Orleans is an old city and a _cité neuve_. Where the river laps its quays, it is old but commonplace; back from the river is a strata which is really old, fine Gothic house-fronts and old leaning walls; while still farther from the river, as one approaches the railway station, it is strictly modern, with all the devices and appliances of the newest of the new. The Orleans of history lies riverwards,--the Orleans where the heart of France pulsed itself again into life in the tragic days which were glorified by "the Maid." "The countryside of the Orléannais has the monotony of a desert," said an English traveller some generations ago. He was wrong. To do him justice, however, or to do his observations justice, he meant, probably, that, save the river-bottom of the Loire, the great plain which begins with La Beauce and ends with the Sologne has a comparatively uninteresting topography. This is true; but it is not a desert. La Beauce is the best grain-growing region in all France, and the Sologne is now a reclaimed land whose sandy soil has proved admirably adapted to an unusually abundant growth of the vine. So much for this old-time point of view, which to-day has changed considerably. The Orléannais is one of the most populous and progressive sections of all France, and its inhabitants, per square kilometre, are constantly increasing in numbers, which is more than can be said of every _département_. There are multitudes of tiny villages, and one is scarcely ever out of sight and sound of a habitation. [Illustration: _ENVIRONS of ORLEANS_ (MAP)] In the great forest, just to the west of Orleans, are two small villages, each a celebrated battle-ground, and a place of a patriotic pilgrimage on the eighth and ninth of November of each year. They are Coulmiers and Bacon, and here some fugitives from Metz and Sedan, with some young troops exposed to fire for the first time, engaged with the Prussians (in 1870) who had occupied Orleans since mid-October. There is the usual conventional "soldiers' monument,"--with considerably more art about it than is usually seen in America,--before which Frenchmen seemingly never cease to worship. This same _Forêt d'Orleans_, one of those wild-woods which so plentifully besprinkle France, has a sad and doleful memory in the traditions of the druidical inhabitants of a former day. Their practices here did not differ greatly from those of their brethren elsewhere, but local history is full of references to atrocities so bloodthirsty that it is difficult to believe that they were ever perpetrated under the guise of religion. Surrounding the forest are many villages and hamlets, war-stricken all in the dark days of seventy-one, when the Prussians were overrunning the land.