-Bonnet-de-Joux and, finally, the fortress of Commune-sur-Martigny-le-Comte.

Of these, that of Chaumont-la-Guiche, two kilometres from Saint-Bonnet-de-Joux, is quite the most splendid when it comes to best fulfilling the mission of a luxurious Renaissance maison de campagne. It is to-day the magnificent twentieth century residence of the Marquis de la Guiche, but is a lineal descendant of the edifice built in the reign of François Premier and terminated by Philibert de Guiche, who died in 1607. At the time of the Saint Bartholomew massacre he was Bailli de Mâcon, and, throughout, the Mâconnais and the Charollais took a firm stand against the killing off of the Protestants as an unholy means to a Christian end.

Before the chateau is an equestrian statue of its sixteenth century chatelain, and the stables, a great vaulted hall whose ceiling is upheld by more than fifty svelt colonnettes, are in no small way reminiscent of the still more extensive Écuries at Chantilly. There is also, as a dependency of the chateau, a remarkably beautiful Gothic chapel with fine old glass in its windows—Gothic of a late construction, be it understood, but acceptable Gothic nevertheless.

At Paray-le-Monail—a place of sainted pilgrimage, because of the miracle of the Sacré Cœur which took place here—is to be seen the luxurious dwelling of a local seigneur who was closely allied to the Comte de Charolles. It is a palace in all but name, and were it on the well-worn travel track in Touraine would be accounted one of the marvels of the brilliant array of Renaissance dwellings there. It holds this distinction to-day among the comparatively few who know it, and, as it serves the public functions of a Hôtel de Ville, its future as a “monument historique” worthy of preservation seems assured. Chateau or palace it may not be; it may be only a luxurious town house; who shall make the distinction after all? Let the reader, or better yet, the visitor, to this admirable Renaissance wonder-work be assured that it is more royally palatial than many which have sheltered the heads and persons of the most fastidious of monarchs.

South from Charolles, behind the hills of the Brionnais, almost on the edge of the ancient Forez, in part only Burgundian, is the coquette bourgade (a French expression absolutely untranslatable) of Marcigny, all ochre and brown after the local colouring. It is a town of a great tree-bordered Place, or Square, with decrepit old houses overhanging its narrow streets, made famous in the past by a celebrated Benedictine priory which received only the daughters of the nobility. Of this monastery there remains only the prior’s palace, a princely sort of abode which to-day has been turned into a hotel. Here one may experience one of the greatest and most joyful surprises of French travel, and pick up his historical lore on the spot.

Leaving Marcigny for Semur-en-Brionnais, one passes a vestige of the feudal past in the shape of an elaborately decorated feudal tower. At a distance this decorative effect seems to be produced by shot still clinging to the walls, an effect that may be seen also at Arques in Normandy and at Tarascon in the Midi. Here this is an illusion. As one approaches nearer it is easy to see these round bosses transform themselves into mascarons, or sculptured decorative details, like the escutcheons and plaques so frequently seen stuck into the walls of so many civic edifices in Italy. This old tower is of a different species, but manifestly it is a memorial of some sort. Its peaked head rises above a sort of pavillon, or loft, like a gigantic pigeon-house. There is a diminutive barbican on one side, and on the other are narrow slits of Gothic

windows, as if for defence rather than as a means of letting light and air within.

“This is some ancient historic monument, no doubt?” you query of some passing peasant. And to be precise he answers: “Yes, a tower.” That is all the information you can get beneath its shadow, but you are content and go your way. It fulfils exactly your idea of what a mediæval donjon should be, and what it lacks in apparent authenticated history can be readily enough imagined by anyone with a predilection for such musings.

Leaving the Charollais and the Brionnais, one turns toward Mâcon by the gateway of Cluny. Mediævalism here is rampant in memory, song and story, though the monuments are unfamiliar ones. It is an echo of the days when abbots and priors were often barons, and barons were magistrates who held the keys of life and death over other of mankind. These were the days, too, when the Pope was the real ruler of many a kingdom with another titular head. Large parcels of land, from the Black Sea to Brittany, fiefs, countships and even dukedoms, were church property, and others held their brief sway therein only by the tolerance of the Pontiff.

Seemingly exempt from this domination, the powerful monks of Cluny knew no lord nor master. On one occasion a Pope and a King of France, with numberless prelates and nobles in their train, took refuge in the old abbey, but not a brother put himself out in the least to do them honour.

By the fifteenth century, the hour of decadence had rung out for Cluny; no more was it true

It was at this time that the “arbitres des rois” lost their power.

