ridden from his country home in the starlight to welcome us.




CHAPTER II.
THROUGH THE MORVAN (continued).


A delightful Sunday spent among delightful English and French friends,
long bright hours of perfect weather, long bright hours of genial and
affectionate intercourse, English sobriety lightened with French esprit
and playfulness-such reminiscences, however precious to the possessor,
hardly form materials for a chapter. I pass on to say something about
Autun itself, a town so rarely visited by my country-folk, that the
principal hotels have not as yet set up a teapot. The people, however,
are so obliging that they will let you go into the kitchen and there
make your own tea, even a plum-pudding, if you want it.

First some will ask the meaning of a name at the head of my page. The
Morvan-what may that be? I must explain, then, without going over
ground I have already described, that the Morvan, accessible as a
tourist-ground from Avallon, Autun, or Nevers, is a little Celtic
kingdom, isolated till recent times from the rest of France, alike by
position, language, and customs.

The name is familiar to French ears as Wales is to our own. Just as we
talk of such-and-such a place being in Wales, instead of specifying the
particular shire, so French folks will tell you that they have just
made a journey into the Morvan, that so-and-so lives in the Morvan,