Never surely did
the renowned Besancon _pates_ taste better, never did the wine of its
warm hill-sides prove of a pleasanter flavour! The children sported on
the turf like little Loves, the air was sweet with the perfume of
new-made hay. The birds sang overhead, and beyond our immediate pavilion
of greenery, lay the curling blue river and smiling green hills. Leaving
the children to sleep under the trees, and the horse to feed at a
neighbouring mill--there is no kind of wayside inn here, so we have to
beg a little hay from the miller or a farmer--we follow a little lad,
provided with matches and candles to the entrance of the famous
grottoes. Outside the sugar-loaf hill, so marvellously channelled and
cased with stalactite formation, has nothing remarkable--it is a mere
green height, and nothing more. Inside, however, as strange a spectacle
meets our eyes as it is possible to conceive. To see these caves in
detail, you must spend an hour or two in the bowels of the earth, but we
were contented with half that time, for this underground promenade is a
very chilly one, as in some places we were ankle deep in water. Each
provided with a candle, we now follow our youthful guide, who was
accompanied by a dog, as familiar as himself with the windings of these
sombre subterranean palaces, for palaces they might be called.
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