I Passed An Hour Or Two Of Flat Suspense, While Fate Settled The Question Of Whether I Should Go On To Perpignan, Return To Beziers, Or Still Discover A Modest Couch At Narbonne.

I shall not have suffered in vain, however, if my example serves to deter other travellers from alighting unannounced at that city on a Wednes- day evening.

The retreat to Beziers, not attempted in time, proved impossible, and I was assured that at Perpignan, which I should not reach till midnight, the affluence of wine-dealers was not less than at Nar- bonne. I interviewed every hostess in the town, and got no satisfaction but distracted shrugs. Finally, at an advanced hour, one of the servants of the Hotel de France, where I had attempted to dine, came to me in triumph to proclaim that he had secured for me a charming apartment in a _maison bourgeoise_. I took possession of it gratefully, in spite of its having an entrance like a stable, and being pervaded by an odor compared with which that of a stable would have been delicious. As I have mentioned, my land- lord was a locksmith, and he had strange machines which rumbled and whirred in the rooms below my own. Nevertheless, I slept, and I dreamed of Car- cassonne. It was better to do that than to dream of the Hotel de France.

I was obliged to cultivate relations with the cuisine of this establishment. Nothing could have been more _meridional_; indeed, both the dirty little inn and Nar- bonne at large seemed to me to have the infirmities of the south, without its usual graces. Narrow, noisy, shabby, belittered and encumbered, filled with clatter and chatter, the Hotel de France would have been described in perfection by Alphonse Daudet. For what struck me above all in it was the note of the Midi, as he has represented it, - the sound of universal talk. The landlord sat at supper with sundry friends, in a kind of glass cage, with a genial indifference to arriv- ing guests; the waiters tumbled over the loose luggage in the hall; the travellers who had been turned away leaned gloomily against door-posts; and the landlady, surrounded by confusion, unconscious of responsibility, and animated only by the spirit of conversation, bandied high-voiced compliments with the _voyageurs de com- merce_. 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 mix- ture known as _gras-double_, a light gray, glutinous, nauseating mess, which my companions devoured in large quantities.

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