The Franche Comté is in no sense a tourist region; its varied topography has not been given even a glance of the eye by most conventional tourists, and its historical souvenirs have been almost entirely ignored by the makers of romances and stage-plays. Switzerland-bound travellers have an excellent opportunity to become acquainted with this comparatively little known corner of old France as they rush across it by express train via Pontarlier, but few avail themselves thereof. For this reason, if no other, the architectural monuments of the Franche Comté come upon one as genuine surprises. From Dijon our way lay through Genlis and Auxonne to Besançon, and there is no better way of approaching the heart of things, though it will require some courage on the part of travellers by train to accommodate themselves to the inconvenient hours of departure and arrival. The traveller by road will have a much easier and a much more enjoyable time of it; and right here is a suggestion of a new ground for touring automobilists who may be tired of well-worn roads. It is just as enjoyable to hunt out historic monuments with an automobile as with a Cook's ticket and a railway train--more so, some of us think. It would certainly not have been possible for the makers of this book to have otherwise got over the ground covered herein, so let not the ultra-sentimentalist decry the modern mode of locomotion. Winding its way between the confines of Burgundy and the Comté the highroad from Paris to Pontarlier and Switzerland led us first to Auxonne. Genlis we passed _en route_ and almost had a thrill over it by recalling the notorious Comtesse de Genlis. We racked our brains a moment and then remembered that the celebrated "_bas bleu_" hailed from somewhere in Picardy, so, then, this particular Genlis had no further interest for us, above all in that there was no chateau in sight. Auxonne (the old Ad Sonam of the Romans, afterwards corrupted into Assona, then Assonium and finally as it is to-day) was but a dozen kilometres beyond Genlis, and, sitting astride the great highway from Paris to Geneva, was early a fortified place of great strategic importance. Vauban traced its last ramparts and it was thought likely to hold its rank for all time, but now the fortifications have disappeared and the city no longer takes its place as a frontier outpost, that honour having been usurped by Besançon in the Jura.