become entirely French till
1349, when Philip le Bel bought Montpellier of those potentates. The
Moors, too, may have left some traces of their race behind. They held
the country from about A.D. 713 to 758, when they were finally expelled
by Charles Martel and Eudes. One sees to this day their towers of meagre
stonework, perched on the grand Roman masonry of those old amphitheatres,
which they turned into fortresses. One may see, too--so tradition
holds--upon those very amphitheatres the stains of the fires with which
Charles Martel smoked them out; and one may see, too, or fancy that one
sees, in the aquiline features, the bright black eyes, the lithe and
graceful gestures, which are so common in Languedoc, some touch of the
old Mahommedan race, which passed like a flood over that Christian land.

Whether or not the Moors left behind any traces of their blood, they left
behind, at least, traces of their learning; for the university of
Montpellier claimed to have been founded by Moors at a date of altogether
abysmal antiquity. They looked upon the Arabian physicians of the Middle
Age, on Avicenna and Averrhoes, as modern innovators, and derived their
parentage from certain mythic doctors of Cordova, who, when the Moors
were expelled from Spain in the eighth century, fled to Montpellier,
bringing with them traditions of that primaeval science which had been
revealed to Adam while still in Paradise; and founded Montpellier, the
mother of all the universities in Europe. Nay, some went farther still,
and told of Bengessaus and Ferragius, the physicians of Charlemagne, and
of Marilephus, chief physician of King Chilperic, and even--if a letter
of St. Bernard's was to be believed--of a certain bishop who went as
early as the second century to consult the doctors of Montpellier; and it
would have been in vain to reply to them that in those days, and long
after them, Montpellier was not yet built. The facts are said to be:
that as early as the beginning of the thirteenth century Montpellier had
its schools of law, medicine, and arts, which were erected into a
university by Pope Nicholas IV. in 1289.

The university of Montpellier, like--I believe--most foreign ones,
resembled more a Scotch than an English university. The students lived,
for the most part, not in colleges, but in private lodgings, and
constituted a republic of their own, ruled by an abbe of the scholars,
one of themselves, chosen by universal suffrage.