At the red-roofed village of La Fouillouse the tramway from St. Étienne stops. The valley, although containing so many factories and such a busy town, is extraordinarily free from smoke, and the fields are as clean and bright as though there were no industrial activities for many miles. At the end of the valley the distant peep of mountains, snow-covered until May, is delightful on a sunny morning. The road goes nearly due northwards through the flat, marshy Plaine-du-Forez, through which the Loire winds a snaky course. Hills surround the plain on all sides, and the pastoral scenes of grazing cattle, backed by the snowy ridges to the west, are most paintable. At the village of Meylieu-Montrond there is a complete shell of a castle on the right bank of the Loire. The reddish-coloured road keeps very straight between rows of poplars, and in a short time brings one to Feurs, a busy little place where, among other things, they make sabots. There was a town here called _Forus_ in Gallo-Roman times, but there are no remains to interest the passing traveller beyond a few old houses. Balbigny is an uninteresting village on the Loire, just where the road leaves the level ground and begins to enter the tumble of hills enclosing the northern end of the plain. The views obtained are most exhilarating all the way to Roanne, and one frequently has great panoramic views of the Loire, which appears as a huge blue serpent in the midst of the green and reddish-brown fields. The road passes through the villages of Neulise, Vendranges, and l’Hôpital, and then drops down to the red-roofed town of ROANNE There is nothing to detain visitors in this busy manufacturing town, for all that was interesting or picturesque, beyond a few houses of the sixteenth century, has disappeared. The streets are narrow and not beautiful. North of Roanne the vine appears again, after having disappeared since leaving the Rhone Valley. The enormous plain of the Loire extends to the north, with mountains on the western horizon, dominated by the silvery grey peaks of the Auvergnes. [Illustration: THE TOUR DE L’HORLOGE AT MOULINS. Built in the fifteenth century. The spires of the cathedral are modern work by Viollet-le-Duc. (_Page 365._)] [Illustration: TOWN PLAN NO. 28.--ROANNE.] La Pacaudière is a picturesque village, with a conspicuously attractive old house on the left, having a steeply pitched turreted roof of dark brown tiles, and a carved stone doorway of the sixteenth century. One notices the gradual disappearance of the low-pitched roof as one goes northwards. La Palisse is a picturesque town on the pretty River Bèbre. The turreted château on the right above the road and river dates from the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries, and has a Flamboyant Gothic chapel, containing the tombs of the family of Chabannes. Jacques de Chabannes, often called La Palisse, became Marshal of France, and was killed at the Battle of Pavia in 1525.