South from Romans lies Die, which in spite of its great antiquity has conserved little of its ancient feudal memories. There are some ancient walls with a supporting tower here and there, but this is all that remains to suggest the power that once radiated from the _Dea Vocontiorum_ of the ancients. From Die down towards the Rhône, through the valley of the Drome, is however a pathway still strewn with many reminders of the feudality. Where the valley of Quint enters that of the Drome, are Pontaix and Sainte Croix, each of them possessed of a fine old ruin of a chateau on a hill overlooking the town and the river-bed below. Outside the stage setting of an opera no one ever saw quite so romantically disposed a landscape as here. The hills and vales bordering upon the Rhine actually grow pale before this little stretch of a dozen kilometres along the banks of the Drome. The village of Sainte Croix, and its chateau, is the more notable of the two mentioned, and played an important rôle in the military history of the Diois. First of all the Romans laid the foundations of the fortress one sees on the height above the crooked streets of the town. This was originally a work intended to protect their communications from their capital city at Vienne, on the banks of the Rhône, with Milan, beyond the Alpine frontier. Formerly, it was a stronghold of the Emperor of the Occident, and in 1215 the Emperor Frederick II gave it to the Bishop of Saint Paul-Trois-Chateaux, who, by the end of the century, had transferred it to the house of Poitiers. Catholics and Protestants occupied it turn by turn during the religious wars, when, after the taking of La Rochelle, Richelieu razed it, as he did so many another feudal monument up and down the length and breadth of France. A great modern--comparatively modern--pile situated at the entrance of the village, has nothing in common with the old fortress on the height, and, though to-day it well presents the suggestion of a fortified mediæval manor, it is in reality nothing but a walled farm, a transformation from an old Antonian convent suppressed at the Revolution. Index _Adrets, Baron des_, 227 _Aguesseau, Chancelier d'_, 42 Aix-les-Bains, 239, 242-243, 279 Albertville, 243, 286 _Allemon, Seigneurs d'_, 224 Allinges, 269 _Amboise, Jacques d'_, 161 Ancy-le-Franc, 16, 93-99 _Andelot Family_, 87-88 _Angely, Regnault de Saint-Jean d'_, 34 _Anjou, René d'_, 118 Annecy, 260-262, 279 Anse, 180 Apremont, 111 _Arbaud, Charles_, 57 Argentière, 302 _Arles, Cardinal d'_, 272 Arnay-le-Duc, 5, 57, 60-61 Autun, 58, 70, 171 Auxerre, 5, 19, 20, 29-34, 35, 37, 38, 104 _Auxerre, Comtes d'_, 30, 33, 35 _Auxerre, Geoffroy, Bishop of_, 32 Auxois, The, 51 Auxonne, 186, 187-189 Avallon, 20, 36-37, 43, 50 Avignon, 108 Bagé-le-Chatel, 177 _Bagé, Seigneurs de_, 177, 179, 199, 210 _Bar, Duc de_, 118 Bar-sur-Seine, 80-81 Barraux, Fort, 247, 251-252, 288 _Bartholdi_, 194, 198 Bathie, 286