nhabitants to a greater
extent than he liked. It is said that when he had taken the town, the
municipality received him in state, and supplied him with wine of the
country. He praised the wine very highly, on which one of the body had
the ill taste to assure him that they had a better wine than that.
'You keep it, perhaps,' was the royal rebuke, 'for a better occasion.'
Henry had a great opinion of this wine; and the Duc de Sully states,
in his Memoirs, that when the Duc de Mayenne retired from the league
against the king, and came to Monceaux to tender his allegiance, Henry
punished him for past offences by walking so fast about the grounds of
the chateau, that the poor duke, what with his sciatica, and what with
his fat, at last told him with an expressive gesture that a minute
more of it would kill him. The king thereupon let him go, and promised
him some _vin d'Arbois_ to set him right again.[27]

The present appearance of the town, as seen from the high level followed
by the railway, scarcely recalls the time when Arbois was known as _le
jardin de noblesse_, and Barbarossa dated thence his charters, or Jean
Sans-peur held there the States of Burgundy. Gollut[28] tells a story of
a dowager of Arbois, mother-in-law to Philip V. and Charles IV. of
France, which outdoes legend of Bishop Hatto. Mahaut d'Artois was an
elderly lady remarkable for her charities, and was by consequence always
surrounded by large crowds of poor folk during her residence at the
Chatelaine, the ruins of which lie a mile or two from Arbois. On the
occasion of a severe famine in Burgundy, she collected a band of her
mendicant friends in a stable, and burned them all, saying that '_par
pitie elle hauoit faict cela, considerant les peines que ces pauvres
debuoient endurer en temps de si grande et tant estrange famine_.'

There is a Val d'Amour near Arbois, but the more beautiful valley of
that name lies between Dole and Besancon, and, as we passed its
neighbourhood, my friend with the Macintosh informed me that as it was
clear from my questions that I was drawing up a history of the Franche
Comte, he must beg me to insert a legend respecting the origin of this
name, Val d'Amour, which, he believed, had never appeared in print. I
disclaimed the history, but accepted the legend, and here it is:--The
Seigneur of Chissey was to marry the heiress of a neighbouring
seigneurie, and, it is needless to add, she was very lovely, and he was
handsome and bra