But we, who pass our days in London, soon weary of other cities, even though they be ancient and French; besides, we wanted to see something of the environs of Dijon; so a fine afternoon found us cycling along the five kilometres of flat yet attractive road that leads by the Canal de Bourgogne to Plombières, in the valley of the Ouche. There was music all the way; the breeze that whispered to the "paint-brush" poplars, and rustled in the reeds and grasses of the bank; the song of the grasshoppers, the "sound of waters shaken" where they curled foaming through the lock gates. We had beauty with us, too; all the mature beauty of a bright autumn day, as we glided beside the still water, between waving grasses and lichen-gilded trunks. On our left were golden vineyards, and, beneath them, rose-embowered cottages and jagged quarries where brawny quarrymen were dealing mighty, swinging strokes that echoed through the valley. To our right were the terraced hills of Talant, and ahead the tower of Plombières church, high above the village roofs. We passed white-hooded peasants--ample women with genuine, solid bodies, ambling homeward from the markets of Dijon, and black-bloused peasants, who, blessed with a patience that was never given to us, were "soaking an indefinite bait in an indifferent stream;" we passed blazing bonfires by the side of the road, whereon girls were heaping all the grasses they had cut during a busy day with the sickle. And when we got there, we found the mairie besieged by women in white dresses and men in black coats. There was a wedding; and couples were whirling in the Salle de Bal. That Talant I spoke of, on the hill, is another spot to make for between tea and dinner; if only for the views it gives you down over the City of Dijon and the Valley of the Ouche. From the village green, shaded with ancient walnut trees, between which the children play with their dappled goats, there lie before you, across the willow-fringed silver streak that is the Canal de Bourgogne, the hills of the Côte d'Or, now shrouded in the purple mists of evening. Southward, looming through the red smoke-wreaths, that curl upwards from its factories, rise the towered palace, and the spires of the ducal city. Below, among the vines and fruit trees, beside the red gravel pit in the grey cemetery, the flames of the peasants' fires, flashing in lines, like the camp fires of a beleaguered town, are deepening with an opalesque veil of floating vapour the gathering mysteries of the night.