The great Abbey of Cluny may readily enough be included in any contemplation of the great civic and domestic establishments of these parts. The only difference is that in some cases the chatelains or chatelaines were princes or princesses instead of abbés or abbesses.

Cluny’s destinies were presided over by an abbé, but kings and cardinals and popes all, at one time or another, came to dwell within its walls.

When Cluny was but a mere hamlet, in the year 910 A.D., Guillaume, Duc d’Aquitaine et Comte d’Auvergne, founded this abbey, which became one of the most celebrated in the universe. From the first its abbés were cardinals and princes of Church and State.

In 1245 Pope Innocent IV. visited the abbey with a train of twelve cardinals and scores of minor churchmen. The Sainted Louis and the queen, his mother, enjoyed hospitality within its walls, and the Emperor of Constantinople, and a throng of followers, all found a welcome here; and this without incommoding the four hundred monks who were attached to the foundation. Pope Gelasse II died at the abbey, and the Archbishop Guy of Vienne was here elected Pope, under the name of Calixtus II, by a conclave assembled within its halls. To-day the pride of the former powerful abbey rests only on its laurels of other days. Its superb basilica has practically disappeared. Only its foundations, five hundred and fifty feet in length, are to be traced. The extensive library has disappeared, and only certain of the walls and roofs and a few minor apartments of the former palatial conventual buildings remain to suggest the one time glory.

The rich plain of Cluny was, in 910 A.D., but a forest called the “Vallé Noire” when the Abbé Bernon with a dozen brothers founded the celebrated Abbey of Cluny, called the “cradle of modern civilization.”

Of the conventual buildings the most remarkable features still standing are the south arm of the great transept of the abbey church, the massive octagonal tower, of a height of sixty metres, another slighter octagonal clocher, and the Chapelle des Bourbons.

Cluny’s old houses, or such of them as remain, have been to a large extent rebuilt and remodelled, but still enough remains to suggest that the old monastic city was a place of luxury-loving and worldly citizens as well as monks. Here and there a flying stair, a balcony, a loggia, or a rez-de-Chaussée arcade suggests a detail almost Italian in its motive. Colonnettes divide a range of windows and pilasters support stone balconies and terraces here and there in a most pleasing manner, and with a most surprising frequency,—a frequency which is the more pleasing, since, as has been said, scarcely anything of the sort is to be seen here in more than fragmentary form, though indeed all the architectural orders and devices of the ingenious mediæval builder are to be noted. The Revolution respected Cluny, but the Empire and “La Bande Noire” condemned it to destruction.

The Abbatial Palace, a palatial dependence of the abbey, where lodged visiting potentates and prelates, escaped entire destruction, and is to-day the chief ornament of the town. A national educational institution now occupies the halls and apartments of this great building where lords and seigneurs and churchmen once held their conclaves.

A fine Gothic portal leads to the inner court of this magnificent edifice, which was erected by two abbés, Jean de Bourbon and Jacques d’Amboise. Each had built a separate dwelling on either side of the great portal. That of the Cardinal de Bourbon is unlovely enough, as such edifices go, but has an air of a certain sumptuousness notwithstanding. That of Jacques d’Amboise is a highly ornate work of the Renaissance, and now serves as the Hôtel de Ville, whilst the other houses a local museum and library.

A garden of the formal order surrounds the two edifices and covers a goodly bit of the ground formerly occupied by the other buildings attached to the abbey. Entrance to this garden, and its Palais Abbatial, as the ensemble is officially known, is through a double Romanesque portal, as much a militant note as the rest is religious.

Cluny’s Hôtel Dieu is another remarkable souvenir of old. Within are various monuments and statues of churchmen and nobles which give it at once a lien on one’s regard. There is a luxurious monument to one of the Abbés of Cluny; another, that the Cardinal de Bouillon erected to his father, Maurice de la Tour d’Auvergne, Duc Souverain de Bouillon, Prince Souverain de Sedan.

Here and there about the town an old feudal tower or house-front juts out in close communion with some banal modern façade, but the whole aspect of the city of some four thousand inhabitants to-day is, when viewed from a distant approach, as of a feudal city with no modernities whatever. Near acquaintance disabuses one of this idea, but, regardless of this, the aspect of Cluny, the monastery and the city, is one of imposing and harmonious grandeur, hardly to be likened to any similar ensemble in France or beyond the frontiers.

