he French proverb says, "ne peut donner que ce qu'elle a;"
and it might seem that an egg which has succeeded in being fresh has
done all that can reasonably be expected of it. But there was a bloom of
punctuality, so to speak, about these eggs of Bourg, as if it had been
the intention of the very hens themselves that they should be promptly
served. "Nous sommes en Bresse, et le beurre n'est pas mauvais," the
landlady said with a sort of dry coquetry, as she placed this article
before me. It was the poetry of butter, and I ate a pound or two of it;
after which I came away with a strange mixture of impressions of late
gothic sculpture and thick _tartines_. I came away through the town,
where, on a little green promenade, facing the hotel, is a bronze statue
of Bichat the physiologist, who was a Bressois. I mention it not on
account of its merit (though, as statues go, I don't remember that it is
bad), but because I learned from it--my ignorance, doubtless, did me
little honour--that Bichat had died at thirty years of age, and this
revelation was almost agitating. To have done so much in so short a life
was to be truly great. This reflection, which looks deplorably trite as
I write it here, had the effect of eloquence as I uttered it for my own
benefit on the bare little mall at Bourg.

[Illustration]

Chapter xxxix

[Beaune]

On my return to Macon I found myself fairly face to face with the fact
that my tour was near its end. Dijon had been marked by fate as its
farthest limit, and Dijon was close at hand. After that I was to drop
the tourist and re-enter Paris as much as possible like a Parisian. Out
of Paris the Parisian never loiters, and therefore it would be
impossible for me to stop between Dijon and the capital. But I might be
a tourist a few hours longer by stopping somewhere between Macon and
Dijon. The question was where I should spend these hours. Where better,
I asked myself (for reasons not now entirely clear to me), than at
Beaune? On my way to this town I passed the stretch of the Cote d'Or,
which, covered with a mellow autumn haze, with the sunshine shimmering
through, looked indeed like a golden slope. One regards with a kind of
awe the region in which the famous _crus_ of Burgundy (Vougeot,
Chambertin, Nuits, Beaune) are, I was going to say, manufactured. Adieu,
paniers; vendanges sont faites! The vintage was over; the shrunken
russet fibres alone clung to their ugly stick. The horizon on the