ottle was enshrined among the
flowers, and that upon the bottle was an inscription--necessarily a
sonnet, as we impulsively decided--our feeling toward Serrieres was of
the warmest. Without question, those generous creatures had sent us of
their best, and with a posy of verse straight from their honest hearts.
Only poets ministering to poets could have conceived so pretty a scheme.
But the eager group that surrounded the Majoral who held the bottle flew
asunder in wrath as he read out loudly, in place of the expected sonnet,
these words: "Quinine prepared by Cuminat at Serrieres"! And then our
feeling toward Serrieres grew much less warm. Yet I am not sure that
Cuminat was moved only by the sordid wish to advertise at our expense
his preparation of quinine. I am disposed to credit him in part with a
helpful desire to check the fever rising in the blood of our boat-load
of Southerners who each moment--as they slid down that hill-side of a
river--were taking deeper and stronger drafts of the heady sunshine of
their own Southern sun. On the other hand, I am forced to admit that had
his motive been pure benevolence his offering would not have been so
pitiably scant.

But the people of Tournon--to which generous town, and to the breakfast
provided by its cordial inhabitants, we came an hour before
noon--entreated us with so prodigal a liberality in the matter of
bottles that the questionable conduct of the Serrieres apothecary
quickly faded from our minds. In ancient times Tournon had a black
reputation for its evil-dealing with chance wayfarers along the Rhone,
and one's blood runs cold with mere thought of the horrors which went on
there in the times of the religious wars. But very likely because of an
honest desire to live down its own bad record--which I mention here
rather to its present credit than to its past shame--it now seems
determined to balance matters by manifesting toward passing travellers
the most obliging courtesy in the world. Certainly, we poets--coming
thither famished, and going thence full fed and sleekly satisfied--had
cause that day to bless its name.

As we came galloping around a curve in the river--I cannot insist too
strongly upon the dashing impetuosity that was the constant buoyant
undertone of our voyage--this Tournon the blessed shot up before us
perked out upon a bold little hill thrust forward into the stream: a
crowd of heavily-built houses rising around a church or two and a
personable