inality, and
Montpellier has gained little from its Bourbon patrons except a series
of fine broad vistas. No city could offer greater contrast to the
ancient and dignified classicism of Nimes.

If the mediaeval origin of Montpellier were not well known, one would
believe it the creation of the Renaissance, and the few narrow, tortuous
streets of the older days recall little of its intense past, when the
city grew as never before nor since, when scholars of the genius of
Petrarch and the wit of Rabelais sought her out, when she belonged to
Aragon or Navarre and not to the King of France. This is the interesting
Montpellier.

In the XIII century, she had a University which the Pope formally
sanctioned, and a school of medicine founded by Arabian physicians which
rivalled that of Paris. More significant still to Languedoc, her
prosperity had begun to overshadow that of the neighbouring Bishopric of
Maguelonne, and a bitter rivalry sprang up between the two cities. From
the first Maguelonne was doomed. She had no schools that could rival
those of Montpellier; she ceased to grow as the younger city increased
in fame and size, till even history passed her by, and the stirring
events of the times took place in the streets of her larger and more
prosperous neighbour. Finally she was deserted by her Bishops, and no
longer upheld by their episcopal dignity, her fall was so overwhelming
that to-day her mediaeval walls have crumbled to the last stone and only
a lonely old Cathedral remains to mark her greatness. In 1536 my Lord
Bishop, with much appropriate pomp and ceremony, rode out of her gates
and entered those of Montpellier as titular Bishop for the first time.

He did not find the townsmen so elated by the new dignity of the city as
to have broken ground for a new Cathedral, nor did he himself seem
ambitious, as his predecessors of Maguelonne had been, to build a church
worthy of his rank. However, as a Bishop must have a Cathedral-church,
the chapel of the Benedictine monastery was chosen for this honour and
solemnly consecrated the Cathedral of Saint-Pierre of Montpellier. This
chapel had been built in the XIV century, and at the time of these
episcopal changes, only the nave was finished. It was, however, Gothic;
and as this style had become much favoured by the South at this late
period, the Bishop must have believed that he had the beginning of a
very fine and admirable Cathedral. In the religious wars which followed