St Bertrand De Comminges is a ruined town on the pinnacles of the Pyrenees, not far from Toulouse, and as close as possible to Bagnères-de-Luchon. Until the Revolution, it remained a bishopric and had a church that was visited by a number of tourists. In the spring of 1883, an Englishman came to this old world place — I can hardly identify it with the name “city” because it has less than a thousand inhabitants. He is a man of the Cambridge University Museum, now comes to Toulouse only to visit the church of St Bertrand and has left at the Hotel Toulouse two friends who are less passionate about archeology than he is, and will meet him early the next morning