Near Cluny, in the heart of the “Black Valley,” is the Chateau de Cormatin, belonging to a M. Gunsbourg, and containing an important collection of pictures and furniture, all of them antique, which are cordially submitted to the gaze of the curious upon a diplomatic request.

Rising from the plain, on the road to Tournus, is the Chateau de Brançion, a feudal relic and not much more, but proclaiming its former military glory as if its history had been epoch-making, which it probably was not, as there is but scant reference to it in local annals.

As one approaches Mâcon by road from the north or west, great villas and “chateaux de commerce” line every kilometre of the way. Some are ancient and historic, though in no really great sense; others are modern and banally, painfully, well-kept and whitewashed—only the badigeon is pink or blue or green, painted one can readily believe by the artist (sic) descendants of the Italians who once inhabited the region in large numbers. There are overhanging balconies on all sides; balustrades, terraces and loggias relieve the monotony of most of the façades, and indeed, it is as if a corner of Italy had been transported to mid-France.

Mâcon is a picturesque ensemble of much that is ancient, but the smugness of the place, its undeniable air of modernity and prosperity, have done much to discount what few well conserved architectural charms it still possesses. This is true of great churches and palatial dwellings alike, though there are many undeniably fine bits here and there which, if one only knew, perhaps possess a history as thrilling as that enjoyed by many more noble edifices.

For one of the best impressions of Mâcon it is possible to have, there is nothing better than Turner’s painting “Mâcon,” or a photographic copy thereof. It is a drawing which until recently was never engraved. Turner and his engravers never dared attempt it, so complex was the light and shadow of the vintage sun shining on the hillsides and valleys of the Côte d’Or. Recently Frank Short made a mezzotint of it, and it stands to-day as one of the most expressive topographical drawings extant.

Mâcon was originally the capital of a petit pays, the Mâconnais, and is to-day, in local parlance. In former times it was the governmental seat of a line of petty sovereigns, from the day of Louis-le-Débonnaire until the country passed into the hands of the ducal Burgundians. From this time forth, though forming a component part of the great duchy, the region was settled frequently upon various members of the parent house as a vassal state where the younger branch might wield a little power of its own without complicating the affairs of the greater government.

In Revolutionary times Mâcon was considered by the Republicans as “a hateful aristocratic hole.” This being so, one wonders that more souvenirs of royalty have not remained.

In feudal times the city was enclosed by an enceinte cut with six great gates, supported by an inner citadel. These walls and bastions were demolished later, and the city was almost alone among those of Burgundy to freely open its doors to the Ligueurs and Henri IV. From this time on important historical events seem to have avoided Mâcon.

The site of Mâcon’s ancient citadel is now occupied by the Préfecture. It was formerly the Episcopal Palace, a regal dwelling which the bishops of other days must have found greatly to their liking. It is the nearest thing to a chateau which Mâcon possesses to-day.

The Hôtel de Ville is a banal structure of the eighteenth century, the gift of the Comte de Montreval, formerly his family residence. The Palais de Justice is also a made-over hôtel-privée and has some architectural distinctions, but there is nothing here to take rank among the castles and chateaux of the rest of the Burgundian countryside.

Southwest from Mâcon, scarce thirty kilometres away, is a romantic little corner of old France known to the French themselves—those who know it at all—as the Pays de Lamartine. The little townlets of Milly and Saint-Pont were the cradle and the refuge of Lamartine, who so loved this part of France extending from the Loire to Lac Leman and the Alps.

The political world of the capital, into whose vortex the great litterateur was irresistibly drawn, had not a tithe of the effect upon his character as compared with that evoked by the solitudes of his Burgundian patrie and his Alpes de Chambéry.

Milly, here in the midst of the opulent plains and hillsides of Burgundy, is a spot so calm and so simply environed that one can not but feel somewhat of the inspiration of the man who called it his “chère maison.”

A half a dozen kilometres from Milly is Saint-Pont surrounded by a magnificent framing of rounded summits forming one of those grandiose landscapes of which Lamartine so often wrote:

Here is the Chateau de Lamartine, not a tourist sight by any means, at least not an over-done one, but a shrine as worthy of contemplation and admiration as many another more grand and more popular.

Seated snugly at the foot of a wooded slope, the chateau, flanked with two great towers, lifts its serrated sky-line proudly above the reddish, ochre-washed walls (a colour dear to the folk of the Mâconnais) high above the level of the roofs of the town below.

A more massive square tower sets further to the rear, and a tourelle, with a pointed candle-snuffer roof, accentuates the militant aspect of the edifice, though indeed its claims rest entirely on the arts of peace to the exclusion of those of war.

