Toulouse Quotes

The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.

Tonight I love you in a way that you have not known in me: I am neither worn down by travels nor wrapped up in the desire for your presence. I am mastering my love for you and turning it inwards as a constituent element of myself. This happens much more often than I admit to you, but seldom when I’m writing to you. Try to understand me: I love you while paying attention to external things. At Toulouse I simply loved you. Tonight I love you on a spring evening. I love you with the window open. You are mine, and things are mine, and my love alters the things around me and the things around me alter my love.

We are all are cripples in some way. [Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec]

You’re a proper little princess, aren’t you? Big estate in Brighton, summers in Toulouse, porcelain china on your shelves and Assam in your teacups? How could you understand? Your people reap the fruits of the Empire. Ours don’t. So shut up, Letty, and just listen to what we’re trying to tell you. It’s not right what they’re doing to our countries.’ His voice grew louder, harder. ‘And it’s not right that I’m trained to use my languages for their benefit, to translate laws and texts to facilitate their rule, when there are people in India and China and Haiti and all over the Empire and the world who are hungry and starving because the British would rather put silver in their hats and harpsichords than anywhere it could do some good.

Love is when the desire to be desired takes you so badly that you feel you could die of it

Everywhere and always ugliness has its beautiful aspects; it is thrilling to discover them where nobody else has noticed them.

You see magic as a weapon, Reid, but you’re wrong. It simply . . . is. If you wish to use it for harm, it harms, and if you wish to use it to save . . . Together, we looked to Toulouse, who tucked a flower behind the woman’s ear. She beamed at him before rejoining the crowd. It saves.

I like big butts,” Renoir explained to Toulouse-Lautrec.

Toulouse Street ran one way toward the Mississippi River. Jackson looked over [Imogene's] head into one of those famous New Orleans courtyards, full of lush foliage, mossy brick, secrets, and wonder.

All confined things die.

I would paint more farms," said Toulouse-Lautrec, "but they always put them so far from the bar.

You have chosen not to be perturbed by great problems, having trouble enough to forget your own fate as man. You are not the dweller upon an errant planet and do not ask yourself questions to which there are no answers. You are a petty bourgeois of Toulouse. Nobody grasped you by the shoulder while there was still time. Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning.

It is only those who do not know who wander the paths. A blind eye and a stout heart create a true wanderer. Those who seek the paths do so in vain; only those who can see deep might hope to wander.

Toulouse is to lose. Good on us,
 That one never lied And said it’s still alive. A full life is a series Of incompletions. Whole with holes. Entirely fragmented. Carrying one-days, Sentences, Old lovers, And looks. Absolutes turn men and women 
Into machines that need 
Numbers to work.
 But people were never meant to work Just to live.

I like big butts," Renoir explained to Toulouse-Lautrec.

This was the only work of Toulouse-Lautrec’s where he was literally and figuratively baring himself, as if to say that love renders you naked and vulnerable.

Toulouse-Lautrec syndrome. I had never seen a case before, but I had heard it described. Named for its most famous sufferer (who did not yet exist, I reminded myself), it was a degenerative disease of bone and connective tissue. Victims often appeared normal, if sickly, until their early teens, when the long bones of the legs, under the stress of bearing a body upright, began to crumble and collapse upon themselves.

These Parisians came, one from Toulouse, another from Limoges, the third from Cahors, and the fourth from Montauban; but they were students; and when one says student, one says Parisian: to study in Paris is to be born in Paris.

Toulouse-Lautrec blew in, winded from six flights of stairs, but still as hilarious and ribald as ever. “Vincent,” he exclaimed, while shaking hands, “I passed an undertaker on the stairs. Was he looking for you or me?” “For you, Lautrec! He couldn’t get any business out of me.” “I’ll make you a little wager, Vincent. I’ll bet your name comes ahead of mine in his little book.” “You’re on. What’s the stake?” “Dinner at the Café Athens, and an evening at the Opéra.” “I wish you fellows would make your jokes a trifle less macabre,” said Theo, smiling faintly.

I have consumed more drink than the first one hundred men you will pass on the street or meet in the madhouse. I scratch my belly and dream of the albatross. I have joined the great drunks of the centuries: Li Po, Toulouse-Lautrec, Crane, Faulkner. I have been selected but by whom?

