MÂCON is a name well known to travellers across France, but its immediate environs are scarcely known at all save as they are recognized as a region devoted to the product of the vine. For a fact the romantic and historic lore which abounds within a short radius of the capital of the Mâconnais makes it one of the most interesting regions of mid-France.

Lying just to the westward is the Charollais, whose capital, Charolles, the ancient fortress of the Comtes de Charolles, is surrounded by a veritable girdle of castles and donjons, the nearest two kilometres beyond the town. They formed in their prime an outer line of defence behind which the counts lived in comparative safety. Montersine, the nearest of these works, a vast rectangular donjon with echauguettes, must certainly have been the most formidable. Within ten leagues are the chateaux of Lugny, Rambeauteau and Corcheval – one of the most ancient of the Charollais. There are also Terreaux-à-Verostres, the Renaissance Chaumont at Saint-Bonnet-de-Joux and, finally, the fortress of Commune-sur-Martigny-le-Comte.

Of these, that of Chaumont-la-Guiche, two kilometres from Saint-Bonnet-de-Joux, is quite the most splendid when it comes to best fulfilling the mission of a luxurious Renaissance maison de campagne. It is to-day the magnificent twentieth century residence of the Marquis de la Guiche, but is a lineal descendant of the edifice built in the reign of François Premier and terminated by Philibert de Guiche, who died in 1607. At the time of the Saint Bartholomew massacre he was Bailli de Mâcon, and, throughout, the Mâconnais and the Charollais took a firm stand against the killing off of the Protestants as an unholy means to a Christian end.

Before the chateau is an equestrian statue of its sixteenth century chatelain, and the stables, a great vaulted hall whose ceiling is upheld by more than fifty svelt colonnettes, are in no small way reminiscent of the still more extensive Écuries at Chantilly. There is also, as a dependency of the chateau, a remarkably beautiful Gothic chapel with fine old glass in its windows – Gothic of a late construction, be it understood, but acceptable Gothic nevertheless.

At Paray-le-Monail – a place of sainted pilgrimage, because of the miracle of the Sacré Cœur which took place here – is to be seen the luxurious dwelling of a local seigneur who was closely allied to the Comte de Charolles. It is a palace in all but name, and were it on the well-worn travel track in Touraine would be accounted one of the marvels of the brilliant array of Renaissance dwellings there. It holds this distinction to-day among the comparatively few who know it, and, as it serves the public functions of a Hôtel de Ville, its future as a “monument historique” worthy of preservation seems assured. Chateau or palace it may not be; it may be only a luxurious town house; who shall make the distinction after all? Let the reader, or better yet, the visitor, to this admirable Renaissance wonder-work be assured that it is more royally palatial than many which have sheltered the heads and persons of the most fastidious of monarchs.

South from Charolles, behind the hills of the Brionnais, almost on the edge of the ancient Forez, in part only Burgundian, is the coquette bourgade (a French expression absolutely untranslatable) of Marcigny, all ochre and brown after the local colouring. It is a town of a great tree-bordered Place, or Square, with decrepit old houses overhanging its narrow streets, made famous in the past by a celebrated Benedictine priory which received only the daughters of the nobility. Of this monastery there remains only the prior’s palace, a princely sort of abode which to-day has been turned into a hotel. Here one may experience one of the greatest and most joyful surprises of French travel, and pick up his historical lore on the spot.

Leaving Marcigny for Semur-en-Brionnais, one passes a vestige of the feudal past in the shape of an elaborately decorated feudal tower. At a distance this decorative effect seems to be produced by shot still clinging to the walls, an effect that may be seen also at Arques in Normandy and at Tarascon in the Midi. Here this is an illusion. As one approaches nearer it is easy to see these round bosses transform themselves into mascarons, or sculptured decorative details, like the escutcheons and plaques so frequently seen stuck into the walls of so many civic edifices in Italy. This old tower is of a different species, but manifestly it is a memorial of some sort. Its peaked head rises above a sort of pavillon, or loft, like a gigantic pigeon-house. There is a diminutive barbican on one side, and on the other are narrow slits of Gothic windows, as if for defence rather than as a means of letting light and air within.

“This is some ancient historic monument, no doubt?” you query of some passing peasant. And to be precise he answers: “Yes, a tower.” That is all the information you can get beneath its shadow, but you are content and go your way. It fulfils exactly your idea of what a mediæval donjon should be, and what it lacks in apparent authenticated history can be readily enough imagined by anyone with a predilection for such musings.

