Frequently this part was the first to succumb to the destroying influence of time, and leave a void for which no amount of latter-day improvement could make up. Even here, while the cloister ranks as one of the most beautiful yet to be seen, it is part in a ruinous condition.
This city of the Landes, that wild, bleak region of sand-dunes and shepherds, abuts upon the more prosperous and fertile territory of the valley of the Adour. By reason of this juxtaposition, its daily life presents a series of contrasting elements as quaint and as interesting as those of the bordering Franco-Spanish cities of Perpignan and Bayonne.
From travellers in general, and lovers of architecture in particular, it has ever received but scant consideration, though it is by no means the desert place that early Victorian writers would have us believe. It is in reality a well-built mediæval town, with no very lurid events of the past to its discredit, and, truthfully, with no very marvellous attributes beyond a certain subtle charm and quaintness which is perhaps the more interesting because of its unobtrusiveness.
It has been a centre of Christian activity since the days of the fifth century, when its first bishop, Marcel, was appointed to the diocese by the mother-see of Auch.
The cathedral of St. Jean-Baptiste belongs to the minor class of present-day cathedrals, and is of a decidedly conglomerate architectural style, with no imposing dimensions, and no really vivid or lively details of ornamentation. It was begun in the thirteenth century, and the work of rebuilding and restoration has been carried on well up to the present time.
[Illustration: STS. BENOIT et VINCENT _de CASTRES_]
Castres will ever rank in the mind of the wayfarer along the byways of the south of France as a marvellous bit of stage scenery, rather than as a collection of profound, or even highly interesting, architectural types.
It is one of those spots into which a traveller drops quite unconsciously _en route_ to somewhere else; and lingers a much longer time than circumstances would seem to justify.
This is perhaps inexplicable, but it is a fact, which is only in a measure accounted for by reason of the "local colour"--whatever that vague term of the popular novelist may mean--and customs which weave an entanglement about one which is difficult to resist.