of extraordinary elevation, forms the whole church. I
sat there a good while; there was no other visitor. I
had taken a great dislike to poor little Narbonne,
which struck me as sordid and overheated, and this
place seemed to extend to me, as in the Middle Ages,
the privilege of sanctuary. It is a very solemn corner.
The other peculiarity of the cathedral is that, exter-
nally, it bristles with battlements, having anciently
formed part of the defences of the _archeveche_, which
is beside it and which connects it with the hotel de
ville. This combination of the church and the for-
tress is very curious, and during the Middle Ages was
not without its value. The palace of the former arch-
bishops of Narbonne (the hotel de ville of to-day
forms part of it) was both an asylum and an arsenal
during the hideous wars by which the Languedoc was
ravaged in the thirteenth century. The whole mass
of buildings is jammed together in a manner that
from certain points of view makes it far from apparent
which feature is which. The museum occupies several
chambers at the top of the hotel de ville, and is not
an imposing collection. It was closed, but I induced
the portress to let me in, - a silent, cadaverous person,
in a black coif, like a _beguine_, who sat knitting in one
of the windows while I went the rounds. The number
of Roman fragments is small, and their quality is not
the finest; I must add that this impression was hastily
gathered. There is indeed a work of art in one of
the rooms which creates a presumption in favor of the
place, - the portrait (rather a good one) of a citizen