in four years of almost constant wanderings by
road and rail up and down France.

Offshore four kilometres is the Ile de Re, an isle thirty kilometres
long, where the inhabitants wear the picturesque _coiffe_ and costume
which have not become contaminated with Paris fashions. The one thing
to criticize is the backwardness of the lives of the good folk of the
isle and their enormous _pieds plats_.

Northward from La Rochelle is a region, almost within sight of the
Ile de Re, where the women wear the most highly theatrical costumes
to be seen anywhere in modern France, not even excepting the peasants
of Brittany. The chief distinction of the costume is a sort of tiny
twisted bandanna over the head, a tight-fitting or folded fichu, a
short ballet sort of a skirt, black stockings, and a gaily bordered
apron and dainty, high-heeled, tiny shoes--in strong contrast in size
and form to the ungainly feet of the women of the Ile de Re.

We left La Rochelle with real regret, passed the fortified town of
Rochefort without a stop, and, in something over two hours, reeled
off some sixty-eight kilometres of sandy, marshy roadway to Saintes.

Saintes is noted for many things: its antiquity, its religious
history, its Roman remains, and the geniality of its toddling old
dealer in sewing-machines (of American make, of course), who, as a
"side" line, sells gasoline and oil at considerably under the
prevailing rates elsewhere. Truly we were in the ideal touring-ground
for automobilists.

To Cognac is sixty-seven kilometres. If we had ever known that Cognac
was the name of a town we had forgotten it, for we had, for the
moment, at any rate, thought it the name of the region where were
gathered the grapes from which cognac was made.

Cognac is famous for the subtle spirit which is sold the world over
under that name, and from the fact that it was the birthplace of the
art-loving monarch, Francois Premier.

For these two reasons, and for the bountiful lunch of the Hotel
d'Orleans, and incidentally for the very bad cognac which we got at a
cafe whose name is really and truly forgotten, Cognac is writ large
in our note-books.

The house where was born Francois Premier is easily found, sitting by
the river's bank. To-day it is the counting-house of one of the great
brandy shippers whose name is current the world over. Its
associations have changed considerably, and where once the new art
instincts were born, in the person of the gallan