It was with no trifling sense of relief that I found the place really picturesque, when we arrived. We had, it is true, to put up with a comfortless drive of three or four miles in a primitive, jolting, yellow omnibus, which crawled at stated hours of the day between the town and the station; but that was a minor evil, and we made the best of it. First of all, we strolled through the village--the clean, white, sunny village, where the people were sitting outside their doors playing at dominoes, and the cocks and hens were walking about like privileged inhabitants of the market-place. Then we had luncheon at the _auberge_ of the "Lion d'Or." Then we looked in at the little church (still smelling of incense from the last service) with its curious old altar-piece and monumental brasses. Then we peeped through the iron gate of the melancholy _cimetière_, which was full of black crosses and wreaths of _immortelles_. Last of all, we went to see the ruin, which stood on the summit of a steep and solitary rock in the midst of a vast level plain. It proved to be a round keep of gigantic strength and height, approached by two courtyards and surrounded by the weed-grown and fragmentary traces of an extensive stronghold, nothing of which now remained save a few broken walls, three or four embrasured loopholes, an ancient well of incalculable depth, and the rusted teeth of a formidable portcullis. Here we paused awhile to rest and admire the view; while Josephine, pleased as a child on a holiday, flung pebbles into the well, ate sugar-plums, and amused herself with my pocket-telescope. "_Regardez_!" she cried, "there is the dome of the Panthéon. I am sure it is the Panthéon--and to the right, far away, I see a town!--little white houses, and a steeple. And there goes a steamer on the river--and there is the railway and the railway station, and the long road by which we came in the omnibus. Oh, how nice it is, Monsieur Basil, to look through a telescope!" "Do me the favor, _ma belle_, to accept it--for my sake," said I, thankful to find her so easily entertained. I was lying in a shady angle of old wall, puffing away at a cigar, with my hat over my eyes, and the soles of my boots levelled at the view. It is difficult to smoke and make love at the same time; and I preferred the tobacco.