Leaving the Charollais and the Brionnais, one turns toward Mâcon by the gateway of Cluny. Mediævalism here is rampant in memory, song and story, though the monuments are unfamiliar ones. It is an echo of the days when abbots and priors were often barons, and barons were magistrates who held the keys of life and death over other of mankind. These were the days, too, when the Pope was the real ruler of many a kingdom with another titular head. Large parcels of land, from the Black Sea to Brittany, fiefs, countships and even dukedoms, were church property, and others held their brief sway therein only by the tolerance of the Pontiff.

Seemingly exempt from this domination, the powerful monks of Cluny knew no lord nor master. On one occasion a Pope and a King of France, with numberless prelates and nobles in their train, took refuge in the old abbey, but not a brother put himself out in the least to do them honour.

By the fifteenth century, the hour of decadence had rung out for Cluny; no more was it true

“En tout pays où vent vente
L’Abbe de Cluni à rente.”

It was at this time that the “arbitres des rois” lost their power.

The great Abbey of Cluny may readily enough be included in any contemplation of the great civic and domestic establishments of these parts. The only difference is that in some cases the chatelains or chatelaines were princes or princesses instead of abbés or abbesses.

Cluny’s destinies were presided over by an abbé, but kings and cardinals and popes all, at one time or another, came to dwell within its walls.

When Cluny was but a mere hamlet, in the year 910 A.D., Guillaume, Duc d’Aquitaine et Comte d’Auvergne, founded this abbey, which became one of the most celebrated in the universe. From the first its abbés were cardinals and princes of Church and State.

In 1245 Pope Innocent IV. visited the abbey with a train of twelve cardinals and scores of minor churchmen. The Sainted Louis and the queen, his mother, enjoyed hospitality within its walls, and the Emperor of Constantinople, and a throng of followers, all found a welcome here; and this without incommoding the four hundred monks who were attached to the foundation. Pope Gelasse II died at the abbey, and the Archbishop Guy of Vienne was here elected Pope, under the name of Calixtus II, by a conclave assembled within its halls. To-day the pride of the former powerful abbey rests only on its laurels of other days. Its superb basilica has practically disappeared. Only its foundations, five hundred and fifty feet in length, are to be traced. The extensive library has disappeared, and only certain of the walls and roofs and a few minor apartments of the former palatial conventual buildings remain to suggest the one time glory.

The rich plain of Cluny was, in 910 A.D., but a forest called the “Vallé Noire” when the Abbé Bernon with a dozen brothers founded the celebrated Abbey of Cluny, called the “cradle of modern civilization.”

Of the conventual buildings the most remarkable features still standing are the south arm of the great transept of the abbey church, the massive octagonal tower, of a height of sixty metres, another slighter octagonal clocher, and the Chapelle des Bourbons.

Cluny’s old houses, or such of them as remain, have been to a large extent rebuilt and remodelled, but still enough remains to suggest that the old monastic city was a place of luxury-loving and worldly citizens as well as monks. Here and there a flying stair, a balcony, a loggia, or a rez-de-Chaussée arcade suggests a detail almost Italian in its motive. Colonnettes divide a range of windows and pilasters support stone balconies and terraces here and there in a most pleasing manner, and with a most surprising frequency, – a frequency which is the more pleasing, since, as has been said, scarcely anything of the sort is to be seen here in more than fragmentary form, though indeed all the architectural orders and devices of the ingenious mediæval builder are to be noted. The Revolution respected Cluny, but the Empire and “La Bande Noire” condemned it to destruction.

The Abbatial Palace, a palatial dependence of the abbey, where lodged visiting potentates and prelates, escaped entire destruction, and is to-day the chief ornament of the town. A national educational institution now occupies the halls and apartments of this great building where lords and seigneurs and churchmen once held their conclaves.

A fine Gothic portal leads to the inner court of this magnificent edifice, which was erected by two abbés, Jean de Bourbon and Jacques d’Amboise. Each had built a separate dwelling on either side of the great portal. That of the Cardinal de Bourbon is unlovely enough, as such edifices go, but has an air of a certain sumptuousness notwithstanding. That of Jacques d’Amboise is a highly ornate work of the Renaissance, and now serves as the Hôtel de Ville, whilst the other houses a local museum and library.

