[CHAPTER XVI]
Ever since we left Beaune, my wife has been endeavouring, at frequent intervals, to extract from me an unconditional promise that, one day, we will go to live there. "It would be lovely," she says, "to live close to the Hôtel Dieu, and to watch the vines, for a whole summer, ripening on the Côte d'Or." So it would.
Certainly, if we are to live in France, we might do worse than choose this little rampart-girdled town, that, though on the main line of the P.L.M., has retained so much of its mediæval charm, and still has houses to show you of every century from the thirteenth onwards.
Beaune has a cachet, and surprises all its own. Go where you may, you will find them, or they will find you. Stand in the little Rue de l'Enfer, not happily named, and look up towards the church. Along a white wall, that the sun has fretted with a lace-work of leafy shadow, runs a frieze of ivy, below a rich cornice of blossoming lilac. Within that garden are glimpses of ancient mottled walls, seen through green branches, whose wavy lines lead up to the tower, crowned by the lovely dome and lantern of Notre Dame.
Or stand beneath the exquisite, gothic porch of that same church, and look through its soft, brown shadowy arches to the white walls and flowery gardens of the old houses beside it; or across the place, to where the warm, purple shadows lie upon the rosy oriel and tourelle of the Maison du Colombier.
