te of a pleasure castle of the Archbishops of Lyons, and of the
Villa Longchene to which light-hearted Lyons' nobles came. Palace and
Villa still are there--the one a Dominican school, the other a hospital
endowed by the Empress Eugenie: but the oaks and the Druids and the
battle are only faint legends now.

I am forced to admit that never a thought was given to that aggregation
of antiquities by the too-frivolous passengers aboard the _Gladiateur_.
At the very moment when we were steaming through those Gallo-Roman and
Mediaeval latitudes there was a burst of music from the piano that fired
our light-headed company as a spark fires a mine. The music was the air
of "La Coupe," the Felibrien Anthem, and instantly a hundred voices took
up the song. When this rite was ended, the music shifted to a livelier
key and straightway a farandole was formed. On the whole, a long and
narrow steamboat is not an especially good place for a farandole; but
the leader of that one--a young person from the Odeon, whose hair came
down repeatedly but whose exceptionally high spirits never came down at
all--was not one of the sort whom difficulties deter. At the head of the
long line of dancers--a living chain held together by clasped hands--she
caracoled and curveted up and down the narrow passes of the boat; and
after her, also caracoling and curveting, came the chain: that each
moment grew in length as volunteers joined it, or (in keeping with
farandole customs) as the less vivacious members of the party were
seized upon and forcibly impressed into its ranks. And so we farandoled
clear away to Givors.

It took the place of a master of ceremonies, our farandole, and acted
as an excellent solvent of formalities. Yet even without it there would
have been none of the stiffness and reserve which would have chilled a
company assembled under like conditions in English-speaking lands.
Friendliness and courtesy are characteristics of the French in general;
and especially did our American contingent profit by those amiable
traits that day on the Rhone. Save for a slight correspondence with a
single member of the party, all aboard the boat were strangers to us;
but in that kindly atmosphere, before we had time to fancy that we were
outsiders, we found ourselves among friends.

Givors slipped by almost unnoticed in the thick of the farandole: a
little town hung out to sun in long strips upon terraces rising from the
water-side; the walls and tiled ro