A garden of the formal order surrounds the two edifices and covers a goodly bit of the ground formerly occupied by the other buildings attached to the abbey. Entrance to this garden, and its Palais Abbatial, as the ensemble is officially known, is through a double Romanesque portal, as much a militant note as the rest is religious.

Cluny’s Hôtel Dieu is another remarkable souvenir of old. Within are various monuments and statues of churchmen and nobles which give it at once a lien on one’s regard. There is a luxurious monument to one of the Abbés of Cluny; another, that the Cardinal de Bouillon erected to his father, Maurice de la Tour d’Auvergne, Duc Souverain de Bouillon, Prince Souverain de Sedan.

Here and there about the town an old feudal tower or house-front juts out in close communion with some banal modern façade, but the whole aspect of the city of some four thousand inhabitants to-day is, when viewed from a distant approach, as of a feudal city with no modernities whatever. Near acquaintance disabuses one of this idea, but, regardless of this, the aspect of Cluny, the monastery and the city, is one of imposing and harmonious grandeur, hardly to be likened to any similar ensemble in France or beyond the frontiers.

Near Cluny, in the heart of the “Black Valley,” is the Chateau de Cormatin, belonging to a M. Gunsbourg, and containing an important collection of pictures and furniture, all of them antique, which are cordially submitted to the gaze of the curious upon a diplomatic request.

Rising from the plain, on the road to Tournus, is the Chateau de Brançion, a feudal relic and not much more, but proclaiming its former military glory as if its history had been epoch-making, which it probably was not, as there is but scant reference to it in local annals.

As one approaches Mâcon by road from the north or west, great villas and “chateaux de commerce” line every kilometre of the way. Some are ancient and historic, though in no really great sense; others are modern and banally, painfully, well-kept and whitewashed – only the badigeon is pink or blue or green, painted one can readily believe by the artist (sic) descendants of the Italians who once inhabited the region in large numbers. There are overhanging balconies on all sides; balustrades, terraces and loggias relieve the monotony of most of the façades, and indeed, it is as if a corner of Italy had been transported to mid-France.

Mâcon is a picturesque ensemble of much that is ancient, but the smugness of the place, its undeniable air of modernity and prosperity, have done much to discount what few well conserved architectural charms it still possesses. This is true of great churches and palatial dwellings alike, though there are many undeniably fine bits here and there which, if one only knew, perhaps possess a history as thrilling as that enjoyed by many more noble edifices.

For one of the best impressions of Mâcon it is possible to have, there is nothing better than Turner’s painting “Mâcon,” or a photographic copy thereof. It is a drawing which until recently was never engraved. Turner and his engravers never dared attempt it, so complex was the light and shadow of the vintage sun shining on the hillsides and valleys of the Côte d’Or. Recently Frank Short made a mezzotint of it, and it stands to-day as one of the most expressive topographical drawings extant.

Mâcon was originally the capital of a petit pays, the Mâconnais, and is to-day, in local parlance. In former times it was the governmental seat of a line of petty sovereigns, from the day of Louis-le-Débonnaire until the country passed into the hands of the ducal Burgundians. From this time forth, though forming a component part of the great duchy, the region was settled frequently upon various members of the parent house as a vassal state where the younger branch might wield a little power of its own without complicating the affairs of the greater government.

In Revolutionary times Mâcon was considered by the Republicans as “a hateful aristocratic hole.” This being so, one wonders that more souvenirs of royalty have not remained.

In feudal times the city was enclosed by an enceinte cut with six great gates, supported by an inner citadel. These walls and bastions were demolished later, and the city was almost alone among those of Burgundy to freely open its doors to the Ligueurs and Henri IV. From this time on important historical events seem to have avoided Mâcon.

The site of Mâcon’s ancient citadel is now occupied by the Préfecture. It was formerly the Episcopal Palace, a regal dwelling which the bishops of other days must have found greatly to their liking. It is the nearest thing to a chateau which Mâcon possesses to-day.

The Hôtel de Ville is a banal structure of the eighteenth century, the gift of the Comte de Montreval, formerly his family residence. The Palais de Justice is also a made-over hôtel-privée and has some architectural distinctions, but there is nothing here to take rank among the castles and chateaux of the rest of the Burgundian countryside.

