is piled up romantically on a steep and almost isolated mass of rock rising from the rushing Salat. It is now a small decayed place without an hotel, but its very steep and picturesque streets lead up to Roman remains of a most interesting character.
Under the name of Lugdunum Consoranorum, St. Lizier was one of the nine cities of Novempopulania; it was the capital of Conserans, the seat of a bishopric founded in 450 by St. Vallier, and it remained an episcopal possession until the Revolution. One crosses the medieval bridge of three or four unequal arches, noticing a piece of Roman marble inscribed to the goddess Belisama let into one of the piers, and then, ascending a precipitous street, turns to the right towards the church at the corner, illustrated here.
The interesting Romanesque church dates from the twelfth or the following century, and is built of red brick, with a central tower, now well restored. Roman remains are built into the apse, and there is also a Roman doorway. The sacristan keeps the key of the beautiful cloisters, every capital of which is different and worth study. A tomb dated 1303
THE CLOISTERS OF THE ROMANESQUE CHURCH AT ST. LIZIER.
is that of Bishop Chatillon, and in the sacristy are portraits of other bishops, whose imposing residence still crowns the highest portion of the town: but this former home of episcopal dignity is now a lunatic asylum. Permission to enter is, however, easily obtained, a gardien conducting the visitor to the small fourteenth-century cathedral and the twelfth-century chapter-house. The bases of the walls of the bishops’ palace are undoubtedly Roman. There were six semicircular and six square towers, and even the twelfth-century episcopal keep stands on a Roman base, just inside the ramparts. Many picturesque corners and some quaint timber-framed houses invite one to linger at St. Lizier, and the time spent there would not be wasted.
ST. GIRONS,
on the other hand, is uninteresting, and as its hotels are uninviting, there is every reason for pushing on. Arthur Young went there in 1787, and wrote as follows:
‘At St. Geronds [St. Girons] go to the Croix Blanche, the most execrable receptacle of filth, vermin, impudence, and imposition that ever exercised the patience or wounded the feelings of a traveller. A withered hag, the dæmon of beastliness, presides there. I laid, not rested, in a chamber over a stable, whose effluviæ through the broken floor were the least offensive of the perfumes afforded by this hideous place. It could give me nothing but two stale eggs, for which I paid, exclusive of all other charges, 20f.’