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 *rential downpour. In provincial circles known as clerical, bicycling is regarded as improper, because it has been pronounced unfashionable. At Orleans you will see women and young girls punting as you wander out beyond the suburbs towards the source of the Loiret, in the charming demesne of the Polignacs, but you will not encounter a woman on a bicycle, for Orleans is a clerical town, and, consequently, all that is most fashionable and pretentious. France is aware of the ills which clericalism has brought upon Spain; yet, for the moment, she is deliberately walking backward, through the strenuous efforts of the snobs and of a defunct aristocracy. These reactionary influences are the work of a coterie of intriguing women and ambitious priests in Paris, and now even material and private interests are menaced by conspiring malcontents.