Southwest from Mâcon, scarce thirty kilometres away, is a romantic little corner of old France known to the French themselves – those who know it at all – as the Pays de Lamartine. The little townlets of Milly and Saint-Pont were the cradle and the refuge of Lamartine, who so loved this part of France extending from the Loire to Lac Leman and the Alps.

The political world of the capital, into whose vortex the great litterateur was irresistibly drawn, had not a tithe of the effect upon his character as compared with that evoked by the solitudes of his Burgundian patrie and his Alpes de Chambéry.

Milly, here in the midst of the opulent plains and hillsides of Burgundy, is a spot so calm and so simply environed that one can not but feel somewhat of the inspiration of the man who called it his “chère maison.”

A half a dozen kilometres from Milly is Saint-Pont surrounded by a magnificent framing of rounded summits forming one of those grandiose landscapes of which Lamartine so often wrote:

“Oui, l’homme est trop petit, ce spectacle l’écrase.”

Here is the Chateau de Lamartine, not a tourist sight by any means, at least not an over-done one, but a shrine as worthy of contemplation and admiration as many another more grand and more popular.

Seated snugly at the foot of a wooded slope, the chateau, flanked with two great towers, lifts its serrated sky-line proudly above the reddish, ochre-washed walls (a colour dear to the folk of the Mâconnais) high above the level of the roofs of the town below.

A more massive square tower sets further to the rear, and a tourelle, with a pointed candle-snuffer roof, accentuates the militant aspect of the edifice, though indeed its claims rest entirely on the arts of peace to the exclusion of those of war.

Here, in the family chateau, Alphonse-Marie-Louis-de-Lamartine passed the happiest years of his life. This was at a time when the pomp of power which he afterwards tasted as Minister of Foreign Affairs, after the abdication of Louis Philippe, had no attraction for him.

“Il est sur la colline
Une blanche maison,
Une tour la domine,
Un buisson d’aubepine
Est tout son horizon.”

As Lamartine himself wrote: “Nothing here will remind one of luxury; it is simply the aspect of a great farm where the owners live the simple life in a great block of a silent dwelling.” These words describe the Chateau de Lamartine very well to-day.

Saint-Pont and the Chateau de Lamartine are well worth half a day of anyone who is found at Mâcon and not hard pressed to move on.

Near Saint-Pont is the ancient Chateau de Noble, belonging, in 1558, to Nicolas de Pisa, and, in 1789, to Claude de la Beaune. It is not a splendid structure in any architectural sense, but a most curious and appealing one. Its chief distinction comes from its two pointed coiffed towers, one at either end of a high sloping gable.

Repairs and restorations made since the Revolution have deprived it of the ancient ramparts which once entirely surrounded it, but the romantic and curious aspect of the main body of the structure, and those all-impressive, svelt, sky-piercing towers, make it seem too quaint to be real. Certainly no more remarkable use of such adjuncts to a seigneurial chateau has ever been made than these towers. Here they are not massive, nor particularly tall, but their proportions are seemingly just what they ought to be. They are, at any rate, entirely in accord with the rest of the structure, and that is what much modern architecture lacks.

CHAPTER XII
IN THE BEAUJOLAIS AND LYONNAIS

SOUTH from Chalon, by the banks of the Saône, lies the Beaujolais, a wine-growing region which partakes of many of the characteristics of the Côte d’Or itself. Further south, beyond Mâcon, the aspect of the Lyonnais is something quite different. All is of a bustle and hustle of the feverish life of to-day, whilst in the Beaujolais pursuits are agricultural. Each of these regions is profoundly wealthy and prosperous, an outgrowth, naturally enough, of the opulent times of old, for here, as in the heart of Burgundy, the conditions of life were ever ample and easy.

Throughout the countryside of the Beaujolais and the Mâconnais one notes a manner of building with respect to the meaner dwellings which, to say the least, is most curious. These small houses are built of a species of sun-dried bricks or lumps of clay. It seems satisfactory; as satisfactory as would be an adobe dwelling – in a dry climate. But here in times of flood those built in the river bottoms have been known to melt away like the sand castles of children at the seashore.