Here, in the family chateau, Alphonse-Marie-Louis-de-Lamartine passed the happiest years of his life. This was at a time when the pomp of power which he afterwards tasted as Minister of Foreign Affairs, after the abdication of Louis Philippe, had no attraction for him.

As Lamartine himself wrote: “Nothing here will remind one of luxury; it is simply the aspect of a great farm where the owners live the simple life in a great block of a silent dwelling.” These words describe the Chateau de Lamartine very well to-day.

Saint-Pont and the Chateau de Lamartine are well worth half a day of anyone who is found at Mâcon and not hard pressed to move on.

Near Saint-Pont is the ancient Chateau de Noble, belonging, in 1558, to Nicolas de Pisa, and, in 1789, to Claude de la Beaune. It is not a splendid structure in any architectural sense, but a most curious and appealing one. Its chief distinction comes from its two pointed coiffed towers, one at either end of a high sloping gable.

Repairs and restorations made since the Revolution have deprived it of the ancient ramparts which once entirely surrounded it, but the romantic and curious aspect of the main body of the structure, and those all-impressive, svelt, sky-piercing towers, make it seem too quaint to be real. Certainly no more remarkable use of such adjuncts to a seigneurial chateau has ever been made than these towers. Here they are not massive, nor particularly tall, but their proportions are seemingly just what they ought to be. They are, at any rate, entirely in accord with the rest of the structure, and that is what much modern architecture lacks.

CHAPTER XII

IN THE BEAUJOLAIS AND LYONNAIS

Throughout the countryside of the Beaujolais and the Mâconnais one notes a manner of building with respect to the meaner dwellings which, to say the least, is most curious. These small houses are built of a species of sun-dried bricks or lumps of clay. It seems satisfactory; as satisfactory as would be an adobe dwelling—in a dry climate. But here in times of flood those built in the river bottoms have been known to melt away like the sand castles of children at the seashore.

The present Département of the Saône-et-Loire was evolved from the very midst of the Burgundian kingdom, and comprises chiefly the mediæval Comtés of the Autunnois, Chalonnais, Mâconnais and Charollais. The Romans were the real exploiters of all this region, and only with the pillage of the Normans, and the successive civil and religious wars, did the break-up of Burgundy really come to be an assured fact.

Chalon-sur-Saône itself is most attractive—in parts. As a whole it is disappointing. François Premier built the fortifications of Chalon in 1521, and half a century later Charles IX constructed the citadel—“to hold the town in subjection, and the inhabitants in ignorance.”

Dijon was the city of the mediæval counts; Chalon was a city of churchmen. Nevertheless the bishops of the episcopal city bore the title of Counts, and of its churches which remain none is more typical of the best of Romanesque in France than the nave and side aisles of Chalon’s Cathedral de Saint Vincent.

Chalon’s monuments of the feudality are few indeed to-day; they and their histories have been well nigh forgotten, but here and there some fine old gable or portico springs into view unannounced, and one readily enough pictures again the life of the lords and ladies who lived within their walls, whilst to-day they are given over to matter of fact, work-a-day uses with little or no sentimental or romantic atmosphere about them.

There is no distinct official edifice at Chalon which takes up its position as a chateau, or manoir, at least none of great renown, though a rebuilt old church now transformed into a hotel of the second or third rate order is one of the most curiously adapted edifices of its class anywhere to be seen.

What a great family the Chalonnais were is recalled by the fact that in the sixteenth century all the folk of the city were regarded as cousins. This is taking the situation by and large, but certain it was that a community of family liens as well as interests did tend to make this relationship notable. Furthermore each of the trades and métiers herded by themselves in real clansman fashion, the nail-makers in the Rue des Cloutiers, the boiler-makers in the Rue des Chaudronniers and the barrel-makers in the Rue des Tonneliers. And there was a quarter, or faubourg, devoted to the priests and monks, as well as another where none but the nobility were allowed to be abroad.

To the west of Chalon are two famous vineyards, Touches and Mercurey, surrounded by mere hamlets, there being no populous centres nearer than Givry or Chalon. One remarks these two famous vineyards because of their repute, and because of the neighbouring superb ruin of the mediæval Chateau de Montaigu which crowns a hill lying between the two properties.

