Excerpt from Noblesse Oblige Between Pontarlier on the French frontier and that district, which in 1793 was known as Bresse lies a great stretch of as uninteresting country as can be found in the whole of Central France. It is sparsely populated now, and was even more so then; but here and there a village raises its red-tiled roofs beside a winding river, and then the long white road goes on again over a featureless plain, as far as eye can see, without another hamlet coming into sight. Vaise is one of these villages, far off the modem track of travellers, and offering nothing noticeable in itself, but situated in one of the few spots which have any claim to picturesqueness, for there a little river runs fiercely between rocky banks, eddying and foaming round great blocks of stone which fell into it at that far-off time when this sti-ange and sudden upheaval of the ground took place, and obliging anyone who wishes to ci: oss to go all the way round to the bridge, which spans the stream with a single very high and pointed stone arch. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.