es like a wet dog as
her sizzling hot cylinders suck juice from a full throttle. We cross one
divide through a winding road bordered by bushy trees and as orderly as
a national park. We coast through a hillside hamlet of barking dogs and
saluting children who stand at smiling attention and greet our passage
with a shrill "Veev La Mereek" (Vive l'Amerique).

We scud across a broad, level road built well above the lowland, and
climb through zig-zagging avenues of stately poplars to the tunnel that
pierces the backbone of the next ridge.

While the solid rock walls of the black bore reverberate with the echoes
from our exhaust, we emerge on a road that turns sharply to the left and
hugs a cliff. Below winds a broad river that looks like mother of pearl
in the moonlight. The mountain walls on either side rise at angles
approximating 45 degrees, and in the light their orderly vineyards look
like the squares on a sloping checkerboard. In front of us and to the
right the flanking ridges converge to a narrow gorge through which the
river Doub runs to loop the town.

Commanding this gorge from the crests of the two rocky heights are
sinister sentinels whose smooth, grey walls and towers rise sheer from
the brink of the cliffs. The moonlight now catching the ramparts of the
em-battlements splashes them with strokes of white that seem ever
brighter in contrast with the darker shadows made by projecting portions
of the walls. Spaniard and Moor knew well those walls, and all the
kingly glory that hurried France to the reign of terror has slept within
their shadows.

Our way down the cliff side is hewn out of the beetling rock. To our
left, a jagged wall of rock rises to the sky. To our right, a step,
rock-tumbled declivity drops to the river's edge.

The moonlight brings funny fancies, and our yellow headlights, wavering
in concentric arcs with each turn of the course, almost seem to glint on
the helmets and shields of the spear-bearing legionaries that marched
that very way to force a southern culture on the Gauls. We slow down to
pass through the rock-hewn gate that once was the Roman aqueduct
bringing water down from mountain springs to the town.

Through the gate, a turn to the left and we reach the black bottom of
the gorge untouched by the rising moon. We face a blast of wind that
slows our speed and brings with it the first big drops of rain. We stop
at the "Octroi" and assure the customs collector that we are military,