In this pleasant humour I came down the hill to where Goudet stands in a green end of a valley, with Château Beaufort opposite upon a rocky steep, and the stream, as clear as crystal, lying in a deep pool between them. Above and below, you may hear it wimpling over the stones, an amiable stripling of a river, which it seems absurd to call the Loire. On all sides, Goudet is shut in by mountains; rocky footpaths, practicable at best for donkeys, join it to the outer world of France; and the men and women drink and swear, in their green corner, or look up at the snow-clad peaks in winter from the threshold of their homes, in an isolation, you would think, like that of Homer’s Cyclops. But it is not so; the postman reaches Goudet with the letter-bag; the aspiring youth of Goudet are within a day’s walk of the railway at Le Puy; and here in the inn you may find an engraved portrait of the host’s nephew, Régis Senac, “Professor of Fencing and Champion of the two Americas,” a distinction gained by him, along with the sum of five hundred dollars, at Tammany Hall, New York, on the 10th April 1876 .