I am alone all day, I read a little but it gives me a headache. I draw and I paint, as much as I can, so much so that my hand gets tired and when it begins to get dark I wait to see if Jeanne d'Armagnac [one of the cousins] will come and sit by my bed. She comes sometimes and tries to distract me and play with me, and I listen to her speak without daring to look at her, she is so tall and so beautiful! And I am neither tall nor beautiful.

Old bureaucrat, my comrade, it is not you who are to blame. No one ever helped you to escape. You, like a termite, built your peace by blocking up with cement every chink and cranny through which the light might pierce. You rolled yourself up into a ball in your genteel security, in routine, in the stifling conventions of provincial life, raising a modest rampart against the winds and the tides and the stars. You have chosen not to be perturbed by great problems, having trouble enough to forget your own fate as man. You are not the dweller upon an errant planet and do not ask yourself questions to which there are no answers. You are a petty bourgeois of Toulouse. Nobody grasped you by the shoulder while there was still time. Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning.

How do you piss, how do you fuck? Not how did you manage to sink seven crossbow bolts into the centre of a target in Toulouse, or how did you manage to fight off three brigands in Florence, half-drunk. No: how did you manage the stuffing and the pissing, Claude? Everyone wanted to peel Claude like a shrimp and see what was underneath now.

Those who say they don't care a damn do care a damn, because those who don't care a damn, don't say they don't care a damn.

I suggest some of this broth that Cook made for Mademoiselle,' came Patrice's muffled voice. 'A little Toulouse sausage, some cheese perhaps...' Gui wolfed down whatever was put in front of him, hunger a gnawing pit in his stomach. Fresh bread and butter, a savory broth made from chicken, then sausage and a slab of cheese, cake made with pears, milk to drink.

At his trial Clement said: “the policeman arrested me in the name of the law; I hit him in the name of liberty.” Then Clement said: “when society refuses you the right to existence, you must take it.

Vieux bureaucrate, mon camarade ici présent, nul jamais ne t'a fait évader et tu n'en es point responsable. Tu as construit ta paix à force d'aveugler de ciment, comme le font les termites, toutes les échappées vers la lumière. Tu t'es roulé en boule dans ta sécurité bourgeoise, tes routines, les rites étouffants de ta vie provinciale, tu as élevé cet humble rempart contre les vents et les marées et les étoiles. Tu ne veux point t'inquiéter des grands problèmes, tu as eu bien assez de mal à oublier ta condition d'homme. Tu n'es point l'habitant d'une planète errante, tu ne te poses point de questions sans réponse : tu es un petit bourgeois de Toulouse. Nul ne t'a saisi par les épaules quand il était temps encore. Maintenant, la glaise dont tu es formé a séché, et s'est durcie, et nul en toi ne saurait désormais réveiller le musicien endormi ou le poète, ou l'astronome qui peut-être t'habitait d'abord.

These Oscars bore the names, one of Felix Tholomyes, of Toulouse; the second, Listolier, of Cahors; the next, Fameuil, of Limoges; the last, Blachevelle, of Montauban. Naturally, each of them had his mistress. Blachevelle loved Favourite, so named because she had been in England; Listolier adored Dahlia, who had taken for her nickname the name of a flower; Fameuil idolized Zephine, an abridgment of Josephine; Tholomyes had Fantine, called the Blonde, because of her beautiful, sunny hair.

In 1234, the canonization of Saint Dominic was finally proclaimed in Toulouse, and Bishop Raymond du Fauga was washing his hands in preparation for dinner when he heard the rumor that a fever-ridden old woman in a nearby house was about to undergo the Cathar ritual. The bishop hurried to her bedside and managed to convince her that he was a friend, then interrogated her on her beliefs, then denounced her as a heretic. He called on her to recant. She refused. The bishop thereupon had her bed carried out into a field, and there she was burned. “And after the bishop and the friars and their companions had seen the business completed,” Brother Guillaume wrote, “they returned to the refectory and, giving thanks to God and the Blessed Dominic, ate with rejoicing what had been prepared for them.

I am not going to let him win, Guillaume. Not this time. I could not keep him from making my mother pay the price for our failed rebellion. Fifteen years she has been his prisoner, fifteen years! And she is his prisoner, for all that she no longer wants for a queen’s comforts. I have had to submit to his demands and subject myself to his whims and endure the indignity of having him brandish the crown before me as he would tease a dog with a bone. But no more. I will not let him rob me of my birthright, and I will not let him keep me from honoring my vow to defend the Holy Land. I do think he is behind that very opportune rebellion in my duchy, and I would not put it past him to be conniving with the Count of Toulouse, either. And if by chance he did not, it is only because he did not think of it. No, a reckoning is long overdue, and we will have it at Bonsmoulins.

