Toulouse

“ To the east of Aquitaine the county of Toulouse became the nucleus of a sort of monarchical centralisation that, by the beginning of the twelfth century, had brought the French lands beyond the Aquitanian border, the imperial lands between the Alps and the Rhone, and the old Spanish march between the Pyrenees and the Ebro, to look to Toulouse as the source of its intellectual and almost of its political life. The lands dependent on the counts of Toulouse became emphatically the Languedoc, the region where the Romance vernacular of southern Gaul was spoken with the greatest purity and force. ”

“ I was one day on a mountain with a family to whom the guide pointed out an indistinct bluish line, saying, ‘There is Toulouse!’ The father, with sparkling eyes, repeated to the son, ‘There is Toulouse!’ And he, at sight of so much joy, cried with transport, ‘There is Toulouse!’ They learned to feel the beautiful, as any one learns to bow, through family tradition. ”

“ I have already alluded to the way in which the names of certain places impose themselves on the mind, and I must add that of Toulouse to the list of expressive appellations. It certainly evokes a vision—suggests something highly méridional. But the city, it must be confessed, is less pictorial than the word, in spite of the Place du Capitole, in spite of the quay of the Garonne, in spite of the curious cloister of the old museum. What justifies the images that are latent in the word is not the aspect, but the history, of the town. ”

“ Our ride toward Toulouse led us steadily into southwestern France and nearer the Pyrenees. From time to time the landscape, with its fields of fodder corn, was peculiarly American. The illusion never lasted long; a château appeared on a distant hill, or a sixteenth-century church by the roadside, and we were once more in Europe, with its ancient architecture and historical association, with its infinite change of scenery and life.
Our trip never grew monotonous. There was always the element of the unexpected. ”

“ We journey by easy stages ten days through Toulouse, on the road to Perpignan, and being favoured with remarkably fine weather, a blue sky, and a bright sun above us, and at every turn something strange or beautiful to admire, no pleasure jaunt in the world could have been more delightful. ”

“ The dominions of the count of Toulouse were divided. A number of fiefs, Beziers, Narbonne, Nimes, Albi, and some other districts were at once annexed to the crown. The capital itself and its county passed to the crown fifty years later. ... The name of Toulouse, except as the name of the city itself, now passed away, and the new acquisitions of France came in the end to be known by the name of the tongue which was common to them with Aquitaine and Imperial Burgundy [Provence] . Under the name of Languedoc they became one of the greatest and most valuable provinces of the French kingdom. ”

“ Fierce and steadfast, sentimentally languishing, dying for a difference of faith, or dying as violently to avenge the insult of a frown or a lifted eye-brow, such are the Languedocians whom Toulouse evokes, near to the Gascons and akin to them. ”

“ From the middle years of the 12th century the people of Toulouse seem to have begun to free themselves from the most oppressive feudal dues. An act of Alphonse Jourdain (1141) exempts them from the tax on salt and wine; and in 1152 we have traces of a “commune consilium Tolosae” making police ordinances in its own name " with the advice of Lord Raymond, count of Toulouse, duke of Narbonne, and marquis of Provence." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Toulouse is situated on the right bank of the Garonne, which here changes a north-easterly for a north-westerly direction, describing a curve round which the city extends in the form of a crescent. On the left bank is the suburb of St Cyprien, which is exposed to the inundations of the river owing to its low situation. The river is spanned by three bridges—that of St Pierre to the north, that of St Michel to the south, and the Pont Neuf in the centre ”

“ From Cressensac to Toulouse the road was full of volunteers, going to join the army of the Pyrenees, and making the air ring with patriotic songs. I was charmed by this bustling spectacle and would have been happy had it not been for my physical suffering. I had never made a long journey by coach before, and I was sea-sick throughout the trip, which decided my father to stop every night to allow me some repose. I arrived at Toulouse feeling very tired, but the sight of my brother, from whom I had been parted for four or five years, gave me so much joy that I very soon recovered. ”