In the neighbourhood of Chalon are numerous little towns of no rank whatever as historic or artistic shrines, but bearing the suffix of Royal. It is most curious to note that many have changed their nomenclature—as it was before the Revolution. Saint Gengoux-le-Royal and ten other parishes all dropped the Royal, and became known as Saint Gengoux-le-National, etc. Donzy-le-Royal was not so fortunate in its position. Saint Gengoux has gained nothing by its spasm of republicanism. It is not more national to-day than Cavaillon or Carpentras, whereas the suffix Royal meant, if it meant anything, that it was an indication of its ancient rank when it belonged directly to the crown of France. Republicanism did not change its allegiance, only its name.

The diligence from Paris stopped at Chalon-sur-Saône in the old days and passengers made their way to Lyons by the river. Colbert it was who sought to develop the service of coches d’eau on the Saône between Chalon and Lyons. He carried the thing so far, in 1669, that he suppressed the public diligence by land which had formerly made the journey between the two capitals. This was not accomplished without a live protestation from the residents of the terminal cities.

In the last days of the malle-poste, when Chalon was the end of the journey from Paris, four steamboats of a primitive order competed for the privilege of carrying passengers from Chalon to Lyons.

To-day the service has been suppressed; the “piroschapes,” as they were called, have gone the way of the mail coaches. Travel to-day is accomplished with more comfort and more expedition.

Below Chalon, following down the Saône, within a league, one comes to Toisé, with a celebrated chateau, almost wholly ignored to-day when checking off the historical monuments of France. And this is true in spite of the fact that it was here within the walls of the Chateau de Toisé that was signed the famous treaty between Henri IV and the Duc de Mayenne. The chateau is simply an admirable Renaissance monument of its time with no very remarkable features or history save that noted above. This is enough to make it better known and more often visited, if only glanced at in passing. The author hopes the suggestion may be taken in earnest by those interested.

Midway between Mâcon and Chalon is Tournus, the site of a chateau-fort built by the Franks, and also of an abbey founded by Charles-le-Chauve in 875 A.D. This monarch gave the abbey a charter as proprietor of the city of Tournus in consideration of the monks putting it and its inhabitants under the protection of the Virgin and Saint Philibert. He also made the congregation of monks of the order of Saint Benoit “fermiers” of this “celestial domain.”

The Abbés of Tournus were a powerful race, rivalling the princes and dukes of other fiefs, and owning allegiance only to the king and Pope, more often to the latter than to the former. Among them were numbered no less than eight cardinals in the fifty-nine who ruled the city and the “domain.”

The monastery itself has become a sort of institution, a secular lodging house, but its fine church still remains as one of the most famous Romanesque-Burgundian examples of its time.

Above Tournus, high on the hill back of the town, sits a disused ancient fabric, a former Benedictine abbey. Its abbés had the right to wear the pontifical vestments, and to administer justice to the city and its neighbouring dependencies. More like an antique fortress than a religious foundation, it is the most ambitious and striking edifice now to be seen in Tournus.

Tournus has an artistic shrine of great moment and interest, although its architectural details comport little with the really dignified examples of mediæval architecture. It is the birthplace of the painter Greuze, and before its arcades rises a monument to his memory. The great painter of the idealist school was born here. In the local museum are nearly five hundred designs from his hand.

Opposite Tournus, in mid-Saône, is a strip of flat island known as the Ile-de-la-Palme, a morsel of alluvial soil respected by centuries of spring floods which have passed it by on either side, and indeed, often over its surface. The Helvetians, quitting their country in ancient times, invaded Gaul and made use of the Ile-de-la-Palme to cross the Saône, aided by either pontoons or rafts. Centuries later, after the bloody battle of Fontenay, the son of Louis-le-Débonnaire held a conference on this isle with regard to the division of the conquered territory. Thus it is that the Ile-de-la-Palme in the Saône has something in common with that other historic island in the Bidassoa where France and Spain played a game of give and take in the sixteenth century.

A short distance from the east bank of the Saône is Romenay in the heart of the Chalonnais. It is a relic of an ancient fortified city, a townlet to-day of less than six hundred inhabitants, though once, judging from the remains of its oldtime ramparts, much more extensive and influential.

Saint Trivier-de-Courtes, like Romenay, has little more than a bare half a thousand of population to-day, though it was once a noble outpost planted by the Ducs de Savoie, the masters of Bresse, against the possible invasion of the Burgundians and the French from the north.

At Bagé-le-Chatel, between Mâcon and Bourg, rises a grim reminder of the feudality. It is the silhouette of the fine old castle of the ancient Seigneurs de Bagé.

