It was here at Saulieu in Revolutionary times that the good people, as if in remembrance of the disasters which had befallen them under monarchial days, hailed with joy the arrival of the men of the Marseilles Battalion as they were marching on Paris "to help capture Capet's castle." Before the church of Saint Saturnin the Patriots' Club had lighted a big bonfire, and the "Men of the Midi" were received with open arms and a warm welcome. "How good they were to us at Saulieu," said one of the number, recounting his adventures upon his arrival at Paris; "they gave us all the wine we could swallow and all the good things we could eat,--we had enough boeuf-à-la-daub to rise over our ears...." To-day the good folk of Saulieu treat the stranger in not unsimilar fashion, and though the town lacks noble monuments it makes up for the deficiency in its good cheer. Saulieu in this respect quite lives up to its reputation of old. This little capital of the Morvan-Bourguignon has ever owned to one or more distinguished Vatel's. Madame de Sévigné, in 1677, stopped here at a friend's country house, and, as she wrote, "_le fermier donne à tous un grand diner_." This was probably the Manoir de Guitant between Bourbilly and Saulieu. They were long at table, for it was a _diner des adieux_ given by her friend Guitant to his visitors. She wrote further: "With the dinner one drank a great deal, and afterwards a great deal more; all went off with the greatest possible éclat. Voila l'affaire!" Evidently such a manner of parting did not produce sadness! A donjon tower with a duck-pond before it, opposite the Hotel de la Poste is all the mediævalism that one sees within the town at Saulieu to-day. It is all that one's imagination can conjure up of the ideal donjon of mediævalism and interesting withal, though its history is most brief, indeed may be said to exist not at all in recorded form, for the chief references to Saulieu's historic past date back to the pagan temple and the founding of the Abbey of Saint Andoche in the eighth century. Still heading south one comes in a dozen kilometres to a chateau of the fourteenth century, and the restorations of Henri IV at Thoisy-la-Berchere. Later restorations, by the Marquis de Montbossier, who occupies it to-day, have made of it one of the most attractive of the minor chateaux of France. One may visit it under certain conditions, whether the family is in residence or not, and will carry away memories of many splendid chimney pieces and wall tapestries. For the rest the furnishings are modern, which is saying that they are banal. This of course need not always be so, but when the Renaissance is mixed with the art nouveau and the latest fantasies of Dufayal it lacks appeal. This is as bad as "Empire" and "Mission," which seem to have set the pace for "club furniture" during the past decade.