The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1893-09-27
A French Sunday.

On Sundays there was slight change
in our programme. For then the market
in our square had rival. The wide
bare Place of the Church of St. Gernin,
usually desert at other times, was the
scene of the weekly. rag-fair. All around
the great brick building, beautiful of
old, but now monument to the inca
pacity of the modern restorer, booths
were set up, or else the merchants stock
in trade was laid srout On the bare, dusty
ground I have never seen such motley
collection. There were piles of rags
that looked assln they might contain
enough cholera germs to devastate all
Europe, old dresses, old shoes, old hats,
old sheets, old towels, old bits of cloth
and cotton; there were books-we never
came across any of special value-and
music and musical Instruments; there
were chairs and tables and beds and
pieces of rusty iron and brass; there
the slippers with gaudy flowers on the
toes which are SO much worn in the
country about here; and there were even
antiquities, amongst which occasionally
was something worth picking up. One
man was eager to force upon us q
lantern which, he said,ss WAS Henri I. /; and
another had lovely old copper water
cooler, with portrait of some ancient
Toulousian dignitary beaten upon it;
and this we captured without any press
ing, much to the satisfaction of an inter-
ested crowd who had come out to be
amused. For it was a curious feature of
the rag market, as of the other places
who attended it seemed to have gathered
there less for business than leasure. Now
and then bargain was made, when
peasant stepped in front of the new caps
and tried on one after another, and ex-
amined the effect in a broken bit of look
ing-glass lent him by the old woman in
charge. But, as rule, the people simply
looked at EVERY .as they wandered
about, before going to hear mass In
Southern Sou h1n Catholics take their religion.
The briskest trade of the morning was
really on the church porch, where women
sold rolls and cake, and beggars demand
flourished outside St. Gernin, inside. mass
after mass was said in the chapels, with
the hideous frescoes on the walls, and
there was a never-ceasing stream of
people down the nave and alsles, by the
piers, where all the stone jointlng Is care
fully and neatly painted; But fortunate
~ not the worst detail can destroy the
solemnity and impressiveness OF this
fine old Romanesque interior as whole
On Sunday afternoon the museum was
open, and admission free. Here Tou-
lousian gayety is slightly more subdued.
Visitors walk decorously thorugh the
galleries, where there are few pictures
of note-chiefly those bought by the state
at the Salon of recent years; few of
historical interest, as, for example, one
showing Napoleon assisting at great
feteson the Garonne-and where there is
a marvellous collection of Romanesque
sculptures, sad witnesses of the beauty
gone forever from St. Gernin and many
another ancient church .of Languedoc.
This museum of old was Franciscan
monastery If in France the state has
taken many buildings from the clergy,
If has been most often to hand them over
to the people All through the provinces
YOU find churches or converts turned
into galleries, and the Frenchman now
comes to look at pictures and statues
where he once came to pray. The old
arch itecture gives additional interest to
provincial : collections, which usually
contain something worth seeing. know
of no museum, however, so lovely id
itself as the one at toulouse, with it's
beautifulss. cloisters. From "a French
Town in Summer by Elizabeth Robins
Pennell, ing Harper's Magazine for .Octo-
her