THE MUSE OF THE DEPARTMENT




On the skirts of Le Berry stands a town which, watered by the Loire,
infallibly attracts the traveler's eye. Sancerre crowns the topmost
height of a chain of hills, the last of the range that gives variety
to the Nivernais. The Loire floods the flats at the foot of these
slopes, leaving a yellow alluvium that is extremely fertile, excepting
in those places where it has deluged them with sand and destroyed them
forever, by one of those terrible risings which are also incidental to
the Vistula--the Loire of the northern coast.

The hill on which the houses of Sancerre are grouped is so far from
the river that the little river-port of Saint-Thibault thrives on the
life of Sancerre. There wine is shipped and oak staves are landed,
with all the produce brought from the upper and lower Loire. At the
period when this story begins the suspension bridges at Cosne and at
Saint-Thibault were already built. Travelers from Paris to Sancerre by
the southern road were no longer ferried across the river from Cosne
to Saint-Thibault; and this of itself is enough to show that the great
cross-shuffle of 1830 was a thing of the past, for the House of
Orleans has always had a care for substantial improvements, though
somewhat after the fashion of a husband who makes his wife presents
out of her marriage portion.