would be well to cast a glance at what its native historian,
Francois Nouguier, says of it.

"Avignon," he writes, "a town noble for its antiquity, pleasing
in its site, superb for its walls, smiling for the fertility
of its soil, charming for the gentleness of its inhabitants,
magnificent for its palace, beautiful in its broad streets,
marvellous in the construction of its bridge, rich because of
its commerce, and known to all the world."

May the shade of Francois Nouguier pardon us if we do not at
first see his city with the same eyes as he does. To those who
know Avignon be it to say who has best described it, the historian
or the novelist.

It is but just to assert in the first place that Avignon is a
town by itself, that is to say, a town of extreme passions. The
period of religious dissensions, which culminated for her in
political hatreds, dates from the twelfth century. After his
flight from Lyons, the valleys of Mont Ventoux sheltered Pierre
de Valdo and his Vaudois, the ancestors of those Protestants who,
under the name of the Albigenses, cost the Counts of Toulouse,
and transferred to the papacy, the seven chateaux which Raymond
VI. possessed in Languedoc.

Avignon, a powerful republic governed by podestats, refused to
submit to the King of France. One morning Louis VIII., who thought
it easier to make a crusade against Avignon like Simon de Montfort,
than against Jerusalem like Philippe Auguste; one morning, we
say, Louis VIII. appeared before the gates of Avignon, demanding