Semur's bourg, donjon and chateau, as the respective quarters of the town are known, tell the story of its past, but they tell it only by suggestion. The ancient fortifications, as entire works, have disappeared, and the chateau has become a barracks or a hospital. Only the chateau donjon and immediate dependencies, a group of towering walls, rise grim and silent as of old above the great arch of the bridge flung so daringly across the Armançon at the bottom of the gorge. The last proprietor of Semur's chateau was the Marquis du Chatelet, the husband of the even more celebrated Madame du Chatelet, who held so great a place in the life of Voltaire. The philosopher, it seems, resided here for a time, and his room is still kept sacred and shown to visitors upon application. Semur as much as anything is a reminder of the past rather than a living representation of what has gone before. Within the city walls were enacted many momentous events of state while still it was the Burgundian capital. Again during the troublous times of the "Ligue," Henri IV transferred to its old chateau the Parliament which had previously held its sittings at Dijon. Semur's monuments deserved a better fate than has befallen them, for they were magnificent and epoch-making, if not always from an artistic point of view, at least from an historic one. We made Semur our headquarters for a little journey to Époisses, Bourbilly and Montbard, where formerly lived and died the naturalist Buffon, in the celebrated Chateau de Montbard. Époisses lies but a few kilometres west of Semur. Its chateau is a magnificently artistic and historic shrine if there ever was such. In 1677 Madame de Sévigné wrote that she "here descended from her carriage: _chez son Seigneur d'Époisses_." Here she found herself so comfortably off that she forgot to go on to Bourbilly, where she was expected and daily awaited. It was ten days later that she finally moved on; so one has but the best of opinions regarding the good cheer which was offered her. At the time it must have been an ideal country house, this mansion of the Seigneur d'Époisses, as indeed it is to-day. The lady wrote further: "Here there is the greatest liberty; one reads or walks or talks or works as he, or she, pleases." This is what everyone desires and so seldom gets when on a visit. As for the other natural and artificial charms which surrounded the place, one may well judge by a contemplation of it to-day. Here in the chateau, or manor, or whatever manner of rank it actually takes in one's mind, you may see the room occupied by Madame de Sévigné on the occasion of her "pleasant visit." It is a "Chambre aux Fleurs" in truth, and that, too, is the name by which the apartment is officially known.