attacked its vital parts so seriously
that it still refused to go.

It was twelve o'clock, high noon, before it was discovered--with the
aid of the electrician from the electric light works--that two tiny
ends of copper wire, inside the coil (which a Frenchman calls a
_bobine_), had become unsoldered, and only when by chance they
rattled into contact would the sparking arrangements work as they
ought.

This was something new for all concerned. None of us will be likely
to be caught that way again. The cost was most moderate. It was not
the automobile owner who paid for the experience this time, a thing
which absolutely could not have happened outside of France. Pretty
much the whole establishment had had a hand in the job, and, if the
service had been paid for according to the time spent, it might have
cost anything the establishment might have chosen to charge.

Ten francs paid the bill, and we went on our way rejoicing, after
having partaken of a lunch, as excellent as the dinner we had eaten
the night before, at the Hotel de France.

La Rochelle, the city of the Huguenots, and later of Richelieu, was
reached just as the setting sun was slanting its red and gold over
the picturesque old port and the Tour de Richelieu. If one really
wants to know what it looked like, let him hunt up Petitjean's "Port
de la Rochelle" in the Musee de Luxembourg at Paris. Words fail
utterly to describe the beauty and magnifycence of this hitherto
unoverworked artists' sketching-ground.

[Illustration: La Rochelle]

We threaded our way easily enough through the old sentinel gateway
spanning the main street, lined with quaint old arcaded,
Spanish-looking houses, and drew up abreast of the somewhat
humble-looking Hotel du Commerce, on the Place d'Armes, opposite the
ugly little squat cathedral, once wedded to the haughty Richelieu
himself.

The Hotel du Commerce at La Rochelle is the equal of the Hotel de
France at Niort, and has the added attraction of a glass-covered
courtyard, where you may take your coffee and watch the household
cats amusing themselves with the goldfish in the pool of the fountain
which plays coolingly in the centre.

La Rochelle and its Hotel du Commerce are too good to be treated
lightly or abruptly by any writer; but, for fear they may both become
spoiled, no more shall be said here except to reiterate that they are
both unapproachable in quaintness, comfort, and charm by anything yet
found by the writer