with much force on to the weir at a point below the wood-work.
Here two planks are placed, forming a seat and a support for the back,
and a little lower still another plank for the feet to rest upon,
without which the bather would have a good chance of being washed away.
The water boils noisily and violently on all sides and in all
directions, coming down upon the subject's shoulders with a heavy thud,
which calls to mind the tender years when something softer than a cane
was used, and sends him forth like a fresh-boiled lobster. All this,
with towels, is not dear at fourpence.

The citadel is the great sight of Besancon, and the polite
Colonel-commandant attends at his office at convenient hours to give
passes. What it might be to storm the position under the excitement of
the sport of war, I cannot say; but certainly it is a most trying affair
on a hot Sunday's afternoon, even when all is made smooth, and the gates
are opened, by a comprehensive pass. The wall mentioned by Caesar as a
great feature of the place cut the site of the citadel off from the
town, and many signs of it were found when the cathedral of S. Stephen
was built, the unfortunate church which went down before the exigencies
of a siege under Louis XIV. The barrack-master proved to be a most
interesting man, knowing many details of Caesar's life and campaigns
which I suspect were not known to that captain himself. He had served in
Algeria, and assented to the proposition that more soldiers died there
of absinthe than of Arabs, stating his conviction that three-fourths of
the whole deaths are caused by that pernicious extract of wormwood, and
that he ought himself to have died of it long ago. He pointed out the
difference between the massive masonry of the period of the Spanish
occupation and the less impressive work of more recent times, and showed
the dungeon from which Marshal Bourmont bought his escape, in the time
of the first Napoleon.

The floor of one of the little look-out towers is composed of a
tombstone, representing a priest in full ecclesiastical dress, and my
question as to how it came there elicited the following story:--When
Louis XIV. was besieging the citadel, he placed his head-quarters, and a
strong battery, on the summit of the Mont Chaudane,[42] which commands
the citadel on one side as the Bregille does on the other. Among the
besieged was a monk named Schmidt, probably one of the Low-country men
to whom the Franche Comte was th