When the discovery was made that a bottle was enshrined among the flowers, and that upon the bottle was an inscription--necessarily a sonnet, as we impulsively decided--our feeling toward Serrieres was of the warmest. Without question, those generous creatures had sent us of their best, and with a posy of verse straight from their honest hearts. Only poets ministering to poets could have conceived so pretty a scheme. But the eager group that surrounded the Majoral who held the bottle flew asunder in wrath as he read out loudly, in place of the expected sonnet, these words: "Quinine prepared by Cuminat at Serrieres"! And then our feeling toward Serrieres grew much less warm. Yet I am not sure that Cuminat was moved only by the sordid wish to advertise at our expense his preparation of quinine. I am disposed to credit him in part with a helpful desire to check the fever rising in the blood of our boat-load of Southerners who each moment--as they slid down that hill-side of a river--were taking deeper and stronger drafts of the heady sunshine of their own Southern sun. On the other hand, I am forced to admit that had his motive been pure benevolence his offering would not have been so pitiably scant. But the people of Tournon--to which generous town, and to the breakfast provided by its cordial inhabitants, we came an hour before noon--entreated us with so prodigal a liberality in the matter of bottles that the questionable conduct of the Serrieres apothecary quickly faded from our minds. In ancient times Tournon had a black reputation for its evil-dealing with chance wayfarers along the Rhone, and one's blood runs cold with mere thought of the horrors which went on there in the times of the religious wars. But very likely because of an honest desire to live down its own bad record--which I mention here rather to its present credit than to its past shame--it now seems determined to balance matters by manifesting toward passing travellers the most obliging courtesy in the world. Certainly, we poets--coming thither famished, and going thence full fed and sleekly satisfied--had cause that day to bless its name.