[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]
In the streets there were Van Ostade’s interiors. Old houses, roofs of uneven thatch, leaning one upon another, machines for hemp displayed in the doorways, little courtyards filled with tubs, wheelbarrows, straw, children, animals—a gay and well-to-do air; above all the great illuminator of the country, the universal decorator, the everlasting giver of joy, the sun poured in profusion its beautiful warm light over the walls of ruddy brick, and patched with strong shadows the white roughcast.
II.
Toulouse appears, all red with bricks, amidst the red dust of evening.
A melancholy city, with narrow and flinty streets. The town hall, called Capicole, has but one narrow entrance, commonplace halls, a pronounced and elegant façade in the taste of the decorations for public festivals. In order that no one may doubt its antiquity, they have inscribed on it the word Capitolium. The cathedral, dedicated to St. Stephen, is remarkable only for one pleasant memory:
“Towards the year 1027,” says Pierre de Marca,
“It was the custom at Toulouse to box a Jew’s ears in public on Easter day, in the Church of St. Stephen. Hugues, chaplain to Aimery, Viscount de Rochechouart, being at Toulouse in his master’s suite, dealt the Jew a blow with such force that it crushed his head and made his brains and eyes to fall out, as Adhémar has observed in his chronicle.”
The choir where Adhémar made this observation is wanting in neither beauty nor grandeur; but what strikes you most on leaving the mountains, is the museum. You find anew thought, passion, genius, art, all the most beautiful flowers of human civilization.