that of the abiding peace of the
Faith, but that of the terrible travesty of religion of the
twenty-second of July, hundreds of years ago.

[Sidenote: Narbonne.]

"Narbonne is still mighty and healthful, if one is to judge from the
activities of the present day; is picturesque and pleasing, and far more
comfortably disposed than many cities with a more magnificently imposing
situation." These words, which were running in the traveller's mind,
grew more and more derisive, more and more ironical, as he walked about
Narbonne. Not in all the South of France had he seen a city so
depressing. Her decline has been continuous for the long five hundred
years since the Roman dykes gave way and she was cut off from the sea.
Agde, almost as old, displays the decline of a dignified, retired old
age; Saint-Gilles-du-Gard was as dirty, but not a whit as pretentious;
Nimes was majestically antique; Narbonne, simply sordid.

It is sad to think that over two thousand years ago she was a second
Marseilles, that she was the first of Rome's transalpine colonies, and
that under Tiberius her schools rivalled those of the Capital of the
world. It is sadder to think that all the magnificence of Roman luxury,
of sculptured marble--a Forum, Capitol, Temples, Baths, Triumphal
Arches,--stood where dreary rows of semi-modern houses now stand. It is
almost impossible to believe in the lost grandeur of this city, and that
it was veritably under the tutelage of so great and superb a god as
Mars.

The eventful Christian period of Narbonne was very noted but not very
long. Her melancholy decay began as early as the XIV century. Of her
great antiquity nothing is left but a few hacked and mutilated carvings;
of her ambitious Mediaevalism, nothing but an unfinished group of
ecclesiastical buildings. Long gone is the lordly "Narbo" dedicated to
Mars, gone the city of the Latin poet, whose words repeated to-day in
her streets are a bitter mockery, and gone the stronghold of mediaeval
times. There remains a rare phenomenon for cleanly France,--a dirty
city, whose older sections are reminiscent of unbeautiful old age,
decrepit and unwashed; and whose newly projected boulevards are
distinguished by tawdry and pretentious youth.

In the midst of this city, stands a group of mediaeval churchly
buildings, the Palace of the prelate, his Cathedral, and an adjoining
Cloister. They are all either neglected, unfinished, or re-built; but
are of so noble a plan th