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in its proportions to suggest the magnitude of the entire fabric as it must once have been, and for that reason is all-sufficient in its appeal to the romantic and historic sense.

      Situated as it was on the main highway between Paris and Dijon, Villeneuve occupied a most important strategic position. It spanned this old Route Royale with its two city gates, and its ramparts stretched out on either side in a determinate fashion which allowed no one to enter or pass through it that might not be welcome. These graceful towered gateways which exist even to-day were the models from which many more of their kind were built in other parts of the royal domain, as at Magny-en-Vexin, at Moret-sur-Loing, and at Mâcon.

      A dozen kilometres from Villeneuve-sur-Yonne is Joigny, almost entirely surrounded by a beautiful wildwood, the Forêt National de Joigny. Joigny was one of the last of the local fiefs to give up its ancient rights and privileges. The fief took rank as a Vicomté. Jeanne de Valois founded a hospice here – the predecessor of the present Hotel Dieu – and the Cardinal de Gondi of unworthy fame built the local chateau in the early seventeenth century.

      The Chateau de Joigny, as became its dignified state, was nobly endowed, having been built to the Cardinal’s orders by the Italian Serlio in 1550-1613. To-day the structure serves the functions of a schoolhouse and is little to be remarked save that one hunts it out knowing its history.

      There is this much to say for the schoolhouse-chateau at Joigny; it partakes of the constructive and decorative elements of the genuine local manner of building regardless of its Italian origin, and here, as at Villeneuve, there is a distinct element of novelty in all domestic architecture which is quite different from the varieties to be remarked a little further north. There, the town houses are manifestly town houses, but at Joigny, as often as not, when they advance beyond the rank of the most humble, they partake somewhat of the attributes of a castle and somewhat of those of a palace. This is probably because the conditions of life have become easier, or because, in general, wealth, even in mediæval times, was more evenly distributed. Certainly the noblesse here, as we know, was more numerous than in many other sections.

      Any one of a score of Joigny’s old Renaissance houses, which line its main street and the immediate neighbourhood of its market-place, is suggestive of the opulent life of the seigneurs of old to almost as great a degree as the Gondi chateau which has now become the École-Communal.

      Of all Joigny’s architectural beauties of the past none takes so high a rank as its magnificent Gothic church of Saint Jean, whose vaultings are of the most remarkable known. Since the ruling seigneur at the time the church was rebuilt was a churchman, this is perhaps readily enough accounted for. It demonstrates, too, the intimacy with which the affairs of church and state were bound together in those days. A luxurious local chateau of the purely residential order, not a fortress, demanded a worthy neighbouring church, and the seigneur, whether or not he himself was a churchman, often worked hand in hand with the local prelate to see that the same was supplied and embellished in a worthy manner. This is evident to the close observer wherever he may rest on his travels throughout the old French provinces, and here at Joigny it is notably to be remarked.

      Saint Fargeau, in the Commune of Joigny, is unknown by name and situation to the majority, but for a chateau-town it may well be classed with many better, or at least more popularly, known. On the principal place, or square, rises a warm-coloured winsome fabric which is the very quintessence of mediævalism. It is a more or less battered relic of the tenth century, and is built in a rosy brick, a most unusual method of construction for its time.

      The history of the Chateau de Saint Fargeau has been most momentous, its former dwellers therein taking rank with the most noble and influential of the old régime. Jacques Coeur, the celebrated silversmith of Bourges and the intimate of Charles VII, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, and the leader of the Convention – Lepelletier de Saint Fargeau – all lived for a time within its walls, to mention only three who have made romantic history, though widely dissimilar were their stations.

      An ornate park with various decorative dependencies surrounds the old chateau on three sides and the ensemble is as undeniably theatrical as one could hope to find in the real. In general the aspect is grandiose and it can readily enough be counted as one of the “show-chateaux” of France, and would be were it better known.

      Mlle. de Montpensier – “la Grande Mademoiselle” – was chatelaine of Saint Fargeau in the mid-seventeenth century. Her comings and goings, to and from Paris, were ever written down at length in court chronicles and many were the “incidents” – to give them a mild definition – which happened here in the valley of the Yonne which made good reading. On one occasion when Mademoiselle quitted Paris for Saint Fargeau she came in a modest “carosse sans armes.” It was for a fact a sort of sub-rosa sortie, but the historian was discreet on this occasion. Travel in the old days had not a little of romanticism about it, but for a lady of quality to travel thus was, at the time, a thing unheard of. This princess of blood royal thus, for once in her life, travelled like a plebeian.

      Closely bound up with the Sennonais were the fiefs of Auxerre and Tonnerre, whose capitals are to-day of that class of important provincial cities of the third rank which play so great a part in the economic affairs of modern France. But their present commercial status should by no means discount their historic pasts, nor their charm for the lover of old monuments, since evidences remain at every street corner to remind one that their origin was in the days when knights were bold. The railway has since come, followed by electric lights and automobiles, all of which are once and again found in curious juxtaposition with a bit of mediæval or Renaissance architecture, in a manner that is surprising if not shocking. Regardless of the apparent modernity roundabout, however, there is still enough of the glamour of mediævalism left to subdue the garishness of twentieth century innovations. All this makes the charm of French travel, – this unlocked for combination of the new and the old that one so often meets. One can not find just this same sort of thing at Paris, nor on the Riviera, nor anywhere, in fact, except in these minor capitals of the old French provinces.

      The Comté d’Auxerre was created in 1094 by the Roi Robert, who, after the reunion of the Burgundian kingdom with the French monarchy, gave it to Renaud, Comte de Nevers, as the dot of one, Adelais, who may have been his sister, or his cousin – history is not precise. The house of Nevers possessed the countship until 1182, when it came to Archambaud, the ninth of the name, Sire de Bourbon. One of his heirs married a son of the Duc de Bourgogne and to him brought the county of Auxerre, which thus became Burgundian in fact. Later it took on a separate entity again, or rather, it allied itself with the Comtes de Tonnerre at a price paid in and out of hand, it must not be neglected to state, of 144,400 livres Tournois. The crown of France, through the Comtes d’Auxerre, came next into possession, but Charles VII, under the treaty of Arras, ceded the countship in turn to Philippe-le-Bon, Duc de Bourgogne. Definite alliance with the royal domain came under Louis XI, thus the province remained until the Revolution.

      With such a history small wonder it is that Auxerre has preserved more than fleeting memories of its past. Of great civic and domestic establishments of mediævalism, Auxerre is poverty-stricken nevertheless. The Episcopal Palace, now the Préfecture, is the most imposing edifice of its class, and is indeed a worthy thing from every view-point. It has a covered loggia, or gallery running along its façade, making one think that it was built by, or for, an Italian, which is not improbable, since it was conceived under the ministership of Cardinal Mazarin who would, could he have had his way, have made all things French take on an Italian hue. From this loggia there is a wide-spread, distant view of the broad valley of the Yonne which here has widened out to considerable proportions. The history of this Préfectural palace of to-day, save as it now serves its purpose as a governmental administrative building, is wholly allied with that of Auxerre’s magnificent cathedral and its battery of sister churches.

      Within the edifice, filled with clerks and officials in every cranny, all busy writing out documents by hand and clogging the wheels of progress as much as inefficiency can, are still found certain of its ancient furnishings and fittings. The great Salle des Audiences is still intact and is a fine example of thirteenth century woodwork. The wainscotting of its walls and ceiling is remarkably worked with a finesse of detail that would be hard to duplicate to-day except at the expense of a lord of finance or a king of petrol. Not even government

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