"In the same way," says M. Perrault-Dabot, "the type of woman that one still meets to-day, at Cluny, recalls to us the shadowy grace and the warm suavity of Prudhon's talent. Cluny belongs to that region of our province where the massy heads and highly-coloured complexions that distinguish the mountain-dweller, disappear, to give place to subtler, slighter forms, and to faces of an exquisite pallor. It is not that perfect beauty in which every feature is regular; but it is beauty in its most suave and touching form." We were the more disappointed, because, though we had not expected to find in Cluny any rivals to the classic beauties of Arles and St. Rémy, we had come prepared for a welcome break in the monotonous plainness of Burgundian humanity, a subject on which I shall have more to say later on. Yet the types we met hereabouts, if not, on the whole, attractive, were certainly not without the individuality that natural vivacity imparts. My wife, sketching the great gate of the abbey, was scandalized by the inordinate amount of child-smacking indulged in by the mothers of the neighbourhood. I was not a witness on that occasion, but I am inclined to think, that, in most cases, she failed to allow for the excitability of a semi-southern temperament, and, could she have read them, would have found more hardness in the hands than in the hearts. The little Hotel de Bourgogne, a white, straggling old building, snugly placed beneath the protecting walls of the Tour de l'Eau Bénite, added its quota to our amusement. The ways of the establishment were refreshingly unconventional. For example, they rang neither bell nor gong for dinner, but sent up two maids, who popped their tousled heads simultaneously in at the bedroom door, and invited us to come down to a meal, which, by the way, quite maintained the traditions of later Clunisian luxe. The company, too, was notable. We sat at the head of the table. On my right was an individual whose cruel, yet suffering, face reminded me of the executioner in Van der Weyden's great picture in the hospital at Beaune. I gathered that the digestive organs were the seat of his troubles; for he rejected, with a grunt, the normal fare, preferring to dine on lightly-boiled eggs, whose liquid contents he imbibed by a peculiar, sucking process, that was, in its way, a clever, though noisy, gastronomic feat.