You look for
the climbing palmipede, and see nothing: nor will you see; for the
quacker is a tiny green tree-frog, who holds on by the suckers at the
ends of his toes (with which he can climb a pane of glass, like a
fly), and has learnt the squirrel's art of going invisible, without
'the receipt of fern-seed,' by simply keeping always on the further
side of the branch.
But come back; for the air even here is suggestive of cholera and
fever. The uncleanliness of these Narbonnois is shameless and
shocking; and 'immondices' of every kind lie festering in the
rainless heat. The sickened botanist retreats, and buys a bottle of
Eau Bully--alias aromatic vinegar.
There, crowding yon hill, with handsome houses and churches, is
Beziers--the blood-stained city. Beneath the pavement of that
church, it is said, lie heaped together the remains of thousands of
men, women, and children, slaughtered around their own altars, on
that fatal day, when the Legate Amalric, asked by the knights how
they should tell Catholics from heretics, cried, "Kill them all--the
Lord will know his own.
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