You Are Not Your Jersey “Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.” - Colin Powell The New Zealand All Blacks (national rugby team) have a mantra: “Leave the jersey in a better place”. It means, this is not your jersey, you are part of something bigger but do your best while you wear the jersey. It provides a valuable lesson about enjoying your moment in the sun but letting go to pursue another one once your time ends. When I played in Toulouse they had the same mindset. The club only contracted a certain number of players each year and there was a set number of locker spaces. Each locker was numbered in such a way that was not associated with a jersey number and that was also the number you wore on your club sportswear. Some numbers were 00, others were 85 and mine was 71. When I joined the coach explained to me in French that this was not my number, but I was part of a tradition that spanned decades. My interpretation still remains, “You are not your jersey.

During the last two decades of the nineteenth century and the first of the twentieth, France enjoyed an upsurge of artistic flourishing that became known as La Belle Epoque. It was a time of change that heralded both art nouveau and post impressionism, when painters as diverse as Monet, Cezanne and Toulouse Lautrec worked. It was an age of extremes, when Proust and Anatole France were fashionable along with the notorious Monsieur Willy, Colette's husband. On the decorative arts, Mucha, Gallé and Lalique were enjoying success; and the theatre Lugné-Poe was introducing the grave works of Ibsen at the same time as Parisians were enjoying the spectacle of the can-can of Hortense Schneider. Paris was the crossroads of a new and many-faceted culture, a culture that was predominately feminine in form, for, above all, la belle Epoque was the age of women. Women dominated the cultural scene. On the one hand, there was Comtesse Greffulhe, the patron of Proust and Maeterlinck, who introduced greyhound racing into France; Winaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac, for whom Stravinsky wrote Renard; Misia Sert, the discoverer of Chanel and Diaghilev's closest friend. On the other were the great dancers of the Moulin Rouge, immortalised by Toulouse lautrec — Jane Avril, Yvette Guilbert, la Goulue; as well as such celebrated dramatic actresses as the great Sarah Bernhardt. It would not be possible to speak of La belle Epoque without the great courtesans who, in many ways, perfectly symbolized the era, chief of which were Liane de Pougy, Émilienne d'Alençon, Cléo de Mérode and La Belle Otero.

Michael took me to Paris for the first time back in 1995. I was thirty-six years old and we’d been seeing each other for five months. He was invited to give a talk on childhood leukemia to a conference in Toulouse, and asked if I’d like to go along. When I regained consciousness I said, yes, yes, yes please! We flew out of Montréal in a snowstorm, almost missing the flight. Michael was, to be honest, a little vague on details, like departure times of planes, trains, buses. In fact, almost all appointments. This was the trip where I realized we each had strengths. Mine seemed to be actually getting us to places. His was making it fun once there. On our first night in Paris we went to a wonderful restaurant, then for a walk. At some stage he said, “I’d like to show you something. Look at this.” He was pointing to the trunk of a tree. Now, I’d actually seen trees before, but I thought there must be something extraordinary about this one. “Get up close,” he said. “Look at where I’m pointing.” It was dark, so my nose was practically touching his finger, lucky man. Then, slowly, slowly, his finger began moving, scraping along the bark. I was cross-eyed, following it. And then it left the tree trunk. And pointed into the air. I followed it. And there was the Eiffel Tower. Lit up in the night sky. As long as I live, I will never forget that moment. Seeing the Eiffel Tower with Michael. And the dear man, knowing the magic of it for a woman who never thought she’d see Paris, made it even more magical by making it a surprise. C. S. Lewis wrote that we can create situations in which we are happy, but we cannot create joy. It just happens. That moment I was surprised by complete and utter joy. A little more than a year earlier I knew that the best of life was behind me. I could not have been more wrong. In that year I’d gotten sober, met and fell in love with Michael, and was now in Paris. We just don’t know. The key is to keep going. Joy might be just around the corner

