by Henry James

“ It has fallen from the state of a noble residence of the sixteenth century to that of a warehouse and a set of offices; but a certain dignity lingers in its melancholy court, which is divided from the street by a gateway that is still imposing, and in which a clambering vine and a red Virginiacreeper were suspended to the rusty walls of brick stone.
The most interesting house at Toulouse is far from being the most striking. ”

“ I am therefore free to say that in the way in which Toulouse looks out on the Garonne there was something that reminded me vaguely of the way in which Pisa looks out on the Arno. The red-faced houses - all of brick - along the quay have a mixture of brightness and shabbiness, as well as the fashion of the open loggia in the topstory. The river, with another bridge or two, might be the Arno, and the buildings on the other side of it - a hospital, a suppressed convent - dip their feet into it with real southern cynicism. I have spoken of the old Hotel d'Assezat as the best house at Toulouse ”

“ The impression was grotesque, but sorne of the objects were contained in curious old cases of beaten silver and brass; these things, at least, which looked as if they had been transmitted from the early church, were venerable. There was, however, a kind of wholesale sanctity about the place which overshot the mark; it pretends to be one of the holiest spots in the world. ”