rou; but its position is not strikingly fine. Beyond this it
contains a good museum and the long facades of its school, but these are
its only definite treasures. Its cathedral struck me as quite the
weakest I had seen, and I remember no other monument that made up for
it. The place has neither the gaiety of a modern nor the solemnity of an
ancient town, and it is agreeable as certain women are agreeable who are
neither beautiful nor clever. An Italian would remark that it is
sympathetic; a German would admit that it is _gemuethlich_. I spent two
days there, mostly in the rain, and even under these circumstances I
carried away a kindly impression. I think the Hotel Nevet had something
to do with it, and the sentiment of relief with which, in a quiet, even
a luxurious, room that looked out on a garden, I reflected that I had
washed my hands of Narbonne. The phylloxera has destroyed the vines in
the country that surrounds Montpellier, and at that moment I was capable
of rejoicing in the thought that I should not breakfast with vintners.

The gem of the place is the Musee Fabre, one of the best collections of
paintings in a provincial city. Francois Fabre, a native of Montpellier,
died there in 1837, after having spent a considerable part of his life
in Italy, where he had collected a good many valuable pictures and some
very poor ones, the latter class including several from his own hand. He
was the hero of a remarkable episode, having succeeded no less a person
than Vittorio Alfieri in the affections of no less a person than Louise
de Stolberg, Countess of Albany, widow of no less a person than Charles
Edward Stuart, the second pretender to the British crown. Surely no
woman ever was associated sentimentally with three figures more
diverse--a disqualified sovereign, an Italian dramatist, and a bad
French painter. The productions of M. Fabre, who followed in the steps
of David, bear the stamp of a cold mediocrity; there is not much to be
said even for the portrait of the genial countess (her life has been
written by M. Saint-Rene-Taillandier, who depicts her as delightful),
which hangs in Florence, in the gallery of the Uffizzi, and makes a
pendant to a likeness of Alfieri by the same author. Stendhal, in his
"Memoires d'un Touriste," says that this work of art represents her as a
cook who has pretty hands. I am delighted to having an opportunity of
quoting Stendhal, whose two volumes of the "Memoires d'un Touriste"
every