The diligence from Paris stopped at Chalon-sur-Saône in the old days and passengers made their way to Lyons by the river. Colbert it was who sought to develop the service of _coches d'eau_ on the Saône between Chalon and Lyons. He carried the thing so far, in 1669, that he suppressed the public diligence by land which had formerly made the journey between the two capitals. This was not accomplished without a live protestation from the residents of the terminal cities. In the last days of the _malle-poste_, when Chalon was the end of the journey from Paris, four steamboats of a primitive order competed for the privilege of carrying passengers from Chalon to Lyons. To-day the service has been suppressed; the "_piroschapes_," as they were called, have gone the way of the mail coaches. Travel to-day is accomplished with more comfort and more expedition. Below Chalon, following down the Saône, within a league, one comes to Toisé, with a celebrated chateau, almost wholly ignored to-day when checking off the historical monuments of France. And this is true in spite of the fact that it was here within the walls of the Chateau de Toisé that was signed the famous treaty between Henri IV and the Duc de Mayenne. The chateau is simply an admirable Renaissance monument of its time with no very remarkable features or history save that noted above. This is enough to make it better known and more often visited, if only glanced at in passing. The author hopes the suggestion may be taken in earnest by those interested. Midway between Mâcon and Chalon is Tournus, the site of a chateau-fort built by the Franks, and also of an abbey founded by Charles-le-Chauve in 875 A.D. This monarch gave the abbey a charter as proprietor of the city of Tournus in consideration of the monks putting it and its inhabitants under the protection of the Virgin and Saint Philibert. He also made the congregation of monks of the order of Saint Benoit "_fermiers_" of this "_celestial domain_." The Abbés of Tournus were a powerful race, rivalling the princes and dukes of other fiefs, and owning allegiance only to the king and Pope, more often to the latter than to the former. Among them were numbered no less than eight cardinals in the fifty-nine who ruled the city and the "domain." The monastery itself has become a sort of institution, a secular lodging house, but its fine church still remains as one of the most famous Romanesque-Burgundian examples of its time. Above Tournus, high on the hill back of the town, sits a disused ancient fabric, a former Benedictine abbey. Its abbés had the right to wear the pontifical vestments, and to administer justice to the city and its neighbouring dependencies. More like an antique fortress than a religious foundation, it is the most ambitious and striking edifice now to be seen in Tournus.