On the road from Montpellier to Narbonne, I had a return to my native disposition, an attack of my dreaminess. I should have forgotten that attack if, like certain imaginary invalids, I had not entered the day of my crisis on a tiny bulletin, the only note of that time which I have found to aid my memory. This time it was an arid space covered with fox-gloves that made me forget the world: my eyes glided over that sea of purple stalks, and encountered at the distance only the blue chain of the Cantal Mountains. In nature, with the exception of the sky, the sea and the sun, it is not the immense objects that inspire me; they give me only a sensation of greatness, which flings my own littleness distraught and disconsolate at the feet of God. But a flower which I pick, a stream of water hiding among the rushes, a bird alternately flying and resting before my eyes lead me on towards all kinds of dreams. Is it not better to be moved for no definite reason than to go through life seeking blunted interests, chilled by their repetition and their number? All is worn out nowadays, even misfortune. At Narbonne I reached the Canal des Deux-Mers[501]. Corneille, singing this work, adds his own greatness to that of Louis XIV.[502] [Sidenote: Toulouse.] At Toulouse, from the bridge over the Garonne, I could see the line of the Pyrenees; I was to cross it four years later: our horizons succeed one another like our days. They offered to show me, in a cave, the dried body of Fair Paule[503]: blessed are they that have not seen and have believed! Montmorency[504] had been beheaded in the courtyard of the town-hall: that head struck off must have been very important, since they still speak of it after so many other heads have been taken off? I do not know if, in the history of criminal proceedings, there exists an eye-witness' evidence which has more clearly established a man's identity: "The fire and smoke which covered him," said Guitaut, "prevented me from recognising him; but seeing a man who, after breaking six of our ranks, was still killing soldiers in the seventh, I thought that it could be only M. de Montmorency; I knew it for certain when I saw him thrown to the ground under his dead horse." The deserted Church of St. Sernin impressed me by its architecture. This church is connected with the history of the Albigenses, which the poem so well translated by M. Fauriel[505] revives: "The gallant young count, his father's heir and the light of his eyes, with the cross and the sword, enter together by one of the doors. Not a single young girl remains in chamber or on landing; the inhabitants of the town, great and small, all come out to gaze upon the count as on a fair and blooming rose." It is to the time of Simon de Montfort[506] that the loss of the _langue d'Oc_ dates back: