The Hotel Decameron is named after Boccaccio, who was once a bartender there.  It stands in a commanding position on the Place Nouveau Riche overlooking the Casino and the odalisk erected by Edward VII in memory of his cure.  After two weeks of the strychnine baths the merry monarch is said to have called for a corncob pipe and a plate of onions, after which he made his escape by walking over the forest track to the French frontier, although previous to this he had not walked a kilometer without a cane since John Bull won the Cowes regatta.  The haut ton of the section in which the Hotel Decameron finds itself can readily be seen by the fact that the campanile of the Duke of Marmalade fronts on the rue Sauterne, just across from the barroom of the Hotel.  The antiquaries say there is an underground corridor between the two.

The fascinations of a stay in Strychnine are manifold.  I have a weak heart, so I did not try the baths, although I used to linger on the terrace of the Casino about sunset to hear Tinpanni’s band and eat a bronze bowl of Kerosini’s gooseberry fool.  I spent a great deal of my time exploring the chief glory of the town, the Casa Grande, which stands on the colossal crag honeycombed underneath with the shafts and vaults of the cheese mine.  There is nothing in the world more entrancing than to stand (with a vinaigrette at one’s nose) on the ramp of the Casa, looking down over the ochre canal, listening to the hoarse shouts of the workmen as they toil with pick and shovel, laying bare some particularly rich lode of the pale, citron-coloured cheese which will some day make Strychnine a place of pelerinage for all the world. Pay homage to the fromage is a rough translation of the motto of the town, which is carved in old Gothic letters on the apse of the Casa itself.  Limberg, Gruyere, Alkmaar, Neufchatel, Camembert and Hoboken—­all these famous cheeses will some day pale into whey before the puissance of the Strychnine curd.  I was signally honoured by an express invitation of the burgomaster to be present at a meeting of the Cheesemongers’ Guild at the Rathaus.  The Kurdmeister, who is elected annually by the town council, spoke most eloquently on the future of the cheese industry, and a curious rite was performed.  Before the entrance of the ceremonial cheese, which is cut by the Kurdmeister himself, all those present donned oxygen masks similar to those devised by the English to combat the German poison-gas.  And I learned that oxygen helmets are worn by the workmen in the quarries to prevent prostration.

It was with unfeigned regret that I found my fortnight over.  I would gladly have lingered in the medieval cloisters of the Gin Palace, and sat for many mornings under the pistachio trees on the terrace sipping my verre of native wine.  But duties recalled me to the beaten paths of travel, and once more I drove in the old-fashioned ambulance to catch my even more old-fashioned train.  The B.V.D. trains only leave Strychnine when there is a stern wind, as otherwise the pungent fumes of the cheese carried in the luggage van are very obnoxious to the passengers.  Some day some American efficiency expert will visit the town and teach them to couple their luggage van on to the rear of the train.  But till then Strychnine will be to me, and to every other traveller who may chance that way, a fragrant memory.