We stopped afresh at Châlon. A friend who was there suggested to me that, instead of the urban curiosities, the great cellars like catacombs, we should visit a freak of nature and a ruin made by time: the Reaux-Chignon and the château de la Roche-Pot. I have described the one and told about the other; it will all be found in my Impressions de Voyage. The drought had interrupted the service of steamboats for some time; however, on returning to Châlon, we learnt that a boat drawing eighteen inches of water only was going to attempt the voyage. We embarked next day about noon, and reached Mâcon, indeed, but it was impossible to go further: it was too much to expect eighteen inches of water of the Saône. Places in the carriages had been reserved for three days past. I was very simple-minded at that period. Alas! I must say I have kept that silly characteristic intact. Boatmen came seeing my predicament, and as the wind was favourable, proposed to row me to Lyons in six hours. I allowed them eight; they deemed there was no need for such an addition of time, and that I had been too generous. Consequently, we settled the fare, and they took me to a big boat in which a dozen innocents like myself were packed together. Among them were three or four who had a double right to this title—some poor babies of five or six months old, accompanied by their nurses. I made a grimace when I saw the company into which I was brought; but bah! six hours are soon passed! It was one o'clock in the afternoon, by seven we should be at Lyons. But, instead of starting at one, we did not leave till three. Our boatmen thought us too comfortable, seated on top of one another as we were, and they probably counted on putting a second row across us. Luckily, they did not succeed. After two hours of fruitless waiting, they at last unmoored. The wind kept the promise it had made us on starting pretty much for an hour, and during that hour we made a league or a league and a half. Then the wind fell. I had thought that, should occasion arise, our boatmen would apply themselves to the oars; but no! we descended the Saône at the same rate as a drowned dog which floated twenty paces from us! Next day, at three in the afternoon, just at the same time as our drowned dog, which kept us company faithfully, we recognised the île Barbe. We reached Lyons fifty minutes later. My health must have been already much stronger to withstand the night I had just passed on the Saône. We stayed three days in Lyons, and, on the third, at three in the afternoon, we took carriage for Geneva. At six in the morning the conductor opened the carriage door, saying, "If the gentlemen would like to do a bit of the way on foot they will have time." It was an invitation offered us by our horses who found that the carriage was quite heavy enough to pull up the incline of Cerdon without us. This climb begins the first slopes of the Alps; it leads to the fort de l'Écluse, posted astride the road, under the arch of which they scrutinise passports. After three hours' walk, on coming from Saint-Genis the conductor, whom I had begged to tell me the exact moment when I got into Switzerland, turned round towards me and said—
"Monsieur, you are no longer in France."
"How far are we from Geneva?"
"An hour and a half's walk."
"Then let me get out and I will walk the remainder of the way."
The conductor complied with my request and, at the end of an hour and a half's walk, I entered the birthplace of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and of Pradier.
[1] See Appendix.