In going round the tree-shaded boulevards which mark the limits of the medieval city several sections of the ramparts can be seen, as well as a most attractive view of the cathedral over the river. ON LEAVING CHARTRES, on the road to Orleans, almost immediately after passing a direction board, there is a fork, where one goes to the right, with the railway parallel with the road for a few kilometres. [Illustration: No. 5. CHARTRES TO ORLEANS.] The huge wheat-growing plain of La Beauce--the granary of France--stretches away to a perfectly level horizon in all directions. Windmills are passed now and then, and distant villages can be seen, but more memorable than anything else is the great dome of sky, and as the car slips rapidly and smoothly along the white ribbon that cuts the scenery in two, one seems to be in the strangest of solitudes and on the very outermost surface of the globe, where every mood of the heavens is felt to its fullest without any mitigating influences. When it rains every drop falls without hindrance, and smites the face with a sting when driven by the untempered wind, and when the sun shines every ray reaches the soil. Allonnes is a roadside village roofed with thatch, coated with green velvet moss, and having blind stone gables towards the road. Two level-crossings succeed, and then Ymonville, another stone village with great farmyards and a megalithic stone, is passed. At Allaines there is a church belonging in part to the eleventh century, and strips of low plantations begin to appear. It is noticeable that French advertisers use the corners of houses in the wayside villages for announcing their productions in blue and white, just where one looks for the blue-and-white direction-boards, so that the eye never fails to catch them, and the various makes of cocoa or pneumatic tyres are engraved on the memory! Soon after passing a grey-green boarded windmill close to the road, which makes a very pretty picture against the emerald of the growing corn beyond, the road goes to the left, and immediately afterwards to the right in the village of Artenay. Soon afterwards a railway appears on the left, and with thin, rickety telegraph-poles as companions, the rest of the way to Orleans begins to lose interest, until a long, dull street shuts out the views. ORLEANS Like many cities boasting a history that goes back to a remote period, Orleans has rebuilt itself so often that it is now a modern town, with only a very few buildings to connect it with the past. All the atmosphere of antiquity pervading such cities as Rouen and Chartres has gone to such an extent that it is with a mental effort equal to that of replacing the hippopotamus in the primeval marshes of the Thames, where London now stands, that one remembers that the Gallic town of _Cenabum_ which stood on the site of Orleans was taken by Julius [Illustration: TOWN PLAN NO. 8.--ORLEANS.]