“ Toulouse is singularly rich in mansions of the 16th and 17th centuries. Several of these are richly adorned by Bachelier, Michelangelo's pupil. The Hotels d Assezat, de St Jean, Las Bordes, Felzins, Duranti, and Maison de Pierre may be specially mentioned. A few houses are said to date from the 14th century or even earlier. Near the Allee St Michel is the palais de justice, the old meeting house of the parlement of Toulouse. ”

“ The most interesting building in Toulouse is the church of St Sernin or Saturnin, whom legend represents as the first preacher of the gospel in Toulouse, where he was perhaps martyred about the middle of the 3rd century. ”

“ The country, after you leave Toulouse, continues to be charming; the more so that it merges its flatness in the distant Cevennes on one side, and on the other, far away on your right, in the richer range of the Pyrenees. Olives and cypresses, pergolas and vines, terraces on the roofs of houses, soft, iridescent moun- tains, a warm yellow light, - what more could the dif- ficult tourist want? He left his luggage at the station, warily determined to look at the inn before committing himself to it. ”

“ Every French town that has given birth to shining talent is straightway turned into a Walhalla. This ancient town, so strikingly placed, breathes of Ingres, attracts the traveller by the magic of the painter's name, has become an art pilgrimage. The noble monument erected by the townsfolk to their great citizen and the picture-gallery he bequeathed his native city well repay a much longer journey than that from Toulouse. We see here to what high levels public spirit and local munificence can rise in France. ”

“ Toulouse, in point of extent, is considered the third town in France, but in proportion to that extent, far less populous than many other of its cities: it possesses some good public buildings, as well as modern private houses, but the general appearance is very antiquated; the streets are narrow and dirty, and what is a great annoyance in walking along them, when it rains you are almost sure to be spouted upon from the tops of the houses, in consequence of pipes sticking out to conduct the water towards the middle of the streets. ”

“ XXI. My real consolation was an hour I spent in Saint- Sernin, one of the noblest churches in southern France, and easily the first among those of Toulouse. This great structure, a masterpiece of twelfth-century ro- manesque, and dedicated to Saint Saturninus, - the Toulousains have abbreviated, - is, I think, alone worth a journey to Toulouse. What makes it so is the extraordinary seriousness of its interior; no other term occurs to me as expressing so well the character of its clear gray nave. As a general thing, I do not favor the fashion of attributing moral qualities to buildings ”

“ It is to be remembered, when we feel astonished at this amount of wealth, that Tolosa was an ancient and very flourishing city, by its position connected with Greece, and sharing considerably in the Mediterranean trade. Notwithstanding its favourable position for commerce, during the last eight234 hundred years, Toulouse has been more celebrated for its love of the arts and its patronage of the Belles Lettres than for its industrial or trading enterprise. ”

“ France is less crude, but not always very much less crude. The most musical city in France is Toulouse. An extraordinary number of singers, composers, and poets seem to be born in Toulouse.
But the debuts of an operatic artist at the Toulouse municipal opera are among the most dangerous and terrible experiences that can fall to a singer. The audience is merciless, and recks not of youth nor sex. If it is not satisfied, it expresses its opinion frankly, and for the more frank and effective expression of its opinion it goes to the performance suitably provided with decayed vegetables. ”

“ He was educated for the bar at Toulouse, the seat of one of the most celebrated parliaments of the kingdom, practised as an advocate with considerable success, and wrote some small pieces, which he sent to the principal literary societies in the south of France. Among provincial towns, Toulouse seems to have been remarkably rich in indifferent versifiers and critics. It gloried especially in one venerable institution, called the Academy of the Floral 437Games. ”

“ All the fetes and rejoicings having ended, the count of Toulouse, one day craving the permission of the Catalonian knight, took his daughter by the hand and led her into another room, and here, with all the tenderness of a kind father, asked her what were her sentiments respecting this young Catalonian. She firmly and deliberately told him, she would rather live single all her days, than be united to a man whose principles and manners were so directly opposite to her own. ”

