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to drop the tourist, and re-enter Paris as much as pos-
sible 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 Côte d'Or, which, covered with a mel-
low 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 crûs 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 left of the road had
a charm, however; there is something picturesque
in the big, comfortable shoulders of the Côte. That
delicate critic, M. Emile Montégut, in a charming
record of travel through this region, published some
years ago, praises Shakspeare for having talked (in
"Lear") of "waterish Burgundy." Vinous Burgundy
would surely be more to the point. I stopped at
Beaune in pursuit of the picturesque, but I might
almost have seen the little I discovered without stop-
ping. It is a drowsy little Burgundian town, very
old and ripe, with crooked streets, vistas always ob-
lique, and steep, moss-covered roofs.    The principal
A Little Tour in France.
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