There is a Val d’Amour near Arbois, but the more beautiful valley of that name lies between Dole and Besancon, and, as we passed its neighbourhood, my friend with the Macintosh informed me that as it was clear from my questions that I was drawing up a history of the Franche Comte, he must beg me to insert a legend respecting the origin of this name, Val d’Amour, which, he believed, had never appeared in print.  I disclaimed the history, but accepted the legend, and here it is:—­The Seigneur of Chissey was to marry the heiress of a neighbouring seigneurie, and, it is needless to add, she was very lovely, and he was handsome and brave.  A lake separated the two chateaux, and the young man not unfrequently returned by water rather late in the evening; and so it fell out that one night he was drowned.  The lady naturally grieved sorely for her loss, and put in train all possible means for recovering her lover’s body.  Time, however, passed on, and no success attended her efforts, till at length she caused the hills which dammed up the waters to be pierced, and then De Chissey was found.  A village sprang up near the outlet thus made, and took thence its name Percee, or, as men now spell it, Parcey; and the rich vegetation which speedily covered the valley, where once the lake had been, gave it such an air of happiness and beauty, that the people remembered its origin, and called it the Valley of Love.  It is a fact that Parcy was not always so spelled, for Noble Constantin Thiehault, Sieur de Perrecey, was a witness to the treaty for the transference of a miraculous host from Faverney to Dole in 1608, and old maps and books give it as Perrecey and Parrecey indifferently.  The De Chisseys, whose names may be found among the female prebends of Chateau-Chalon, with its necessary sixteen quarters, filled a considerable place in the history of the Comte from the Crusades downwards, and known as les Fols de Chissey, the brave[29] and dashing, and witty De Chisseys—­qualities which no doubt were possessed by the poor young man for whom the fair Chatelaine drained the Val d’Amour.

As we drew nearer to Besancon, each turn of the small streams, and each low rounded hill, might have served as an illustration to Caesar’s ‘Commentaries.’  Now at length it was seen how, whatever the result of a battle, there was always a proximus collis for the conquered party to retire to; and it would have been easy to find many suitable scenes for the critical engagement, where the woods sloped down to a strip of grass-land between their foot and the stream.

The Frenchman knew his Caesar, but he put that general in the fourth century B.C.  He made mistakes, too, in quoting him, which were easily detected by a memory bristling with the details of his phraseology, the indelible result of extracting the principal parts of his verbs, and the nominatives of his irregular nouns, from half a dozen generations of small boys.  He promised me a rich Julian feast in Besancon, and