第56章

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 doorposts;and the landlady,surrounded by confusion,unconscious of responsibility,and animated only by the spirit of conversation,bandied highvoiced 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 odor;there was in particular a horrible mixture known as grasdouble,a light gray,glutinous,nauseating mess,which my companions devoured in large quantities.A man opposite to me had the dirtiest fingers I ever saw;a collection of fingers which in England would have excluded him from a farmers'

ordinary.The conversation was mainly bucolic;though a part of it,I remember,at the table at which I sat,consisted of a discussion as to whether or no the maidservant were sage,a discussion which went on under the nose of this young lady,as she carried about the dreadful grasdouble,and to which she contributed the most convincing blushes.It was thoroughly meridional.

In going to Narbonne I had of course counted upon Roman remains;but when I went forth in search of them I perceived that I had hoped too fondly.There is really nothing in the place to speak of;that is,on the day of my visit there was nothing but the market,which was in complete possession."This intricate,curious,but lifeless town,"Murray calls it;yet to me it appeared overflowing with life.Its streets are mere crooked,dirty lanes,bordered with perfectly insignificant houses;but they were filled with the same clatter and chatter that I had found at the hotel.The market was held partly in the little square of the hotel de ville,a structure which a flattering woodcut in the GuideJoanne had given me a desire to behold.The reality was not impressive,the old color of the front having been completely restored away.Such interest as it superficially possesses it derives from a fine mediaeval tower which rises beside it,with turrets at the angles,always a picturesque thing.The rest of the market was held in another place,still shabbier than the first,which lies beyond the canal.The Canal du Midi flows through the town,and,spanned at this point by a small suspensionbridge,presented a certain sketchability.On the further side were the venders and chafferers,old women under awnings and big umbrellas,rickety tables piled high with fruit,white caps and brown faces,blouses,sabots,donkeys.Beneath this picture was another,a long row of washerwomen,on their knees on the edge of the canal,pounding and wringing the dirty linen of Narbonne,no great quantity,to judge by the costume of the people.Innumerable rusty men,scattered all over the place,were buying and selling wine,straddling about in pairs,in groups,with their hands in their pockets,and packed together at the doors of the cafes.They were mostly fat and brown and unshaven;they ground their teeth as they talked;they were very meridionaux.

The only two lions at Narbonne are the cathedral and the museum,the latter of which is quartered in the hotel de ville.The cathedral,closely shut in by houses,and with the west front undergoing repairs,is singular in two respects.It consists exclusively of a choir,which is of the end of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the next,and of great magnificence.There is absolutely nothing else.This choir,of extraordinary elevation,forms the whole church.Isat there a good while;there was no other visitor.Ihad taken a great dislike to poor little Narbonne,which struck me as sordid and overheated,and this place seemed to extend to me,as in the Middle Ages,the privilege of sanctuary.It is a very solemn corner.

The other peculiarity of the cathedral is that,externally,it bristles with battlements,having anciently formed part of the defences of the archeveche,which is beside it and which connects it with the hotel de ville.This combination of the church and the fortress is very curious,and during the Middle Ages was not without its value.The palace of the former archbishops of Narbonne (the hotel de ville of today forms part of it)was both an asylum and an arsenal during the hideous wars by which the Languedoc was ravaged in the thirteenth century.The whole mass of buildings is jammed together in a manner that from certain points of view makes it far from apparent which feature is which.The museum occupies several chambers at the top of the hotel de ville,and is not an imposing collection.It was closed,but I induced the portress to let me in,a silent,cadaverous person,in a black coif,like a beguine,who sat knitting in one of the windows while I went the rounds.The number of Roman fragments is small,and their quality is not the finest;I must add that this impression was hastily gathered.There is indeed a work of art in one of the rooms which creates a presumption in favor of the place,the portrait (rather a good one)of a citizen of Narbonne,whose name I forget,who is described as having devoted all his time and his intelligence to collecting the objects by which the.visitor is surrounded.This excellent man was a connoisseur,and the visitor is doubtless often an ignoramus.