Bang!! Rattle! Bang!! The thicket of horns, visible from without, shook like a wood in a winter gale. A mild white head was thrust over the lime-washed barrier, mutely protesting. We echo the animal's protest, and our own. "Do you always keep travellers waiting like this?" "You see, Monsieur, it is because of the cow, she is bien souffrante." "Then why treat her so?" I pointed to the still trembling truck; "but in any case, are we of less importance than a cow? Are not we, too, bien souffrant?" "Yes, but you see, Monsieur, if the cow died, the _patron_ would lose four hundred francs; but, had I known, I would have brought your bicycles earlier." We reached the Hotel St. Louis at last. Then, wishing to escape, until dinner-time, from the still glowing streets, we crossed the Place du Champs de Mars, followed the gentle descent of the Faubourg d'Arroux, and passed beneath the Roman gate that leads northward from the city of Augustus into the open plain. A hundred yards or so further on, a sharp turn to the left brought us to two bridges crossing the tributary streams that wind among the whispering poplars, beneath which, all day long, the kneeling blanchisseuses have been pounding mercilessly their unoffending washing. Continuing our walk between the dusty green hedges of the lane meandering through the fertile plain of Autun, we saw, rising before us, a building whose mysterious, alluring aspect at once rivetted our attention, as it must that of all who have an eye for the spirit of the past, and an ear for her call. We entered boldly by the gate in the hedge, and shared possession of the field with the pale cows, who, placid as the stones, and not unlike them in colour, lifted to us questioning eyes. The monument,--all that remains of it, rather,--consists of two great stone walls, adjacent sides of a building, ruined and roofless. It rises in the midst of the meadow, from among the grasses and brambles about its base, a huge, weird, Caliban-like thing, shattered, yet still massive, pierced with great tortured openings, and many smaller ones above. The golden light of evening, gilding it, casts into the holes and crevices, between the weather-worn masonry, pitchy shadows from which the stones bristle out defiantly, as though challenging the centuries to undo them, if man will but hold his hand. This relic of Roman times, called by the peasants, "The Temple of Janus"--though some antiquarians deny that it was ever a temple, and that the three headed god was ever worshipped there--is not the only striking object in the landscape. Away to the north-west, behind the tossing boughs of the poplars, the setting sun is adorning with changing purples the flanks of the distant hills. The broadest of those peaks, crested with dark foliage, is none other than our old friend the Mount.