“ From this time the counts of Toulouse were the greatest lords in southern France. Raymond IV., the hero of the first crusade, assumed the formal titles of marquis of Provence, duke of Narbonne, and count of Toulouse. While Raymond was away in the Holy Land, Toulouse was seized by William IX., duke of Aquitaine, who claimed the city in right of his wife Philippa, the daughter of William IV., but was unable to hold it long (1098-1100) . ”

“ On the other side of the street, at the corner of Rue du Regard, was and is the Hôtel de Toulouse, a seventeenth-century structure, named for its former occupant, the Comte de Toulouse, son of Madame de Montespan. It was used as a prison early in the nineteenth century, and since then it has been the seat of the Conseil-de-Guerre; famous, or infamous, in our day, as the head-quarters of the Court-Martial. The wide façade on the court has no distinction, nor has the "Tribunal of Military Justice" on the first floor; to which we mount by the broad staircase at the left of the entrance-door. ”

“ It is almost too perfect—as if it were an enormous model placed on a big green table at a museum. A steep, paved way, grass-grown like all roads where vehicles never pass, stretches up to it in the sun. It has a double enceinte, complete outer walls and complete inner (these, elaborately fortified, are the more curious) ; and this congregation of ramparts, towers, bastions, battlements, barbicans, is as fantastic and romantic as you please. The approach I mention here leads to the gate that looks toward Toulouse—the Porte de l'Aude. ”

“ Toulouse, the principal commercial and industrial centre of Languedoc, has important markets for horses, wine, grain, flowers, leather, oil and farm produce. Its pastry and other delicacies are highly esteemed. Its industrial establishments include the national tobacco factory, flour-mills, saw-mills, engineering workshops and factories for farming implements, bicycles, vehicles, artificial manures, paper, boots and shoes, and flour pastes. ”

“ Plan of Toulouse.
The more ancient part of the city consists of narrow irregular pebble-paved streets. Most of the houses are of brick, and none of any great architectural pretensions, except those which date back at least to the 17th century. In 1868 the municipal authorities determined to construct two entirely new streets, broad and straight, intended to cut one another at right angles near the centre of the city. Of these the first, the Rue de Metz, starts eastward from the Pont Neuf, and will ultimately intersect the Rue d'Alsace-Lorraine running from north to south. ”

“ Toulouse was the most wealthy and prosperous city in the South of France. Among its citizens were many men of literature, art, and science. Jasmin was at first disposed to dedicate Franconnette to the city of Bordeaux, where he had been so graciously received and feted on the recitation of his Blind Girl of Castel-Cuille; but he eventually decided to dedicate the new poem to the city of Toulouse, where he had already achieved a considerable reputation. ”

“ She began to grow impatient, murmur, and at length abuse
The extreme unpunctuality of Louis of Toulouse. [83]
But when two servants entered, who between them bore a box,
She was half afraid that something else had struck besides the clocks;
And when the men retired, she still thinking it a ruse,
Raised up the lid and found the corpse of Louis of Toulouse.
Without a word, without a shriek, she fell upon the ground,
The maidens hast’ning to her aid, a lifeless body found.
So, young gentlemen, take warning, and ne’er yourselves amuse
By attempting fascinations like Count Louis of Toulouse. ”

“ These are the oldest ecclesiastical arrangements, closely following the civil divisions of the Empire. These divisions lived through the Teutonic conquests; and, though here and there a see was translated from one city to another, they were not seriously interfered with till the fourteenth century. ♦Foundation of the provinces of Toulouse and Alby, 1322.♦ Pope John the Twenty-second raised the see of Toulouse in the province of Narbonne and that of Alby in the province of Bourges to metropolitan rank, thus forming two new provinces. ”