The Palais des Beaux Arts contains a good picture-gallery and a museum of gun-making and looms, but otherwise there is little to see in this town, consisting mainly of one very long street.
THE ROAD TO ROANNE
From St. Étienne until one reaches Fontainebleau the towns and villages have fewer antiquities and, on
No. 22. ST. ÉTIENNE TO MOULINS.
the whole, less picturesqueness than farther south, and if time is running short this portion of the tour can be hurried over with less fear of missing good things than any other part of the route described. The scenery is delightful in some districts, but comparatively tame in others.
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.