The environs of the Lac d'Annecy have ever been a retreat for litterateurs and artist folk. Ernest Renan lodged here in the _hôtellerie_ of the famous Abbey, where he occupied a _chambre de prieur_. José-Maria Héredia came here in company with Taine; Ferdinand Fabre passed many months here in an isolated little house on the very shores of the lake; Albert Besnard, the painter, has recently built a studio here, and a quaint and altogether charming villa; Paul Chabas, too, has resorted hither recently for the same purpose, and indeed scores have found out this accessible but tranquil little corner of Savoy. Another Parisian, a Monsieur Noblemaire, has acquired the picturesque Savoyard Manoir de Thoron, built sometime during the seventeenth century, and lives indeed the life of a noble under the old régime amid the very same luxuriant and agreeable surroundings. Faverges, at the lower end of the Lac d'Annecy, backed up by the sombre Forêt de Doussard, and in plain view of the snowy top of Mont Blanc off to the eastward, is at once a _ville industrielle_ and a reminiscent old feudal town. Its interest is the more entrancing because of the contrasting elements which go to make up its architectural aspect and the life of its present day inhabitants. A mediæval chateau elbows a modern silk factory, and the idle gossip of the workers as they take their little walks abroad on the little _Place_ blends strangely enough with the amorous escapades of Henri IV which still live in local legend. On the road from Faverges to Thone, by the switch-back mountain road, following the valley of the Fier, is the Manoir de la Tour, where on a fine mid-summer morning in 1730 Jean Jacques Rousseau climbed a cherry tree and bombarded the coquettish Mademoiselle Graffeny and Mademoiselle Galley with the rich, ripe--not overripe--fruit. We know this because Jean Jacques himself said so, and for that reason this little human note makes a pilgrimage hither the pleasurable occupation that it is. The fine old manor is still intact. But the cherry tree? No one knows. May be it was a mythical cherry tree like that of the George Washington legend. In spite of this the guardian will show visitors many cherry trees, and one may take his choice. Lac Leman is commonly thought a Swiss lake, as is Mont Blanc usually referred to as a Swiss mountain--which it isn't. A good third of the shore line of Lac Leman is French--"_Leman Français_," it is called. Practically the whole southern, or French, shore of the Lake of Geneva--or Lake Leman, as we had best think of it since it is thus known to European geographers--is replete with a fascinating appeal which the Swiss shore entirely lacks. It is difficult to explain this, but it is a fact.