Orléans is beautifully placed on a hillside overlooking the Loire. With this physical advantage, and its long list of historical associations, one cannot help feeling that it might have done better for itself, and have become more than just a quiet, unobtrusive and rather dull city, with all its monuments easily attainable. The Cathedral is an example of the last lingering phase of Gothic architecture, and was rebuilt, so we are told--after its destruction by the Huguenots--during the interval between 1600 and 1829. The building as a mass has great merit, for the architects have made an effort to clothe it with dignity, and one feels that the church itself is conceived in a spirit to make it, certainly at a distance, not unworthy of the stronghold of Clovis and his successors. [Illustration: THE HOUSE OF JACQUES CŒUR, BOURGES] The train which we took from Orléans to Bourges was slow enough to enable us to look out, almost as easily as from a _voiture_, at the richly wooded country. Here and there a small pyramidal church tower peeps out from the trees, but, as a rule, there is little sign of life in this pleasant country, and even the fields and the gorse-covered commons are bare of sheep and cattle. This _train-d’omnibus_, in discharge of its functions as a mail train, distributed letter-bags at every station. Here were waiting young girls acting as postmistresses, many of whom had come from a considerable distance, having ridden on bicycles, bare-headed, in the scorching sun, along dusty roads, to deliver up their heavy loads and to enjoy a chat with the travelling postman, who was evidently welcomed by them as bringing all the latest bits of gossip along the line. About a mile away there is a very beautiful view of the town, and the general effect is a grey one. Roofs and houses--the latter perhaps originally built of yellow-white stone--have all weathered to a beautiful grey, and there is an air of mediævalism about the place. Bourges, indeed, like many other towns in France, goes back to early days for its greatness, and belongs far more to the past than to the present. The fifteenth century saw it at the height of its fame as a king’s residence; Charles VII., perhaps finding the more northerly towns too hot for him during the English occupation, took up his abode there and became for the time being “King of Bourges”; and Louis XI. founded a university in the town. Here was born the famous Bourdaloue, and Boucher, the painter of Versailles before “le Déluge,” Boucher who was “a Grasshopper, and painted-- Rose-water Raphael--_en couleur de rose_, The crowned Caprice, whose sceptre, nowise sainted, Swayed the light realms of ballets and bon-mots; Ruled the dim boudoir’s _demi-jour_, or drove Pink-ribboned flocks through some pink-flowered grove,” and who now, his Grasshopper days ended, lies buried beside his mother in the Church of Saint Bonnet. [Illustration: BOURGES]