My real consolation was an hour I spent in SaintSernin,one of the noblest churches in southern France,and easily the first among those of Toulouse.This great structure,a masterpiece of twelfthcentury romanesque,and dedicated to Saint Saturninus,the Toulousains have abbreviated,is,I think,alone worth a journey to Toulouse.What makes it so is the extraordinary seriousness of its interior;no other term occurs to me as expressing so well the character of its clear gray nave.As a general thing,I do not favor the fashion of attributing moral qualities to buildings;I shrink from talking about tender porticos and sincere campanili;but I find I cannot get on at all without imputing some sort of morality to SaintSernin.As it stands today,the church has been completely restored by ViolletleDuc.The exterior is of brick,and has little charm save that of a tower of four rows of arches,narrowing together as they ascend.
The nave is of great length and height,the barrelroof of stone,the effect of the round arches and pillars in the triforium especially fine.There are two low aisles on either side.The choir is very deep and narrow;it seems to close together,and looks as if it were meant for intensely earnest rites.The transepts are most noble,especially the arches of the second tier.
The whole church is narrow for its length,and is singularly complete and homogeneous.As I say all this,I feel that I quite fail to give an impression of its manly gravity,its strong proportions or of the lonesome look of its renovated stones as I sat there while the October twilight gathered.It is a real work of art,a high conception.The crypt,into which I was eventually led captive by an importunate sacristan,is quite another affair,though indeed I suppose it may also be spoken of as a work of art.It is a rich museum of relics,and contains the head of Saint Thomas Aquinas,wrapped up in a napkin and exhibited in a glass case.The sacristan took a lamp and guided me about,presenting me to one saintly remnant after another.The impression was grotesque,but sorne of the objects were contained in curious old cases of beaten silver and brass;these things,at least,which looked as if they had been transmitted from the early church,were venerable.There was,however,a kind of wholesale sanctity about the place which overshot the mark;it pretends to be one of the holiest spots in the world.The effect is spoiled by the way the sacristans hang about and offer to take you into it for ten sous,I was accosted by two and escaped from another,and by the familiar manner in which you pop in and out.This episode rather broke the charm of SaintSernin,so that I took my departure and went in search of the cathedral.It was scarcely worth finding,and struck me as an odd,dislocated fragment.