The wide countrysides of Europe sum themselves up in central cities: municipalities inheriting from Rome. The lesser towns group round the larger; the bishops of the lesser suffragan to metropolitan of the greater cities, as it was fixed in the Roman order which Constantine inherited from Diocletian and which everywhere stamps the West with the framework of the Fourth Century. These great cities are not only the heads and inspirers of their provinces, they are also the gathering places of armies; the contrast and the fellowship between them is especially seen when either is the capital of a wide plain below a mountain range. Then each becomes the depot and the goal in turn of invading forces, each stands for the national fortunes upon either side of the passes. So, for the great Alps, you have Augsburg and Milan; so for the Vosges, Strasburg and Nancy; so for the Pyrenees, Saragossa and Toulouse.

No two cities in Europe are more representative of their provinces or stand better for symbolising the nature of their land. From the towers of each the[Pg 266] long line of the Pyrenees may be traced, especially in early autumn mornings when the sky is clear with the approaching cold and when the first snow has fallen upon the summits. From Toulouse the dark Northern escarpment runs along the southern horizon in a wall, surprisingly level and seeming tiny in its long stretch or belt of grey; from Saragossa, much further off and more rarely the white strips and patches can be caught behind the nearer foothills, the whole in a glare of sunlight full upon it, like a desert tilted up; you just see them over dry, treeless plains, and immediately the sun rises they are lost in the hot haze. The Pyrenees thus stand between the two cities and belong to each, and the legends of the mountain regard now one, now the other, or, as in the Song of Roland, both combined (for the Horn of Roland as he died was heard southward in Saragossa, northward in Toulouse), and the smoke of each may just be seen or guessed from certain heights, from passes that look southward into Aragon or northward into Aquitaine.

Alone of the central bishoprics of these hills they are united by a road, and have so been united for two thousand years. Characteristically, in the true spirit of the Pyrenees, there is but that one great road between them. It takes men, and has taken them since the legions made it, up by Huesca and Jaca and so over the Summus Pyrenæus, the "Somsport," then down by the deep valley of Bearn to Oloron, to Pau, to Tarbes, and down the river bank to Toulouse.[Pg 267] All the armies have taken it. Through this paved gap went the first Frankish kings, still wild, wandering South for spoil, and through it in a tide poured the Mohammedan host that so nearly seized upon Europe. All such marchings brought up under the walls of one or other of the cities: Saragossa for ever besieged from the North, Toulouse beating off the raids from the South, fight similar wars. Each has its river, and the river of each is the life of the two provinces on either slope of the mountains; the Ebro of Aragon, the Garonne of Aquitaine. Each has its port: the one Barcelona, the other Bordeaux; and in each valley there is separation of thought and custom—something like hostility—between the inland city and the commerce of the sea. Each was for long the centre of a nation, each afforded the title of a great house. Aragon was built up under its princes, from that remote age when the chieftain of a few mountain clans began to fight his way South against the infidels till the light grew strong upon the Twelfth Century and Alphonso fixed himself and the Faith upon the Ebro. Toulouse grew under its counts to be almost a nation, ruling everything from the Cevennes to the Pyrenees, and making a rallying place, schools, law courts, and an imperial middle for all the fields of the Garonne.

So far the parallel between these twin cities holds; but the test of any appreciation of them is contrast.

The landscape of Saragossa is a baked plain, ill-watered and reflecting up to heaven the fierce sun of[Pg 268] Spain like a plate of bronze. The landscape of Toulouse is of fields and meadows with many trees. The Ebro trickles under the great bridge of Saragossa for weeks together; then perhaps dies altogether, becoming rather a stagnant pool or two than a river; then, in spate, rises high and threatens the piles, roaring against them, and suddenly sinks again. The Garonne runs in a broad, even stream, shallow, but full and never lacking water; it is already placid as it sweeps under the great bridge of Toulouse. Saragossa became the capital of a true kingdom whose language, traditions, and above all whose chivalrous aristocracy were its own. Toulouse went under in the false adventure of the Albigensian schism. Saragossa was Mohammedan, a sort of northern bastion of Islam, till far into the development of the Middle Ages: it did not re-enter Christendom till 1118. The First Crusade was long past, England was all Norman, while yet this city was governed by Asiatic ideas in contempt of Europe. Toulouse, always Christian, rose against the uni............