They Were Almost Always Marked By An Extreme Amenity.

At Toulouse there was the strongest temptation to speak to people, simply for the entertainment of hearing them reply

With that curious, that fascinating accent of the Languedoc, which appears to abound in final con- sonants, and leads the Toulousains to say _bien-g_ and _maison-g_, like Englishmen learning French. It is as if they talked with their teeth rather than with their tongue. I find in my note-book a phrase in regard to Toulouse which is perhaps a little ill-natured, but which I will transcribe as it stands: "The oddity is that the place should be both animated and dull. A big, brown-skinned population, clattering about in a flat, tortuous town, which produces nothing whatever that I can discover. Except the church of Saint- Sernin and the fine old court of the Hotel d'Assezat, Toulouse has no architecture; the houses are for the most part of brick, of a grayish-red color, and have no particular style. The brick-work of the place is in fact very poor, - inferior to that of the north Italian towns, and quite wanting in the richness of tone which this homely material takes on in the damp climates of the north." And then my note-book goes on to narrate a little visit to the Capitol, which was soon made, as the building was in course of repair and half the rooms were closed.

XX.

The history of Toulouse is detestable, saturated with blood and perfidy; and the ancient custom of the Floral Games, grafted upon all sorts of internecine traditions, seems, with its false pastoralism, its mock chivalry, its display of fine feelings, to set off rather than to mitigate these horrors. The society was founded in the fourteenth century, and it has held annual meetings ever since, - meetings at which poems in the fine old _langue d'oc_ are declaimed and a blushing laureate is chosen. This business takes place in the Capitol, before the chief magistrate of the town, who is known as the _capitoul_, and of all the pretty women as well, - a class very numerous at Toulouse. It was impossible to have a finer person than that of the portress who pretended to show me the apart- ments in which the Floral Games are held; a big, brown, expansive woman, still in the prime of life, with a speaking eye, an extraordinary assurance, and a pair of magenta stockings, which were inserted into the neatest and most polished little black sabots, and which, as she clattered up the stairs before me, lavishly displaying them, made her look like the heroine of an _opera-bouffe_. Her talk was all in _n_'s, _g_'s, and _d_'s, and in mute _e_'s strongly accented, as _autre_, _theatre_, _splendide_, - the last being an epithet she applied to everything the Capitol contained, and especially to a horrible picture representing the famous Clemence Isaure, the reputed foundress of the poetical contest, presiding on one of these occasions.

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