There is a thirteenth-century bridge of seventeen arches, which should be seen, and four churches, of which St. Nazaire, formerly the cathedral, is the most important. It was burnt in the siege of 1209, so that there are only slight remains of the early building. The transepts belong to the thirteenth century, and the choir, apse, and nave to the next. The façade has a fine rose-window, and in the choir the fourteenth-century windows are protected externally by wrought-iron grilles. The cloister, also of the fourteenth century, is a beautiful piece of work. The other churches are--(1) St. Jacques, with a beautiful twelfth-century apse: (2) La Madelaine, where many of the townsfolk were killed in 1209, is a Romanesque building, altered and restored in the eighteenth century; (3) St. Aphrodise belongs to the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, and has a Romanesque crypt. The font at the west end is an early sarcophagus of marble, with a bas-relief, showing two infuriated beasts in combat. The Canal du Midi crosses the Orb at Béziers on a big aqueduct, and considering that it was built as long ago as 1668, it should be looked upon with the deepest respect. Arthur Young, who was inclined to run down most of the things he saw in the South of France, grew enthusiastic over the Canal du Midi. ‘The Canal of Languedoc,’ he says, ‘is the capital feature of all this country.... Nine sluice-gates let the water down the hill to join the river at the town--a noble work! The port is broad enough for four large vessels to lie abreast.... This is the best sight I have seen in France.’ A fairly hilly country is passed through between Béziers and Pézenas, but there are no bad gradients on the road. PÉZENAS stands in a narrow plain, of such great fertility, owing to the volcanic properties of the soil, that it is called the Garden of Hérault. It was a Roman colony, and Pliny mentions the excellence of its woollen stuffs. A bust of Molière reminds the passer-by that the famous playwright represented his first works in the town during the winter of 1656, and that it was here that he wrote ‘Les Précieuses Ridicules.’ A fifteenth-century gateway survives in the town, and there are some interesting houses of the same and the following centuries. Leaving Pézenas, one crosses the railway twice, and then goes to the right for Montagnac, crossing the River Hérault. Montagnac is a sad-looking town, with gloomy and dirty stuccoed houses; and one is glad to leave it behind, as one goes through the sunny hills towards Mèze, having, as one approaches that town, a great panoramic view over the land-locked Etang-de-Thau, with the Mediterranean showing beyond Cette. It is in this neighbourhood that one begins to notice the swords of the cactus, and the olive is seldom absent from the views. Aleppo pines grow picturesquely here and there, and a solitary cypress appears now and then.