The present Département of the Saône-et-Loire was evolved from the very midst of the Burgundian kingdom, and comprises chiefly the mediæval Comtés of the Autunnois, Chalonnais, Mâconnais and Charollais. The Romans were the real exploiters of all this region, and only with the pillage of the Normans, and the successive civil and religious wars, did the break-up of Burgundy really come to be an assured fact.

Chalon-sur-Saône itself is most attractive – in parts. As a whole it is disappointing. François Premier built the fortifications of Chalon in 1521, and half a century later Charles IX constructed the citadel – “to hold the town in subjection, and the inhabitants in ignorance.”

Dijon was the city of the mediæval counts; Chalon was a city of churchmen. Nevertheless the bishops of the episcopal city bore the title of Counts, and of its churches which remain none is more typical of the best of Romanesque in France than the nave and side aisles of Chalon’s Cathedral de Saint Vincent.

Chalon’s monuments of the feudality are few indeed to-day; they and their histories have been well nigh forgotten, but here and there some fine old gable or portico springs into view unannounced, and one readily enough pictures again the life of the lords and ladies who lived within their walls, whilst to-day they are given over to matter of fact, work-a-day uses with little or no sentimental or romantic atmosphere about them.

There is no distinct official edifice at Chalon which takes up its position as a chateau, or manoir, at least none of great renown, though a rebuilt old church now transformed into a hotel of the second or third rate order is one of the most curiously adapted edifices of its class anywhere to be seen.

What a great family the Chalonnais were is recalled by the fact that in the sixteenth century all the folk of the city were regarded as cousins. This is taking the situation by and large, but certain it was that a community of family liens as well as interests did tend to make this relationship notable. Furthermore each of the trades and métiers herded by themselves in real clansman fashion, the nail-makers in the Rue des Cloutiers, the boiler-makers in the Rue des Chaudronniers and the barrel-makers in the Rue des Tonneliers. And there was a quarter, or faubourg, devoted to the priests and monks, as well as another where none but the nobility were allowed to be abroad.

To the west of Chalon are two famous vineyards, Touches and Mercurey, surrounded by mere hamlets, there being no populous centres nearer than Givry or Chalon. One remarks these two famous vineyards because of their repute, and because of the neighbouring superb ruin of the mediæval Chateau de Montaigu which crowns a hill lying between the two properties.

In the neighbourhood of Chalon are numerous little towns of no rank whatever as historic or artistic shrines, but bearing the suffix of Royal. It is most curious to note that many have changed their nomenclature – as it was before the Revolution. Saint Gengoux-le-Royal and ten other parishes all dropped the Royal, and became known as Saint Gengoux-le-National, etc. Donzy-le-Royal was not so fortunate in its position. Saint Gengoux has gained nothing by its spasm of republicanism. It is not more national to-day than Cavaillon or Carpentras, whereas the suffix Royal meant, if it meant anything, that it was an indication of its ancient rank when it belonged directly to the crown of France. Republicanism did not change its allegiance, only its name.

The diligence from Paris stopped at Chalon-sur-Saône in the old days and passengers made their way to Lyons by the river. Colbert it was who sought to develop the service of coches d’eau on the Saône between Chalon and Lyons. He carried the thing so far, in 1669, that he suppressed the public diligence by land which had formerly made the journey between the two capitals. This was not accomplished without a live protestation from the residents of the terminal cities.

In the last days of the malle-poste, when Chalon was the end of the journey from Paris, four steamboats of a primitive order competed for the privilege of carrying passengers from Chalon to Lyons.

To-day the service has been suppressed; the “piroschapes,” as they were called, have gone the way of the mail coaches. Travel to-day is accomplished with more comfort and more expedition.

Below Chalon, following down the Saône, within a league, one comes to Toisé, with a celebrated chateau, almost wholly ignored to-day when checking off the historical monuments of France. And this is true in spite of the fact that it was here within the walls of the Chateau de Toisé that was signed the famous treaty between Henri IV and the Duc de Mayenne. The chateau is simply an admirable Renaissance monument of its time with no very remarkable features or history save that noted above. This is enough to make it better known and more often visited, if only glanced at in passing. The author hopes the suggestion may be taken in earnest by those interested.

Midway between Mâcon and Chalon is Tournus, the site of a chateau-fort built by the Franks, and also of an abbey founded by Charles-le-Chauve in 875 A.D. This monarch gave the abbey a charter as proprietor of the city of Tournus in consideration of the monks putting it and its inhabitants under the protection of the Virgin and Saint Philibert. He also made the congregation of monks of the order of Saint Benoit “fermiers” of this “celestial domain.”

