Poitiers was our next stop; it was just growing dusk as we slowed into the station. Surely few cities offer more suggestive environment for mystery and romance than does Poitiers, seen by the fading light of a November afternoon. Dim heights surround the city; a broad, grey river, in parts a dazzle of steely points, flows round the outskirts; a glimpse is seen here and there, of spire, tower and battlements rising from out the midst of wooded heights; of grey, winding roads leading steeply down from the city on the hill, to the valleys and ravines beneath. We had an additional adjunct to the general picturesqueness in a long procession of priests, some wearing birettas, some sombreros, accompanied by serried ranks of country-women in the long-backed white caps peculiar to the district, with long, stiff white strings hanging loose over the shoulder. It was evidently the end of some pilgrimage. Poitiers is a city of many priests and religious orders, both of men and women; of monasteries and nunneries. When the procession had wended its way out of the station, the platform was appropriated by men carrying baskets of eggs, coloured with cochineal. Now, as everyone who has travelled much in this part of France is aware, really new-laid eggs, and matches, are apparently not indigenous, so to speak, for neither can be procured without enormous difficulty. I could have made quite a fortune over a few little boxes of English safety matches I possessed! Nevertheless, sufficiently ill-advised as to buy some of these eggs, we found that the colour was distinctly appropriate; for the red of the eggs' autumn was upon them, both materially and metaphorically. This information was conveyed to us promptly on "taking their caps off" (as a child once happily expressed it to me). Their "autumn" tints were very much "turned" indeed, and, in consequence, they speedily made their "last appearance on any stage" on the road far beneath! I remember on one occasion when remonstrating with the proprietor of a hotel, regarding the flavour of much keeping that hung about his new-laid eggs, he remarked that he only "took them as the _poulets_ laid them down!"