But, quiet as the country was, there was nothing to remind us it was Sunday. Peasants were at work. Old women here and there cut grass by the wayside, or carried it home in large bundles on their backs. In one place cantonniers were busy covering the road with broken stones. In another we passed travellers footing it over the white highway; one who walked barefoot, with his boots and his umbrella strapped to his back, was singing as he went.—Only once we heard church bells. In the little grey stone villages, at whose entrance poplars stood for sentinels, there were more people about than usual. And at Souppes, where we stopped for coffee, the café was full of men in blouses, playing cards and drinking beer.
In the course of the afternoon we left the
department of the Seine-et-Loire for the Loiret, where the road, though not bad, was not quite so good, and where the kilometre-stones no longer marked the distance, but were newly whitened, looking for all the world, as J—— suggested, like tombstones of dead kilometres.—Then we came to the first vineyard on our route, in which the vines, heavy with purple clusters, clung to low poles, with none of the grace of the same vines crossing from mulberry to mulberry in Italy, or of the hops in England.—Up and down the road took us—now giving us a glimpse of an old farm-house on a hillside, and then of a far château half hidden in the trees, until we began to meet many carriages.—A few minutes after these signs of city life appeared, we were in Montargis.
MONTARGIS.
THE landlady was full of apologies for the dulness of the town. The band always played on Sunday afternoons on the Place in front of her house, she said; but now the troops were away for the autumn manœuvres, and Montargis was sad in their absence. We thought, however, she might better have apologised for the lateness of her dinner-hour.—But it was, after all, fortunate, for it so chanced we saw more of Montargis than we expected.
Though little is said about it in guide and other books, it is one of the prettiest towns in all France. A river, an old church, and a mediæval castle are always elements of picturesqueness, and these Montargis has used to the very best advantage.—We found the church grey and weather-worn of course.