En route from Chalonnes one passes Chemillé almost the only market-town of any size in the district. It is very curious, with its Romanesque church and its old houses distributed around an amphitheatre, like the loges in an opera-house.

This is the very centre of the Bocage, where, in Revolutionary times, the Republican armies so frequently fought with the bands of Vendean fanatics.

The houses of Cholet are well built, but always with that grayness and sadness of tone which does not contribute to either brilliancy of aspect or gaiety of disposition. Save the grand street which traverses the town from east to west, the streets are narrow and uncomfortable; but to make up for all this there are hotels and cafés as attractive and as comfortable as any establishments of the kind to be found in any of the smaller cities of provincial France.

The handkerchief industry is very considerable, no less than six great establishments devoting themselves to the manufacture.

Cholet is one of the greatest cattle markets, if not the greatest, in the land. The farmers of the surrounding country buy bœufs maigres in the southwest and centre of France and transform them into good fat cattle which in every way rival what is known in England as "best English." This is accomplished cheaply and readily by feeding them with cabbage stalks.

On Saturdays, on the Champ de Foire, the aspect is most animated, and any painter who is desirous of emulating Rosa Bonheur's "Horse Fair" (painted at the great cattle market of Bernay, in Normandy) cannot find a better vantage-ground than here, for one may see gathered together nearly all the cattle types of Poitou, the Vendée, Anjou, Bas Maine, and of Bretagne Nantaise.

In earlier days Cholet was far more sad than it is to-day; but there remain practically no souvenirs of its past. The wars of the Vendée left, it is said, but three houses standing when the riot and bloodshed was over. Two of the greatest battles of this furious struggle were fought here.

On the site of the present railroad station Kleber and Moreau fought the royalists, and the heroic Bonchamps received the wound of which he died at St. Florent, just after he had put into execution the order of release for five thousand Republican prisoners. This was on the 17th October, 1793. Five months later Stofflet possessed himself of the town and burned it nearly to the ground. Not much is left to remind one of these eventful times, save the public garden, which was built on the site of the old château.

[Donjon of the Château de Clisson]