Between the Brenne and a canal which flows through the town rises an admirable feudal tower indicating the one time military and strategic importance of the site. It is called Mont Bard, and marks where once stood the fortress that surrendered in its time to the "Ligueurs." Near Montbard is a hamlet which bears the illustrious name of Buffon, but it is doubtful if even a few among its three hundred inhabitants know for whom it is named. Still further away, on the Châtillon road, is the little town of Villaines-en-Dumois, a bourg of no importance in the life of modernity. It is somnolent to an extreme, comfortable-looking and apparently prosperous. The grand route from Paris to Dijon passes it by a dozen kilometres to the left, and the railway likewise. Coaching days left it out in the cold also, and modern travel hardly knows that it exists. In spite of this the town owns to something more than the trivial morsels of stone which many a township locally claims as a chateau. Here was once a favourite summer residence of the Burgundian dukes, and here to-day the shell, or framework, of the same edifice looks as though it might easily be made habitable. The property came later to the Madame de Longueville, the sister of the Grand Condé. There is nothing absolutely magnificent about it now, but the suggestion of its former estate is still there to a notable degree. The walls and towers, lacking roofs though they do, well suggest the princely part the edifice once played in the life of its time. In spite of the fact that the name of the town appears in none of the red or blue backed guide-books, enough is known of it to establish it as the former temporary seat of one of the most formal of the minor courts of Europe, where--the records tell--etiquette was as strict as in the ducal palace at Dijon. Four great round towers are each surrounded by a half-filled moat, and the suggestion of the old chapel, in the shape of an expanse of wall which shows a remarkably beautiful ogival window, definitely remains to give the idea of the former luxury and magnificence with which the whole structure was endowed. A detached dwelling, said to be the house of the prior of a neighbouring monastery who attached himself to the little court, is in rather a better state of preservation than the chateau itself, and might indeed be made habitable by one with a modest purse and a desire to play the "grand seigneur" to-day in some petty gone-to-seed community. These opportunities exist all up and down France to-day, and this seems as likely a spot as any for one who wishes to transplant his, or her, household gods.