flowers, fruit, and little cheeses, begging me to return the following
summer! At Clermont-Ferrand, good fortune for the first time directed
me to a really comfortable hotel, as on previous visits, alike in
lodgings and hotels, I had been cheated, bullied, and made
uncomfortable. Let me signal alike the fact and the name: at the Hotel
de la Poste I was enabled really to enjoy this interesting old town,
the views of the Puy de Dome from every opening, the noble, Romanesque
church of Notre Dame du Port, the magnificent display of the shops-no
town in all France where you can buy more beautiful jewellery, bronzes
and porcelain than at Clermont.

My companion quitted me here, proceeding by night express to Paris, and
I took the long, slow, wearisome parliamentary to Lyons, a ten hours'
journey, which wiser travellers will not fail to break half-way. The
only express train between Clermont and Lyons leaves very early in the
morning, so we have a choice of evils.

I do not know why the Puy de Dome should be my favourite mountain, but
so it is, and never did it look lovelier than to-day, as, with its
sister volcanoes, pyramid upon pyramid of warm purple, it towered above
the green Limagne; gradually the rest receded from view, till at last
nothing was left but that solitary dome of amethyst under the golden
heaven. At Lyons--where I awaited a dear French friend--I always make a
point of seeing the famous town-clock, work of a modern sculptor, a son
of Lyons.

This clock, or rather the marble facade adorning it, is not only a work
of genius, but a sermon in stone, perpetually preached to the surging,
buzzing crowds below. It stands high above the central hall of the
Exchange, at business hours a scene of extraordinary bustle and