86 kilometres from Paris. 71 “ from Orléans. 35 “ from Dreux. An excellent train, leaving the Gare S. Lazare at mid-day, runs through from Paris in one hour and a half. A good _déjeuner_ is served in the train on starting. Returning from Chartres, most of the trains run into the Montparnasse Station, south of the river and twenty minutes’ drive from the Place de l’Opéra. The road is straight and level and a favourite one with automobilists. Chartres may also, of course, be approached from Normandy _viâ_ Rouen, Évreux, Dreux, and, if you include Amiens to the North-west, and Caen (whence you will visit Bayeux, Lisieux, and Falaise) to the North-east, Chartres will be found to provide the perfect finish to a delightful and instructive, and also economical, tour. An itinerary for those who have but a short time to spare at Chartres is suggested on page 352. Hotels--Grand Monarque (Automobile Club de France); Duc de Chartres; France. [Illustration] The Story of CHARTRES CHAPTER I _Druids and Romans: The Crypt_ Built half on the slope and half on the strath in a depression of calcareous soil, Chartres lies along the banks of the gliding Eure, breaking the long levels of La Beauce. La Beauce, indeed, is still the waterless, shadeless, woodless plain that the Bishop of Poitiers described in the sixth century, but it is now also one immense field of corn in which man has planted a few scattered farms and pleasure houses.[1] It is the granary of France. _Le blé c’est la Beauce et la Beauce c’est Chartres._[2] And on every side of it, spread out in the summer time like a many-coloured carpet under the great dome of the sky, stretch the cornfields, cut by the black lines of the railway, or by the straight, disheartening lengths of roads which run beyond the distant horizon of monotonous level, to Dreux, to Orléans, to Paris. The twin spires of Chartres are the only landmark. The sole beauty in this country must be found in its fecundity; in the fields of standing corn, which the passing breezes curve into travelling waves, and in the endless perspective of sameness which inspires the same emotions of mingled pleasure and sadness as the sight of the vast and melancholy ocean. And, like a ship for ever a-sail in the distance, everywhere the great Church of Chartres is visible, with the passing light or shadow upon its grey, weather-beaten surfaces, or, as it seemed to Lowell:-- ‘Silent and grey as forest-leaguered cliff Left inland by the ocean’s slow retreat.’