which I should
not reach till midnight, the affluence of wine-dealers was not less than
at Narbonne. I interviewed every hostess in the town, and got no
satisfaction but distracted shrugs. Finally, at an advanced hour, one of
the servants of the Hotel de France, where I had attempted to dine, came
to me in triumph to proclaim that he had secured for me a charming
apartment in a _maison bourgeoise_. I took possession of it gratefully,
in spite of its having an entrance like a stable and being pervaded by
an odour compared with which that of a stable would have been delicious.
As I have mentioned, my landlord was a locksmith, and he had strange
machines which rumbled and whirred in the rooms below my own.
Nevertheless I slept, and I dreamed of Carcassonne. It was better to do
that than to dream of the Hotel de France. I was obliged to cultivate
relations with the cuisine of this establishment. Nothing could have
been more _meridional_; indeed, both the dirty little inn and Narbonne
at large seemed to me to have the infirmities of the south without its
usual graces. Narrow, noisy, shabby, belittered and encumbered, filled
with clatter and chatter, the Hotel de France would have been described
in perfection by Alphonse Daudet. For what struck me above all in it was
the note of the Midi as he has represented it--the sound of universal
talk. The landlord sat at supper with sundry friends in a kind of glass
cage, with a genial indifference to arriving guests; the waiters tumbled
over the loose luggage in the hall; the travellers who had been turned
away leaned gloomily against door-posts; and the landlady, surrounded by
confusion, unconscious of responsibility, and animated only by the
spirit of conversation, bandied high-voiced compliments with the
_voyageurs de commerce_. At ten o'clock in the morning there was a table
d'hote for breakfast--a wonderful repast, which overflowed into every
room and pervaded the whole establishment. I sat down with a hundred
hungry marketers, fat, brown, greasy men, with a good deal of the rich
soil of Languedoc adhering to their hands and their boots. I mention the
latter articles because they almost put them on the table. It was very
hot, and there were swarms of flies; the viands had the strongest odour;
there was in particular a horrible mixture known as _gras-double_, a
light grey, glutinous, nauseating mess, which my companions devoured in
large quantities. A man opposite to me had the dirt