Everything has already been caught, until my death, in an icefloe of being: my trembling when a piece of rough trade asks me to brown him (I discover that his desire is his trembling) during a Carnival night; at twilight, the view from a sand dune of Arab warriors surrendering to French generals; the back of my hand placed on a soldier's basket, but especially the sly way in which the soldier looked at it; suddenly I see the ocean between two houses in Biarritz; I am escaping from the reformatory, taking tiny steps, frightened not at the idea of being caught but of being the prey of freedom; straddling the enormous prick of a blond legionnaire, I am carried twenty yards along the ramparts; not the handsome football player, nor his foot, nor his shoe, but the ball, then ceasing to be the ball and becoming the “kick-off,” and I cease being that to become the idea that goes from the foot to the ball; in a cell, unknown thieves call me Jean; when at night I walk barefoot in my sandals across fields of snow at the Austrian border, I shall not flinch, but then, I say to myself, this painful moment must concur with the beauty of my life, I refuse to let this moment and all the others be waste matter; using their suffering, I project myself to the mind's heaven. Some negroes are giving me food on the Bordeaux docks; a distinguished poet raises my hands to his forehead; a German soldier is killed in the Russian snows and his brother writes to inform me; a boy from Toulouse helps me ransack the rooms of the commissioned and non-commissioned officers of my regiment in Brest: he dies in prison; I am talking of someone–and while doing so, the time to smell roses, to hear one evening in prison the gang bound for the penal colony singing, to fall in love with a white-gloved acrobat–dead since the beginning of time, that is, fixed, for I refuse to live for any other end than the very one which I found to contain the first misfortune: that my life must be a legend, in other words, legible, and the reading of it must give birth to a certain new emotion which I call poetry. I am no longer anything, only a pretext.

By the fourteenth century, Romance dialects belonged to two broad categories. Those in which “yes” was pronounced oc—mostly south of the Loire River—were called langues d’oc (oc languages). Those in which speakers said oïl for “yes”—in the north—were called langues d’oïl, a term which came to be used interchangeably with Françoys. Oïl and oc are both derivatives of the Latin hoc (this, that), which at the time was used to say yes. In the south they simply chopped off the h. In the north, for some reason, hoc was reduced to a simple o, and qualifiers were added—o-je, o-nos, o-vos for “yes for me,” “yes for us” and “yes for you.” This was complicated, so speakers eventually settled for the neutral o-il—“yes for that.” The term was used in the dialects of Picardy, Normandy, Champagne and Orléans. Other important langues d’oïl were Angevin, Poitevin and Bourguignon, spoken in Anjou, Poitiers and Burgundy, which were considerably farther south of Paris. Scholars debate who created the designations langues d’oïl and langues d’oc. The poet Dante Alighieri, in his De vulgari eloquentia of 1304, was one of the first to introduce the term langue d’oc, opposing it to the langue d’oïl and the langue de si (Romance from Italy). A fifth important langue d’oïl was Walloon, the dialect of the future Belgium. The langues d’oc attained their golden age in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when groups of wandering musicians, or troubadours, travelled from city to city spreading a new form of sung poem that extolled the ideal of courtly love, or fin’amor. This new poetry was very different from the cruder epic poems of the north, the chansons de geste, and it enjoyed great literary prestige that boosted the influence of two southern rulers, the Count of Toulouse and the Duke of Aquitaine. Even many Italian courts adopted the langue d’oc, which is also known today as Occitan. Wandering poets of the north, the trouvères of Champagne, also borrowed and popularized the song-poems of the south.

French definition dictionary @ 1994-2011 Synapse Développement, Toulouse (France). All rights reserved.

propos de ce dictionnaire Dictionnaire Français Cordial © 1994-2015 Synapse Développement, Toulouse, France. Tous droits réservés.

The crowd had grown sweatier and louder and drunker. It was like being trapped in a Toulouse-Lautrec painting, green-lit faces spinning around me with ghoulish expressions. I wanted to set Bad on them, all teeth and burnished bronze fur. I wanted to scream myself hoarse. I wanted to draw a door in the air, a door to somewhere else, and walk through it.

By then, Toulouse had learned real wealth didn't come from stolen trinkets, but from knowledge. We sold secrets instead of gems, sold them to the highest bidder.

