“Lodéve, June 8.—From Montpelier I went to Aigues-Mortes, the old sea-town where St. Louis embarked for the Crusades, little altered since his time, unless, indeed, the mosquitoes are worse, for they are terrible.”
“Lexos, Aveyron, June 15.—From Rodez and its great cathedral, and Mareillac in the heart of the vine country, I had an excursion of transcendent beauty through the most exquisite mountain valleys and chestnut forests, by rocks and waterfalls, to Conques. I was taken there by a single line in Fergusson’s ‘Architecture’ comparing it with Souillac, which I had already seen, but found perhaps the most beautiful spot in France, and, in that desolation, a glorious romanesque abbey church, grand as a cathedral of the first rank, in which, owing to its lonely position, all the curious mediaeval treasures remain unspoilt. Here, and indeed everywhere, I found the greatest kindness from the charming well-to-do peasantry. Every one seems well off: every one full of courtesy and goodness; and though all the men in blouses expect to be treated as equals, they are indescribably pleasant.
“Anything so cheap as ‘Untravelled France’ it is impossible to imagine. Even at Mende, where it is quite a good hotel, prices were: room—very good, 1 fr., dinner 2 fr., breakfast 50 c., service 50 c., bougie never anything, and these are the usual prices.
“Nothing can describe what the delicious, sweetness of the acacias has been, so abundant in all these town-villages, and now it is giving way to that of the limes.
“This is a wooden inn of the humblest kind, close in the shadow of a great junction station, at which I am for convenience, but the pleasantness of the people gives it a charm. This solitary existence is a placid, peculiar halt in life.”
I was the greater part of July in London.
Journal.