Passing Mâcon by, and still following the Saône, one comes in a dozen or twenty kilometres to Thoissey, a town which has not been greatly in evidence these latter days. It is a somnolent little city of the ancient Principality of Dombes, that disputed ground of the Burgundians and the Savoyards in the middle ages. Only from the fact that it was the birthplace of Commandant Marchand of the ill-fated Faschoda expedition would it ever have been mentioned in the public prints of the last generation.

In good old monarchial days it was different. Then Thoissey set an aristocratic example to many a neighbour more prosperous and better known to-day. The Princes de Dombes had a chateau here, and they embellished the local Hospice in a way that made it almost a rival of that other establishment of its class at Beaune. Throughout Thoissey there were, and are still, many admirable examples of the town houses of the nobles and courtiers of the little State of Dombes. Thoissey was the miniature capital of a miniature kingdom. The local “college” still shows evidences of a luxuriant conception of architectural decoration with its finely sculptured window frames and doorways.

The most striking incident of Thoissey’s career was when the Seigneur de Bagé attacked the Seigneur de Thoissey, who was at the time the Sire de Beaujeau, in his stronghold. The latter called the Duc de Bourbon to his aid and thus brought about an inter-province imbroglio which necessitated the intervention of the King of France as mediator, though without immediate success. The litigation finally went before Pope Clement VII (a French Pope, by the way), and only in 1408, a quarter of a century after the feud began, did the Duc de Bourbon, who meantime had become also the Sire de Beaujeau, succeed in throwing off his adversaries.

Thoissey during the time of the Ligue, or more particularly its Seigneur, threw in its lot with Mayenne, who ultimately, when he finally went over to his royal master, caused the Chateau de Thoissey to be razed to earth. This is why to-day one sees only the heap of stones, locally called “the chateau,” which, to be appreciated, require a healthy imagination and some knowledge of the situation.

At Belleville-sur-Saône is a little strip of the earth’s surface called by the French the finest panorama in the world and “le plus bel lieu de France.” It is beautiful, even beyond words, a smiling radiant river valley with nearly all the artistic attributes which go to make up the ideal landscape. Just how near it comes to being the finest view in the world is a matter of opinion. The New Zealander thinks that he has that little corner of God’s green earth, and so does many a down-east farmer, to say nothing of the man from the Missouri Valley and the occasional Scotch Highlander.

The tiny little city of Anse has few recollections for most travellers, but it possesses an admirable ruin of a chateau-fortress, with two towers bronzed by time and still proudly erect. This ruin, together with the memory that Augustus once had a palace here in the ancient Anita of the Romans, and the neighbouring ruin of the chateau of the Sires de Villars over towards Trévoux, are all that Anse has to-day for the curious save its delightful situation in a bend of the Saône.

Opposite Belleville-sur-Saône is Montmerle. In the middle ages it was one of the sentinel cities which guarded the Principality of Dombes. Sieges and assaults without number were its portion, from the Bourguignons, the troops of the Sire de Beaujeau, the Dauphinois and the Counts and Dukes of Savoy.

The imposing ruins of the former chateau-fortress tell the story of its mighty struggle which endured for nearly a century. For the most part the bulk of the material of which it was built has disappeared, or at least has been built up into other works, but the massive signal tower which once bolstered up the main portal still rises high above the waters of the Saône. The tower supposedly dates from the twelfth century—the period to which belonged the chateau—and is distinguished by its hardiness and height rather than for its solidity and massiveness.

At Farcins, near-by, is a magnificent and still habitable chateau of the end of the reign of Henri IV, built by Jean de Sève, Conseiller du Roi, on the plans of Baptiste Androuet du Cerceau. From Montmerle one may see the towers and roofs of half a dozen other minor chateaux of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries scattered here and there through the Beaujolais, but nothing distinctive arrests one’s attention until Villefranche and Trévoux are reached.

The Sires de Beaujeau, from motives of policy if from no other, ever respected the privilege of Villefranche (founded by Humbert IV). The traditions of Villefranche’s old Auberge du Mouton are classic, and have been used time and again by playwright and novelist without even acknowledgment to history. It was here in the “Free City” beside the Rhone that Edward II swore to observe the city’s claims of municipal liberty.

Villefranche has no other notable monuments save the Hôtel de Ville of to-day, which is an admirable Renaissance town house, and another equally striking in the Rue Nationale. The latter is almost palatial in its proportions.

Just below Villefranche is Trévoux, the ancient capital of the Principality of Dombes. It comes into the lime-light here only because of its ruined castle on a height above the town which travellers by road or rail cannot fail to remark even if they do not think it worth while to become intimately acquainted.

