I here propose to zig-zag with my readers through regions of Eastern France not described in any of my former works. The marvels of French travel, no more than the _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of French literature, are unlimited. Short of saluting the tricolour on Mont Blanc, or of echoing the Marseillaise four hundred and odd feet underground in the cave of Padirac, I think I may fairly say that I have exhausted France as a wonder-horn. But quiet beauties and homely graces have also their seduction, just as we turn with a sense of relief from "Notre Dame de Paris" or "Le Pere Goriot," to a domestic story by Rod or Theuriet, so the sweet little valley of the Loing refreshes after the awful Pass of Gavarni, and soothing to the ear is the gentle flow of its waters after the thundering Rhone. Majestic is the panorama spread before our eyes as we pic-nic on the Puy de Dome. More fondly still my memory clings to many a narrower perspective, the view of my beloved Dijon from its vine-clad hills or of Autun as approached from Pre Charmoy, to me, the so familiar home of the late Philip Gilbert Hamerton. If, however, the natural marvels of France, like those of any other country, can be catalogued, French scenery itself offers inexhaustible variety. And so, having visited, re-visited, and re-visited again this splendid hexagon on the European map, I yet find in the choice of holiday resorts a veritable _embarras de richesses_. And many of the spots here described will, I have no doubt, be as new to my readers as they have been to myself--_Larchant_ with its noble tower rising from the plain, recalling the still nobler ruin of Tclemcen on the borders of the Sahara--_Recloses_ with its pictorial interiors and grand promontory overlooking a panorama of forest, sombre purplish green ocean unflecked by a single sail--_Moret_ with its twin water-ways, one hardly knows which of the two being the more attractive--_Nemours_, favourite haunt of Balzac, memoralized in "Ursule Mirouet"--_La Charite_, from whose old-world dwellings you may throw pebbles into the broad blue Loire--_Pougues_, the prettiest place with the ugliest name, frequented by Mme. de Sevigne and valetudinarians of the Valois race generations before her time--_Souvigny_, cradle of the Bourbons, now one vast congeries of abbatial ruins--_Arcis-sur-Aube_, the sweet riverside home of Danton--its near neighbour, _Bar-sur-Aube_, connected with a bitterer enemy of Marie Antoinette than the great revolutionary himself, the infamous machinator of the Diamond Necklace. These are a few of the sweet nooks and corners to which of late years I have returned again and again, ever finding "harbour and good company." And these journeys, I should rather say visits, East of Paris led me once more to that sad yearning France beyond the frontier, to homes as French, to hearts as devoted to the motherland as when I first visited the annexed provinces twenty years ago!

EAST OF PARIS

CHAPTER I

MELUN