“Who knows Nemours,” wrote Balzac, “knows that nature there is as beautiful as art,” and again he dwells upon the charm of the sleepy little town memorialized in “Ursule Mirouët.” The delicious valley of Loing indeed fascinated Balzac almost as much as his beloved Touraine. As his recently published letters to Madame Hanska have shown us, several of his greatest novels were written in this neighbourhood, whilst in the one named above we have a setting as striking as that of “Eugenie Grandet” or “Béatrix.” A ten minutes’ railway journey brings us to Nemours, one of the few French towns, by the way, in which Arthur Young lost his temper. Here is his own account of the incident:-- “Sleep at Nemours, where we met with an innkeeper who exceeded in knavery all we had met with, either in France or Italy: for supper, we had a _soupe maigre_, a partridge and a chicken roasted, a plate of celery, a small cauliflower, two bottles of poor _vin du Pays_, and a dessert of two biscuits and four apples: here is the bill:--Potage 1 liv. 10f.--Perdrix 2 liv. 10f.--Poulet 2 liv.--Céleri 1 liv. 4f.--Choufleur 2 liv.--Pain et dessert 2 liv.--Feu et appartement 6 liv.--Total 19 liv. 8f. Against so impudent an extortion we remonstrated severely but in vain. We then insisted on his signing the bill, which, after many evasions, he did, _à l’étoile, Foulliare_. But having been carried to the inn, not as the star, but the _écu de France_, we suspected some deceit: and going out to examine the premises, we found the sign to be really the _écu_, and learned on enquiry that his own name was Roux, instead of _Foulliare_: he was not prepared for this detection, or for the execration we poured on such infamous conduct; but he ran away in an instant and hid himself till we were gone. In justice to the world, however, such a fellow ought to be marked out.” I confess I do not myself find such charges excessive. From a very different motive, Nemours put me as much out of temper as it had done my great predecessor a hundred years before. Will it be believed that a town memorialized by the great, perhaps _the_ greatest, French novelist, could not produce its title of honour, in other words a copy of “Ursule Mirouët”? This town of 4,000 and odd souls and chef-lieu of department does not possess a bookseller’s shop. We did indeed see in a stationer’s window one or two penny books, among these an abridged translation of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” But a friendly wine merchant, who seemed to take my reproaches very much to heart, assured us that in the municipal library all Balzac’s works were to be found, besides many valuable books dealing with local history. Cold comfort this for tourists who want to buy a copy of the Nemours story! As we stroll about the grass-grown streets, we feel that railways, telephones and the rest have very little changed Nemours since Balzac’s descriptions, written three-quarters of a century ago.