Largely owing to the propinquity and obstinacy of the striking clock of the great church I arose at 6 a. m. The market was already in progress. I spoke with! an official about the clock, but I could not make him see that I had got up in the middle of the night. In spite of my estimate of his clock, he good-naturedly promised me much better roads. And the promise was fulfilled. But we did not mind. For now the strong wind was against us. This altered all our relations with the universe, and transformed us into impolite, nagging pessimists; previously we had been truly delightful people.
All that day till tea-time we grumbled over a good road that wound its way through a gigantic wheat-field. True that sometimes the wheat was oats, or even a pine plantation; but, broadly speaking, the wheat was all wheat, and the vast heaving sea of it rolled up to the very sides of the road under our laggard wheels. And it was all right, and it was all being cut with two-horse McCormick reapers. We actually saw hundreds of McCormick reapers. Near and far, on all the horizons, we could detect the slow-revolving paddle of the McCormick reaper. And at least we reached Chateau Landon, against the walls of which huge waves of wheat were breaking. Chateau Landon was our destination. We meant to discover it and we did.
Château Landon is one of the most picturesque towns in France; but, as the landlady of the Red Hat said to us, “no one has yet known how to make come _messieurs_, the tourists.” I should say that (except Carcassone, of course) Vezelay, in the Avalonnais, is perhaps _the_ most picturesque town in all France. Chateau Landon comes near it, and is much easier to get at. On one side it rises straight up in a tremendous sheer escarpment out of the little river Fusain, in which the entire town washes its clothes. The view of the city from the wooded and murmurous valley is genuinely remarkable, and the most striking feature of the view is the feudal castle which soars with its terrific buttresses out of a thick mass of trees. Few more perfect relics of feudalism than this formidable building can exist anywhere. It will soon celebrate its thousandth birthday. In putting it to the uses of a home for the poor (Asile de St. Severin) the townsmen cannot be said to have dishonoured its old age. You climb up out of the river by granite steps cut into the escarpment and find yourself all of a sudden in the market square, which looks over a precipice. Everybody is waiting to relate to you the annals of the town since the beginning of history: how it had its own mint, and how the palace of the Mint still stands; how many an early Louis lived in the town, making laws and dispensing justice; how Louis le Gros put himself to the trouble of being buried in the cathedral there; and how the middlemen come from Fontainebleau to buy game at the market. We sought the tomb in the cathedral, but found nothing of interest there save a stout and merry priest instructing a class of young girls in the aisle. However, we did buy a pair of fowls in the market for 4s. and carried them at our saddles, all the way back to Fontainebleau. The landlady of the Red Hat asked us whether her city was not wondrous? We said it was. She asked us whether we should come again? We said we should. She asked us whether we could do anything to spread the fame of her wondrous town? We said we would do what we could.