This Combination Of The Church And The For-
Tress Is Very Curious, And During The Middle Ages Was
Not Without Its Value.
The palace of the former arch-
bishops of Narbonne (the hotel de ville of to-day
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 sur-
rounded. This excellent man was a connoisseur, and
the visitor is doubtless often an ignoramus.
XXV.
"Cette, with its glistening houses white,
Curves with the curving beach away
To where the lighthouse beacons bright,
Far in the bay."
That stanza of Matthew Arnold's, which I hap-
pened to remember, gave a certain importance to the
half-hour I spent in the buffet of the station at Cette
while I waited for the train to Montpellier.
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