The old castle is situated on the summit of a hill to the west of the town, its two black-banded towers of the middle ages proclaiming loudly the era of its birth. The octagonal donjon is a master-work of its kind and dates from the twelfth century. Since the Revolution this remarkable donjon has been shorn of a good two-thirds of its former height, and the effect is now rather stubby. With another twenty metres to its credit it must indeed have been imposing, as well by its construction as its situation. It is no wonder that this powerful defence was able to resist the attack of the Sire de Varambon, who, after capturing the city, sought vainly to take the chateau in 1431. It was a cruel victory indeed, for the wilful seigneur, not content with capturing the city, drove out all its wealthy and comfortably rich inhabitants and charged them a price of admission to get in again, mutilating their persons in a shocking manner if they did not disgorge all of their treasure as the price of this privilege.

The local seigneur, his family and immediate retainers, were meanwhile huddled within the walls of the chateau and only escaped starvation at the hands of the victor by his having tired of the game of siege and by his withdrawal, carrying with him all the loot which he could gather together and transport.

It was at Trévoux that the Jesuits compiled the celebrated Dictionary and Journal which made such a furor in the literary annals of the eighteenth century.

With the exception of François Premier all of the French monarchs from Philippe-Auguste down to Louis XIV acknowledged the independence of the Principality of Dombes, and owed them the allegiance of supplying men and money in case they were attacked. The Parliament met at Trévoux and the Principality was one of the earliest and smallest political divisions of France to coin its own money.

CHAPTER XIII

THE FRANCHE COMTÉ: AUXONNE AND BESANÇON

It is characteristic of the independent spirit of the people of these parts that they should tell Henri IV, who praised the wine they offered him, when he was making a stay among them, and was being entertained in Besançon’s citadel, that they had a much better one in the cellar which they were saving for a more august occasion.

The Franche Comté is in no sense a tourist region; its varied topography has not been given even a glance of the eye by most conventional tourists, and its historical souvenirs have been almost entirely ignored by the makers of romances and stage-plays. Switzerland-bound travellers have an excellent opportunity to become acquainted with this comparatively little known corner of old France as they rush across it by express train via Pontarlier, but few avail themselves thereof. For this reason, if no other, the architectural monuments of the Franche Comté come upon one as genuine surprises.

From Dijon our way lay through Genlis and Auxonne to Besançon, and there is no better way of approaching the heart of things, though it will require some courage on the part of travellers by train to accommodate themselves to the inconvenient hours of departure and arrival. The traveller by road will have a much easier and a much more enjoyable time of it; and right here is a suggestion of a new ground for touring automobilists who may be tired of well-worn roads. It is just as enjoyable to hunt out historic monuments with an automobile as with a Cook’s ticket and a railway train—more so, some of us think. It would certainly not have been possible for the makers of this book to have otherwise got over the ground covered herein, so let not the ultra-sentimentalist decry the modern mode of locomotion.

Winding its way between the confines of Burgundy and the Comté the highroad from Paris to Pontarlier and Switzerland led us first to Auxonne. Genlis we passed en route and almost had a thrill over it by recalling the notorious Comtesse de Genlis. We racked our brains a moment and then remembered that the celebrated “bas bleu” hailed from somewhere in Picardy, so, then, this particular Genlis had no further interest for us, above all in that there was no chateau in sight.

Auxonne (the old Ad Sonam of the Romans, afterwards corrupted into Assona, then Assonium and finally as it is to-day) was but a dozen kilometres beyond Genlis, and, sitting astride the great highway from Paris to Geneva, was early a fortified place of great strategic importance. Vauban traced its last ramparts and it was thought likely to hold its rank for all time, but now the fortifications have disappeared and the city no longer takes its place as a frontier outpost, that honour having been usurped by Besançon in the Jura.

Of the military and feudal past there are still vivid memories at Auxonne. The chateau-fort is still there, built in different epochs by Louis XI, Charles VIII and Louis XII, and these works combined to make an edifice seemingly all-resistant, or at least formidable to a high degree. The chateau is still there, in part at least—not much has actually been despoiled, but actually the railway station is more militant in aspect. The stranger coming to Auxonne for the first time—unless he be prepared beforehand—will have grave doubts at first as to which is the chateau and which is the gare. The latter has a crenelated cornice, meurtrières pierced in its walls, and the vague appearance of bastions, all of which are also found in the real in the old chateau grimly overlooking the swift-flowing Saône. The enormous flanking towers of the real chateau, in spite of the city having been shorn of its prime military rank, are still kept in condition for the service of long-range guns, for the French are ever in a state of preparedness for the invasion which may never come. The lesson of “71” was well learned.

