lour. This church has high beauty
and value, but I will spare the reader a presentation of details which I
myself had no opportunity to master. It consists of a romanesque nave,
of the end of the eleventh century, and a Gothic choir and transepts of
the beginning of the fourteenth; and, shut up in its citadel like a
precious casket in a cabinet, it seems--or seemed at that hour--to have
a sort of double sanctity. After leaving it and passing out of the two
circles of walls, I treated myself, in the most infatuated manner, to
another walk round the Cite. It is certainly this general impression
that is most striking--the impression from outside, where the whole
place detaches itself at once from the landscape. In the warm southern
dusk it looked more than ever like a city in a fairy tale. To make the
thing perfect, a white young moon, in its first quarter, came out and
hung just over the dark silhouette. It was hard to come away--to
incommode one's self for anything so vulgar as a railway train; I would
gladly have spent the evening in revolving round the walls of
Carcassonne. But I had in a measure engaged to proceed to Narbonne, and
there was a certain magic in that name which gave me strength--Narbonne,
the richest city in Roman Gaul.

[Illustration]

Chapter xxiv

[Narbonne]

At Narbonne I took up my abode at the house of a _serrurier mecanicien_,
and was very thankful for the accommodation. It was my misfortune to
arrive at this ancient city late at night, on the eve of market-day; and
market-day at Narbonne is a very serious affair. The inns, on this
occasion, are stuffed with wine-dealers; for the country round about,
dedicated almost exclusively to Bacchus, has hitherto escaped the
phylloxera. This deadly enemy of the grape is encamped over the Midi in
a hundred places; blighted vineyards and ruined proprietors being quite
the order of the day. The signs of distress are more frequent as you
advance into Provence, many of the vines being laid under water in the
hope of washing the plague away. There are healthy regions still,
however, and the vintners find plenty to do at Narbonne. The traffic in
wine appeared to be the sole thought of the Narbonnais; every one I
spoke to had something to say about the harvest of gold that bloomed
under its influence. "C'est inoui, monsieur, l'argent qu'il y a dans ce
pays. Des gens a qui la vente de leur vin rapporte jusqu'a 500,000
francs par an." That little speech ad