The Saône River enters the narrative at the moment the Rhône meets it, becoming part of the current that carries Tristram downstream. Its brief appearance marks both a physical passage through the landscape and the novel’s characteristic disruption of chronological order: the narrator insists that he has described this voyage before making it.

Setting and Course

Having reached a boat in time to save his passage, Tristram sails away from the place identified as the lovers’ tomb—or, as he immediately corrects himself, from a tomb that did not exist. Less than a hundred yards into the voyage, the Rhône and the Saône meet and carry him merrily onward between them. The river is therefore presented not through a sustained description of its banks, but through its joining with the Rhône and its role in the traveler’s movement.

Narrative Sequence

The passage makes the river’s forward current collide with the narrator’s backward-looking account. Tristram says that he has described the voyage down the Rhône before making it, turning the expected sequence of departure, travel, and narration inside out. The Saône’s confluence thus serves as a concrete point in the journey while also locating the episode within the book’s digressive, self-conscious treatment of time: the traveler has only just embarked on a voyage that, in the telling, is already past.