On the great entrance portal of the chateau is blazoned a stone-sculptured hedgehog, the devise of Louis XII, and in opposing niches are two carven angels holding aloft an escutcheon. Another doorway is hardly less impressive, though somewhat vague as to the purport of its ornament, which stands for nothing military or even civic.

This introduction to the militant glory of the Auxonne of other days is a ripe indication of the dignity with which the place was one day enhanced. Of a population to-day of something less than five thousand souls, the city shelters nearly three thousand soldiers of all arms. Its warlike aspect can hardly be said to have changed much from what it was of old in spite of the fact that its importance is lower down in the scale.

Another warlike reminder is the statue which rises proudly in the Place d’Armes. It is that of the Sous-Lieutenant Bonaparte as he was upon his arrival at Auxonne, a pallid youth just out of the military school of Brienne.

In the plain neighbouring upon Auxonne, a sort of mid-France Flanders, is a populous town with a momentous and romantic history, albeit its architectural monuments, save in fragments, are practically nil. The Revolutionary authorities took away its old name and called it “Belle Defense,” in memory of a heroic resistance opposed by the place to the invading Duc de Lorraine in 1616. Gallas had freed the Saône with thirty thousand men, and with Cardinal La Valette at the head of his army (a cardinal whom Richelieu had made a general) found Dijon so well guarded that he turned on his steps and attacked what is to-day Saint Jean-de-Losne. Fifty thousand soldiers in all finally besieged the place, and less than fifteen hundred of the inhabitants, and a garrison of but a hundred and fifty, held them at bay. The Duc d’Enghien, the future Grand Condé, then Governor of Burgundy, was able to send a feeble body of reinforcements and thus turn the tide in favour of the besieged.

For this great defence Louis XIII exonerated the city from all future taxes, and the grand cross of the Legion d’Honneur was allowed to be incorporated into the city arms, as indeed it endures unto to-day. The tracings of the former fortifications are plainly marked, though the walls themselves have disappeared.

Dole is commonly thought of as but a great railway junction. Besançon and Montbéliard are the real objectives of this itinerary through the Franche Comté and the half-way houses are apt to be neglected. For fear of this we “stopped over” at Dole.

Dole’s historic souvenirs are many and have in more than one instance left behind their stories writ large in stone. The present Hôtel de Ville was the old Palais du Parlement, built in the sixteenth century, from the designs of Boyvin, who was himself President of the Chambre at the time. Within the courtyard of this old Parliament House is an impressive donjon of a century earlier, the Tour de Vergy, which offers as choice a lot of underground cells, or oubliettes, as one may see outside the Chateau d’If or the Castle of Loches. The Palais de Justice at Dole, with a magnificently carved portal, was formerly the Couvent des Cordeliers and dates from 1572.

The memory of Besançon in the minds of most folk—provided they have any memory of it at all—will be recalled by the opening lines of Stendhal’s “Rouge et Noir.” “Besançon n’est pas seulement une des plus jolies villes de France, elle abonde en gens de cœur et d’esprit.”

The flowing Doubs nearly surrounds the “Roc” of Besançon with a great horse-shoe loop which gives a natural isolation and makes its citadel more nearly redoubtable than was ever imagined by Vauban, its builder.

From an artistic point of view Besançon’s monuments are not many or varied if one excepts the Palais Granvelle and the military defences, which are made up in part of a number of mediæval towers and Vauban’s citadel. There are four great sentinel towers surrounding the city, all dating from the period of Charles Quint, but the city gates, piercing the fortification walls, were built also by Vauban between 1668-1711, and are by no means as ancient as they look.

The Palais Granvelle, of the sixteenth century, has a fine dignified monumental aspect wholly impressive regardless of its lack of magnitude and the absence of a strict regard for the architectural orders. Liberties have been taken here and there with its outlines which place it beyond the pale of a thoroughly consistent structure, but for all that it undeniably pleases the eye, and more. And what else has one a right to demand unless he is a pedant? In general the civic and domestic architecture of the Franche Comté are of a sobriety which gives them a distinction all their own; the opposite is true of the churches, taking that at Pont-à-Mousson as a concrete example.

The street façade of the Palais Granvelle is undeniably fine, with a dignity born of simplicity. Its interior façade, that giving on the courtyard, is freer in treatment, but still not