Repairs and restorations made since the Revolution have deprived it of the ancient ramparts which once entirely surrounded it, but the romantic and curious aspect of the main body of the structure, and those all-impressive, svelt, sky-piercing towers, make it seem too quaint to be real. Certainly no more remarkable use of such adjuncts to a seigneurial chateau has ever been made than these towers. Here they are not massive, nor particularly tall, but their proportions are seemingly just what they ought to be. They are, at any rate, entirely in accord with the rest of the structure, and that is what much modern architecture lacks. [Illustration] CHAPTER XII IN THE BEAUJOLAIS AND LYONNAIS South from Chalon, by the banks of the Saône, lies the Beaujolais, a wine-growing region which partakes of many of the characteristics of the Côte d'Or itself. Further south, beyond Mâcon, the aspect of the Lyonnais is something quite different. All is of a bustle and hustle of the feverish life of to-day, whilst in the Beaujolais pursuits are agricultural. Each of these regions is profoundly wealthy and prosperous, an outgrowth, naturally enough, of the opulent times of old, for here, as in the heart of Burgundy, the conditions of life were ever ample and easy. Throughout the countryside of the Beaujolais and the Mâconnais one notes a manner of building with respect to the meaner dwellings which, to say the least, is most curious. These small houses are built of a species of sun-dried bricks or lumps of clay. It seems satisfactory; as satisfactory as would be an adobe dwelling--in a dry climate. But here in times of flood those built in the river bottoms have been known to melt away like the sand castles of children at the seashore. The present Département of the Saône-et-Loire was evolved from the very midst of the Burgundian kingdom, and comprises chiefly the mediæval Comtés of the Autunnois, Chalonnais, Mâconnais and Charollais. The Romans were the real exploiters of all this region, and only with the pillage of the Normans, and the successive civil and religious wars, did the break-up of Burgundy really come to be an assured fact. Chalon-sur-Saône itself is most attractive--in parts. As a whole it is disappointing. François Premier built the fortifications of Chalon in 1521, and half a century later Charles IX constructed the citadel--"to hold the town in subjection, and the inhabitants in ignorance." Dijon was the city of the mediæval counts; Chalon was a city of churchmen. Nevertheless the bishops of the episcopal city bore the title of Counts, and of its churches which remain none is more typical of the best of Romanesque in France than the nave and side aisles of Chalon's Cathedral de Saint Vincent.