UGUENOT NATURALIST {8}

"Apollo, god of medicine, exiled from the rest of the earth, was straying
once across the Narbonnaise in Gaul, seeking to fix his abode there.
Driven from Asia, from Africa, and from the rest of Europe, he wandered
through all the towns of the province in search of a place propitious for
him and for his disciples. At last he perceived a new city, constructed
from the ruins of Maguelonne, of Lattes, and of Substantion. He
contemplated long its site, its aspect, its neighbourhood, and resolved
to establish on this hill of Montpellier a temple for himself and his
priests. All smiled on his desires. By the genius of the soil, by the
character of the inhabitants, no town is more fit for the culture of
letters, and above all of medicine. What site is more delicious and more
lovely? A heaven pure and smiling; a city built with magnificence; men
born for all the labours of the intellect. All around vast horizons and
enchanting sites--meadows, vines, olives, green champaigns; mountains and
hills, rivers, brooks, lagoons, and the sea. Everywhere a luxuriant
vegetation--everywhere the richest production of the land and the water.
Hail to thee sweet and dear city! Hail, happy abode of Apollo, who
spreadest afar the light of the glory of thy name!"

"This fine tirade," says Dr. Maurice Raynaud--from whose charming book on
the "Doctors of the Time of Moliere" I quote--"is not, as one might
think, the translation of a piece of poetry. It is simply part of a
public oration by Francois Fanchon, one of the most illustrious
chancellors of the faculty of medicine of Montpellier in the seventeenth
century." "From time immemorial," he says, "'the faculty' of Montpellier
had made itself remarkable by a singular mixture of the sacred and the
profane. The theses which were sustained there began by an invocation to
God, the Blessed Virgin, and St. Luke, and ended by these words: 'This
thesis will be sustained in the sacred Temple of Apollo.'"

But however extravagant Chancellor Fanchon's praises of his native city
may seem, they are really not exaggerated. The Narbonnaise, or
Languedoc, is perhaps the most charming district of charming France. In
the far north-east gleam the white Alps; in the far south-west the white
Pyrenees; and from the purple glens and yellow downs of the Cevennes on
the north-west, the Herault slopes gently down towards the "Etangs," or
great salt-water lagoons, and the vast alluvia