counted by the hundred a month during the holiday season. Alert to the
unmistakable rat-tat-tat of Dame Fortune at their front-doors, the good
folks are preparing for the welcome invasions to come. The auberge is
being transformed into an inn, roads are improving, a regular service
of guides has been organized, and all charges for guides, carriages,
and mules have been regulated by tariff. It is hardly possible to
exaggerate the weird fascination and eldritch charm of this once
dreaded, ill-omened place. Only one pen--that, alas! at rest for ever--
could have done justice to such a theme. In the hands of the great
Sand, Montpellier-le-Vieux might have afforded us a chef d'oeuvre to set
beside 'La Ville Noire' or the adorable 'Jeanne.'

Fresh and interesting as is a sojourn on the Roof of France, a name in
verity accorded to the Lozere, I have not restricted myself within such
limits. The climbing up and the getting down offer many a racy and
novel experience. I have given not only the middle of my journey, but
the beginning and the end. Those of my country-folk who have traversed
the picturesque little land of the French Morran, who have steamed from
Lyons to Avignon, made their way by road through the Gard and the
Aveyron, and sojourned in the cheese-making region of the Cantal--I
fancy their number is not legion--may pass over my chapters thus
headed. Had I one object in view only, to sell my book, I must have
reversed the usual order of things, and put the latter half in place of
the first. I prefer the more methodical plan, and comfort myself with
the reflection that France, excepting Brittany, Normandy, the Pyrenees,
the Riviera and the Hotel du Jura, Dijon, is really much less familiar
to English travellers than Nijni-Novgorod or Jerusalem. I no more
encountered anyone British born during my two journeys in the Lozere
than I did a beggar. This privileged corner of the earth enjoys an
absolute immunity from excursionists and mendicants. Strong