oom in the hotel, a silly, stuffy little room
which no one with any sense ever enters. One simply follows a
well-fed _commis-voyageur_ to the nearest popular cafe and writes his
letters there, as a well-habituated traveller should do.

Once on the road again we passed Montelimar--"_le pays du nougat
et de M. l'ex-President Loubet,_" we were told by the _octroi_
official who held us up at the barrier of this self-sufficient,
dead-and-alive, pompous little town. We didn't know M. Loubet and we
didn't like _nougat_, so we did not stop, but pushed on for Tournon.
There, at the little Hotel de la Poste, beneath the donjon tower of
the old _chateau_, we ate the most marvellously concocted _dejeuner_
we had struck for a long time. There's no use describing it; it won't
be the same the next time; though no doubt it will be as excellent.
It cost but two francs fifty centimes, including _vin du St. Peray_,
the rich red wine of the Rhone, a rival to the wines of Burgundy.

We might have done a good deal worse had we stopped at progressive,
up-to-date Valence, where automobile tourists usually do stop, but we
took the offering of the small town instead of the large one, and
found it, as usual, very good.

We had passed La Voute-sur-Rhone, that classic height which has been
pictured many times in old books of travel. It, and Tournon, and
Valence, and Viviers, and Pont St. Esprit were once riverside
stations for the _coches d'eau_ which did a sort of omnibus service
with passengers on the Rhone, between Lyons and Avignon. There is a
steamboat service to-day which also carries passengers, but it is not
to be recommended if one has the means of getting about by road.

This town, too, and Valence, were directly on the route of the
_malle-poste_ from Lyons to Marseilles. The different _postes_ or
relays were marked on the maps of the day by little twisted
hunting-horns. For the most part an old-time route map of the great
trunk lines of the _malle-poste_ and the _messageries_ would, serve
the automobilist of to-day equally as well as a modern road map.

The _malle-poste_, and the hiring out of post-horses, in France was
an institution more highly developed than elsewhere.

Post-horses were only delivered one in France upon the presentation
of a passport and payment, in advance, according to the following
tariff. The price was fixed by law, being the same throughout all
France.

1 Poste (about 15 miles) 1 franc 50 centime