Bruno" bu düşüncelerini özellikle dinsel dogmalara uygulamak isterdi. "Kutsal" diye bilinen din kitaplarının insanları zekâ bakımından gerilettiğini, ahlaken çökerttiğini söylerdi. Gelişme kanunlarından söz eder ve Doğa'nın devamlı bir gelişme halinde bulunduğunu belirtirdi. Tüm yayınlarında genel olarak savunduğu şu olmuştur ki, "iman" yoluyla ilim yapmak mümkün değildir; bilimsel araştırmalara başlarken o alanda "gerçek" diye bilinen ne varsa her şeyi şüpheyle karşılayıp tekrar ele alıp eleştirmek ve Tanrı sözleri diye öne sürülen şeyleri bile akıl eleğinden geçirmek gerekir. Ve işte bundan dolayıdır ki, Kilise, halkı, "Eğer kurtuluşa ulaşmak ve Cennet'lere kavuşmak istiyorsanız iman sahibi olun, imanı her şeyin üstünde tutun" şeklindeki beyin yıkamalarıyla yetiştirirken, “Bruno" aksini savunur ve “İman yoluyla değil fakat ancak şüphecilik (akılcılık) sayesinde gerçeklere ulaşabilirsiniz" formülünü salık verirdi.* Kilise, yeryüzü eşitsizliklerini ve yoksulluklarını kader işi gibi gösterirken, “Bruno”, tüm eşitsizliğin beşeri düzen'in bozukluğundan, yani insanların kendinden gelme olduğunu ve ancak insan eliyle giderilebileceğini ve insanların ancak bu sayede insanlık haysiyetine yaraşır bir yaşam düzenine çıkabileceklerini belirtirdi. Bu tür görüşleri yüzünden başta Kilise olmak üzere çevresinin hışmına uğradı. 1576'da Kilise tarafından zındıklıkla suçlandı ve işinden atıldı. Canını kurtarmak için Fransa'ya kaçtı, Toulouse ve Paris Üniversitelerinde ve daha sonra İngiltere'de Oxford Üniversitesi'nde ders verdi ve özellikle "Aristo"nun fikirlerini okuttu. Fakat her gittiği yerde gericilerin saldırılarına uğradı. Almanya'ya geçmek istedi, izin alamadı. Ömrünün 16 yılını bir ülkeden bir diğerine göç ederek geçirdi. Venedikli zengin bir tüccarın daveti üzerine İtalya'ya döndü, fakat görüşlerini paylaşmayanların şikâyeti üzerine yargılandı ve hapse atıldı; sonunda odun ateşinde yakılma cezasına mahkûm edildi.** Mahkûmiyet kararını dinlerken bile insan haysiyetine yaraşır bir cesaretle yargıçlara şöyle haykırdı: “Bu kararı veren sizler, kararı dinleyen benden daha fazla korku içerisindesiniz.” Odun ateşinde yakılmaya götürüldüğü sırada şöyle diyordu: "Istırap duymaktan kaçınmayan kişi, faziletli ve hikmet sahibi olan kişidir; her şeye akılcı açıdan bakan kişi, mutlu olan kişidir...” Ölüm cezasından kurtulmak için dahi olsa görüşlerini değiştirmeyeceğini bildirmesi ve ateşte yakılırken dudaklarını bile kıpırdatmadan kendisini ölüme terk etmesi, onun cesareti ve üstün karakteri hakkında bilgi vermeye yeterlidir. Fakat emsalsiz karakteriyle daha sonraki yüzyıllarda insanlığa yazgısını değiştiren büyük düşünürlerin yetişmesine vesile olacak, onlara örnek teşkil edecektir ki, bunlar arasında "Descartes", “Leibnitz", “Kant", "Hegel" gibi dev düşünürler ve onların aracılığıyla "Goethe" ve "Emerson" gibi ünlüler yer alacaktır. Sadece fikirsel gelişme alanında değil ve fakat insan karakterinin ve ahlakiliğinin gelişmesi bakımından da insanlığa en büyük hizmetlerde bulunmuştur. * Brinton, Giordano Bruno, Philosopher and Martyr, Philadelphia, 1980, s.23, 24, 29. ** Brinton, Giordano Bruno, Philosopher and Martyr, Philadelphia, 1980, s.1-23; Ponsonby, Rebels and Reformers; Biographs for the Young, New York, 1919, s.119.

