uis XIV.
and of the pastors of the desert. From the garden of the Peyrou, at
Montpellier, you may see the hills of the Cevennes, to which they of the
religion fled for safety and out of which they were hunted and harried.
I have only to add, in regard to the Musee Fabre, that it contains the
portrait of its founder--a little, pursy, fat-faced, elderly man, whose
countenance contains few indications of the power that makes
distinguished victims. He is, however, just such a personage as the
mind's eye sees walking on the terrace of the Peyrou of an October
afternoon in the early years of the century; a plump figure in a
chocolate-coloured coat and a _culotte_ that exhibits a good leg--a
culotte provided with a watch-fob from which a heavy seal is suspended.
This Peyrou (to come to it at last) is a wonderful place, especially to
be found in a little provincial city. France is certainly the country of
towns that aim at completeness; more than in other lands they contain
stately features as a matter of course. We should never have ceased to
hear about the Peyrou if fortune had placed it at a Shrewsbury or a
Buffalo. It is true that the place enjoys a certain celebrity at home,
which it amply deserves, moreover; for nothing could be more impressive
and monumental. It consists of an "elevated platform," as Murray
says--an immense terrace laid out, in the highest part of the town, as a
garden, and commanding in all directions a view which in clear weather
must be of the finest. I strolled there in the intervals of showers, and
saw only the nearer beauties--a great pompous arch of triumph in honour
of Louis XIV. (which is not, properly speaking, in the garden, but faces
it, straddling across the _place_ by which you approach it from the
town), an equestrian statue of that monarch set aloft in the middle of
the terrace, and a very exalted and complicated fountain, which forms a
background to the picture. This fountain gushes from a kind of hydraulic
temple, or _chateau d'eau_, to which you ascend by broad flights of
steps, and which is fed by a splendid aqueduct, stretched in the most
ornamental and unexpected manner across the neighbouring valley. All
this work dates from the middle of the last century. The combination of
features--the triumphal arch, or gate; the wide fair terrace, with its
beautiful view; the statue of the grand monarch; the big architectural
fountain, which would not surprise one at Rome, but does surprise on
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