Page:A Motor-Flight Through France.djvu/94

A MOTOR-FLIGHT THROUGH FRANCE park on the Allier, and the wide circumjacent boulevards, it wears, at every turn, the same trim holiday air, the rouge and patches of smooth gravel, bright flower-borders, gay shops, shady benches, inviting cafés. Even the cab-stands, with their smart vis-à-vis and victorias drawn by plump cobs in tinkling harnesses, seem part of a dream-town, where all that is usually sordid and shabby has been touched by the magic wand of trimness; or where some utopian millionaire has successfully demonstrated that the sordid and shabby need never exist at all.

But, to the American observer, Vichy is perhaps most instructive just because it is not the millionaire's wand which has worked the spell; because the town owes its gaiety and its elegance, not to the private villa, the rich man's "show-place," but to wise public expenditure of the money which the bathers annually pour into its exchequer.

It was, however, rather for the sake of its surroundings than for the study of its unfolding season, that we had come there; and the neighbouring country offered the richest return for our enterprise. [ 52 ]