El récord de la hora fue objetivo de los grandes desde que Henri Desgrange, futuro «padre» del Tour de Francia, consiguió la primera marca moderna en el Buffalo parisino, el de Toulouse-Lautrec, Montmartre con sol, bailarinas del Folies Bergère… Era 1893 y Desgrange llevaba en el manillar de su bici una botella con un litro de leche «por si me llega desfallecimiento»…

She looked up, eyes bright. ‘On the first day, before things became intolerable, an overweight, middle-aged woman from Toulouse – a statistician – whom no one paid any attention to gave a very interesting talk on what she called ‘“triangulation”,’ she said, pronouncing the English word with a French accent.

El fondo de la ponencia era banal, como todas las cuestiones organizativas: pedía que la comisión ejecutiva tuviera más miembros del interior que del exterior. Aunque la sede formal del PSOE siguiese en Toulouse, las decisiones políticas y la estrategia debían decidirse en España. Había muchas formas de plantear eso, y Felipe escogió la más cruel. Miró a los ojos a Llopis y personalizó todo el discurso, convirtiéndolo en un duelo personal. Jamás en la historia del partido se había visto algo así.

Toulouse-Lautrec often worked while under the influence of a concoction he called the Earthquake Cocktail, a potent mixture of absinthe and cognac. Gabriel made do with Cortese di Gavi and Debussy

Too tight, Toulouse?”, as Toulouse-Lautrec’s tailor said, fitting him for new pants, Tuscaloosa, the fact that what was that thing about Tuscaloosa, that Groucho Marx line, about how in Africa the elephant tusks are hard to remove but in Alabama the Tuscaloosa,

After all, Philippa of Toulouse had been ousted by an uncle of very dubious legitimacy; and as noted earlier, the position as regard women’s rights was moving backwards rather than forwards as the twelfth century progressed.

There’s no safety—not in the tiny Toulouse or the rebuilt New Orleans. Not in the whole world. There’s no safety, but I’m after something else. Redemption. The chance to breathe without this terrible weight on my chest.

Take her home, eat with her, and sip wine, laugh softly at sad things, make love to her and fall asleep in her arms; that's what he wanted to do. The Laundress - Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, 1884.

The librarians told themselves Virgil the grammarian was born in Toulouse by mistake; he should have been born in the western islands. They corrected the errors of nature.

the Jews of France are swimming against the tide, moving from the West to the most dangerous and volatile region on the planet. They are doing so for one reason only: they feel safer in Israel than they do in Paris, Toulouse, Marseilles, or Nice. Such is the condition of modern France.

Toulouse then felt a cool touch on his right hand as something wound around his wrist. It was the Lucefate snake, slowly coiling around him, winding tightly, but not enough to leave more than a slight impression afterwards. Toulouse flinched at first, yet forced himself to remain still and calm. It was Nature’s first commandment to humans: remain still and calm until you understand, until you have seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and felt all that was needed before acting.

Ah, Toulouse, you have travelled too much. You know the gods of a hundred lands, those of the trees and mountains, the sky and sea, the stars and planets, of demons and angels, and even the Master of the Cosmos. But I am speaking of God. There are others, I’m sure, but only one God who created even great Zeus and Rama. Yet travel is like philosophy: a few years of it will perk the eye to differences, which you shall be able to notice with ease. Yet living as I have, travelling to lonely lands and through a thousand metropolises and hidden woods, you rather see the similarities. All becomes one, and God too becomes one. Not the sum of all those gods here, but beyond them, a being few philosophers have truly grasped. He has always been one, but he is severed in our minds. So it is up to us to piece him back together. If our souls possess a clarity beyond what our mortal nature can bestow, we shall see him.

In 1163 a Council of the Romish Church at Tours,[43] called together by Pope Alexander III, forbade any intercourse with Waldenses because they taught “a damnable heresy, long since sprung up in the territory of Toulouse.” Before the close of the 12th century there was a numerous Waldensian church in Metz, which had translations of the Bible in use. The church in Cologne had long been in existence in 1150 when a number of its members were executed, of whom their judge said “They went to their death not only with patience but with enthusiasm.

Pope Innocent III required of the Count of Toulouse, Raymond VI, who ruled in Provence, and of the other rulers and prelates in the South of France, that the heretics should be banished. This would have meant the ruin of the country. Raymond temporised, but was soon involved in a hopeless quarrel with the Pope, who in 1209 proclaimed a crusade against him and his people. Indulgences, such as had been given to the Crusaders who went at great risk to themselves to rescue the Holy Places in Palestine from the Mohammedan Saracens, were now offered to all who would take part in the easier work of destroying the most fruitful provinces of France. This, and the prospect of booty and licence of every kind attracted hundreds of thousands of men. Under the presidence of high clerical dignitaries and led by Simon de Montfort, a military leader of great ability and a man of boundless ambition and ruthless cruelty, the most beautiful and cultivated part of Europe at that time was ravaged, became for twenty years the scene of unspeakable wickedness and cruelty and was reduced to desolation.