The Abbés of Tournus were a powerful race, rivalling the princes and dukes of other fiefs, and owning allegiance only to the king and Pope, more often to the latter than to the former. Among them were numbered no less than eight cardinals in the fifty-nine who ruled the city and the “domain.”

The monastery itself has become a sort of institution, a secular lodging house, but its fine church still remains as one of the most famous Romanesque-Burgundian examples of its time.

Above Tournus, high on the hill back of the town, sits a disused ancient fabric, a former Benedictine abbey. Its abbés had the right to wear the pontifical vestments, and to administer justice to the city and its neighbouring dependencies. More like an antique fortress than a religious foundation, it is the most ambitious and striking edifice now to be seen in Tournus.

Tournus has an artistic shrine of great moment and interest, although its architectural details comport little with the really dignified examples of mediæval architecture. It is the birthplace of the painter Greuze, and before its arcades rises a monument to his memory. The great painter of the idealist school was born here. In the local museum are nearly five hundred designs from his hand.

Opposite Tournus, in mid-Saône, is a strip of flat island known as the Ile-de-la-Palme, a morsel of alluvial soil respected by centuries of spring floods which have passed it by on either side, and indeed, often over its surface. The Helvetians, quitting their country in ancient times, invaded Gaul and made use of the Ile-de-la-Palme to cross the Saône, aided by either pontoons or rafts. Centuries later, after the bloody battle of Fontenay, the son of Louis-le-Débonnaire held a conference on this isle with regard to the division of the conquered territory. Thus it is that the Ile-de-la-Palme in the Saône has something in common with that other historic island in the Bidassoa where France and Spain played a game of give and take in the sixteenth century.

A short distance from the east bank of the Saône is Romenay in the heart of the Chalonnais. It is a relic of an ancient fortified city, a townlet to-day of less than six hundred inhabitants, though once, judging from the remains of its oldtime ramparts, much more extensive and influential.

Saint Trivier-de-Courtes, like Romenay, has little more than a bare half a thousand of population to-day, though it was once a noble outpost planted by the Ducs de Savoie, the masters of Bresse, against the possible invasion of the Burgundians and the French from the north.

At Bagé-le-Chatel, between Mâcon and Bourg, rises a grim reminder of the feudality. It is the silhouette of the fine old castle of the ancient Seigneurs de Bagé.

Passing Mâcon by, and still following the Saône, one comes in a dozen or twenty kilometres to Thoissey, a town which has not been greatly in evidence these latter days. It is a somnolent little city of the ancient Principality of Dombes, that disputed ground of the Burgundians and the Savoyards in the middle ages. Only from the fact that it was the birthplace of Commandant Marchand of the ill-fated Faschoda expedition would it ever have been mentioned in the public prints of the last generation.

In good old monarchial days it was different. Then Thoissey set an aristocratic example to many a neighbour more prosperous and better known to-day. The Princes de Dombes had a chateau here, and they embellished the local Hospice in a way that made it almost a rival of that other establishment of its class at Beaune. Throughout Thoissey there were, and are still, many admirable examples of the town houses of the nobles and courtiers of the little State of Dombes. Thoissey was the miniature capital of a miniature kingdom. The local “college” still shows evidences of a luxuriant conception of architectural decoration with its finely sculptured window frames and doorways.

The most striking incident of Thoissey’s career was when the Seigneur de Bagé attacked the Seigneur de Thoissey, who was at the time the Sire de Beaujeau, in his stronghold. The latter called the Duc de Bourbon to his aid and thus brought about an inter-province imbroglio which necessitated the intervention of the King of France as mediator, though without immediate success. The litigation finally went before Pope Clement VII (a French Pope, by the way), and only in 1408, a quarter of a century after the feud began, did the Duc de Bourbon, who meantime had become also the Sire de Beaujeau, succeed in throwing off his adversaries.

Thoissey during the time of the Ligue, or more particularly its Seigneur, threw in its lot with Mayenne, who ultimately, when he finally went over to his royal master, caused the Chateau de Thoissey to be razed to earth. This is why to-day one sees only the heap of stones, locally called “the chateau,” which, to be appreciated, require a healthy imagination and some knowledge of the situation.