THE BEAUTIES OF FRANCE 



433 



Barriere, tablets with terse inscriptions 

 commemorate the gay and gallant days 

 of the age of chivalry and romance by 

 preserving the anonymous fame of a 

 "sweet singer of Perigueux" and "an- 

 other troubadour." 



Nearby, in the green smother of a 

 charming little public garden, lurk relics 

 older than all the rest — the shattered 

 fragments of the Roman amphitheater, 

 so buried in the twisted greenery and 

 flowers they take some finding. Another 

 relic of early days, the lofty, broken-brick 

 cylinder r called the Tour de Yesone, 

 marks the center of the old town of Ve- 

 suna, and in its blasted cavern the imagi- 

 native soul may still feel himself in the 

 presence of the gods to whom this unique 

 temple was dedicated. 



Between Perigueux and Albi is a chain 

 of exquisite river valleys and low moun- 

 tains, rolling farmlands and daring little 

 hills that look as if they had popped up 

 as perches for an old castle or a crowded 

 town high above the plain. The railroad 

 passes along one side of the vast natural 

 amphitheater called the Circus of Mont- 

 valent, whose brutal crags tower up more 

 than 500 feet into the sunny blue. It 

 dives under hills and tears over slender 

 bridges, which seem to be stretched to 

 their fullest tension to span the gorges. 

 Most of the town names here terminate 

 in ac, a syllable that makes it impossible 

 ever to forget this region. 



Eanguedoc, the land of oc, with its 

 green canals and turbid river Tarn, is a 

 lovely district, where geography has in- 

 fluenced both people and architecture, 

 from Roman times to the present day : a 

 land of great cities and vast wild ex- 

 panses, of weirdness and goblin fascina- 

 tion. Toulouse, the greatest city of the 

 Midi and the embodiment of its history, 

 is a living testimony to geographical in- 

 fluence. Palaces, houses, donjon library, 

 and churches are built solidly of brick. 



world's noblest structures in clay 



Toulouse lies in a flat and dusty plain, 

 and the people, recognizing their oppor- 

 tunity, took the clay at their feet and 

 wrought with it in noble structures full 

 of local significance. The most notable, 

 the largest, and one of the most beautiful 



Romanesque churches in the world, St. 

 Sernin by name, is unforgettable, as it 

 towers above the town, a great red pile 

 trimmed with white. Its lofty five- 

 storied spire hovers above the five hand- 

 some apsidal chapels with an effect of 

 grace and symmetry surprising in so 

 huge a mass built of such a material. 



The city blooms with beautiful avenues 

 and parks. The Garonne is a picture, 

 with its quaint and ancient mills, its 

 bridges, its great green island, and its 

 innumerable fishermen, who angle from 

 every pier, in every mill sluice, out of 

 boats and trees, and from sand-bars. But 

 these are features. Toulouse would be 

 robbed of much of its character and 

 charm were it to lose its beautiful radi- 

 ating canals, which link the Atlantic with 

 the Mediterranean through the Garonne. 

 They all meet and mingle in the vast 

 basin of the Embouchure, where trolley- 

 cars empty out merrymakers by the thou- 

 sand to enjoy the cool beauty of sweeping 

 water vistas between the trees. 



MANY NOTED CITIES 



It would be hard to find a province 

 where there are so many notable cities as 

 in Eanguedoc : Albi, whose stupendous 

 fortress cathedral, with walls 157 feet 

 high and a tower like a donjon keep, 

 frowns down from the top of its hill upon 

 the dammed and twice-bridged Tarn; 

 away in the distant hills, Carcassonne 

 (see pp. 458-461), most fascinating and 

 romantic of French cities, the slate roofs 

 of its turreted double walls gleaming sil- 

 ver in the southern sun; Narbonne, with 

 its startling, doubly battlemented Church 

 of St. Just; Beziers, that thrusts out its 

 massive, terraced shoulder to fend off the 

 river and support its cathedral ; "Black" 

 Agde; beautiful Cette, a pearl floating 

 upon a sapphire sea, and Aigues-Mortes, 

 walled City-of -Dead- Waters, a dun town 

 whose square battlements command the 

 sickly lagoons where St. Louis laid its 

 foundations (see page 457). 



BEAUTIFUL NIMES 



Most notable of all is Nimes, a big, 

 healthy-minded, sprawling city full of 

 languorous southern fragrance, rich in 

 splendid avenues, and a park finer than 