After the capture of another place, La Minerve, about 140 believers were found, women in one house, men in another, engaged in prayer as they awaited their doom. De Montfort had a great pile of wood prepared, and told them to be converted to the Catholic faith or mount that pile. They answered that they owned no papal or priestly authority, only that of Christ and His Word. The fire was lighted and the confessors, without hesitation, entered the flames. It was near this spot, in the neighbourhood of Narbonne, that the Inquisition was established (1210), under the superintendence of Dominic, the founder of the Dominican order. When, at the Council of Toulouse (1229) it was made a permanent institution, the Bible, excepting only the Latin Psalter, was forbidden to the laity, and it was decreed that they might have no part of it translated into their own languages. The Inquisition finished what the crusade had left undone.

Sitting in deep abdominal distress Martin let his mind rumble on cassoulet de Toulouse and remembered with yearning the poularde en vessu he had first eaten in a modest hotel in the Ardèche.

Inquisitor Hugo de Beniols had a number of prominent people burned alive at Toulouse, in 1275, among them Angèle, Lady of Labarthe, a woman of sixty-five years accused of sexual intercourse with Satan.

Suzanne was still striving to steer Maurice towards a more salubrious way of life in early September 1901, when a shattering piece of news reached her: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was dead.

The end of the nineteenth century is often referred to as the "fin de siècle" because of its philosophy of decadence, and the first decade of the twentieth century is referred to as "La belle Époque" because of a sense of optimism and confidence. In both periods, Paris was a breeding ground for artistic and literary movements that challenged the establishment and sought to come to terms with a complex society no longer easily definable. Paris was the center of activity as well as the favored subject of numerous artists. The work of naturalists, symbolists, decadents, Incohérents, and Nabis presented fresh visions of life and society during this important period of "modern" French art.

Raymond of Toulouse, who, cognisant of the whole plan, had been left behind with the main body of the army, heard at this instant the signal horn, which announced that an entry had been effected, and, leading on his legions, the town was attacked from within and without. Imagination cannot conceive a scene more dreadful than that presented by the devoted city of Antioch on that night of horror. The Crusaders fought with a blind fury, which fanaticism and suffering alike incited. Men, women, and children were indiscriminately slaughtered, till the streets ran with blood. Darkness increased the destruction, for when morning dawned the Crusaders found themselves with their swords at the breasts of their fellow-soldiers, whom they had mistaken for foes. The Turkish commander fled, first to the citadel, and that becoming insecure, to the mountains, whither he was pursued and slain, and his grey head brought back to Antioch as a trophy. At daylight the massacre ceased, and the Crusaders gave themselves up to plunder. They found gold, and jewels, and silks, and velvets in abundance, but of provisions, which were of more importance to them, they found but little of any kind. Corn was excessively scarce, and they discovered to their sorrow that in this respect the besieged had been but little better off than the besiegers.

Agnès was from Toulouse, in the south of France, so she knew a thing or two about sun-soaked veggies. She taught me how to sauté the onions until they turned translucent with a pale caramel around the edges. Then she added the slices of eggplant, but no more oil- because eggplant soaks up every liquid within reach. We served it over pasta; we were students, after all. Marie-Chantal brought out the fish. Or, rather, she brought out a solid white mountain with the fish hidden inside. She had baked the bass in a crust of coarse sea salt, which she cracked open at the table with a knife and a hammer. It was spectacular really, like serving baked Alaska for a main course.

The Council of Toulouse, in 1119, presided over by Pope Calixtus II., pronounced a general excommunication upon all who held the sentiments of the Albigenses, cast them out of the Church, delivered them to the sword of the State to be punished, and included in the same condemnation all who should afford them defense or protection.

The city has dealt with the likes of Toulouse Lautrec, Van Gogh, Hemingway and Gertrude Stein, not to mention Mr. Bonaparte. And the Moulin Rouge is there as well. Really, Parisians have seen it all, if you know what I mean. I should be just a tiny bleep on their emotional radar, which is perfectly fine with me.