Nîmes

So one of the challenges of my job is that I am constantly traveling.

So I'm in the south of France right now, I've been in Nîmes and Carcassonne, Uzès, and I'm in Aix-en-Provence right now.

And I'm actually, I'll turn it around so you can see the camera, so you can see behind me.

You'll see I'm in a bedroom.

I just happened to wander around and I overheard a conversation of the owners at the time, I'm really worried because I don't speak English and we have this delegation of Japanese businessmen coming.

This is organized by the local bank and the Chamber of Commerce of Nîmes.

How are we going to do this because nobody really speaks English? Then I just lifted my hand and I said, hey, I can do.

And that's how I came in.

Attack upon the Protestant churches.

Some time before the death of General Lagarde, the Duke of d'Angoulême had visited Nîmes and other cities in the south, and at the former place honored the members of the Protestant consistory with an interview, promising them protection, and encouraging them to reopen their temple so long shut up.

They have two churches at Nîmes, and it was agreed that the small one should be preferred on this occasion, and that the ringing of the bell should be omitted.

General Lagarde declared that he would answer with his head for the safety of his congregation.

The Protestants privately informed each other that worship was once more to be celebrated at ten o'clock, and they began to assemble silently and cautiously.

So to be appreciated there, I used to say to myself, man, I love America, but these people over here really make you feel good when you do your whatever you're doing, you know? So I had this long, many years of experience going to Paris and other, oh, and Avignon.

and Nîmes and Bordeaux and all over Paris in earlier days, you know? And I played there with Milt Jackson and Ray Brown and I'm playing over there with my own groups

and

I know that there's a lot of African people, Cameroon, Senegal, Martinique from the Caribbean, and they're connecting with me because I bring the island vibe, you know?

until I find that in the year 1890 there were only three cases of which I retain any record.

During the winter of that year, and the early spring of 1891, I saw in the papers that he had been engaged by the French Government upon a matter of supreme importance, and I received two notes from Holmes, dated from Narbonne and from Nîmes, from which I gathered that his stay in France was likely to be a long one.

It was with some surprise, therefore, that I saw him walk into my consulting-room upon the evening of April 24th.

It struck me that he was looking even paler and thinner than usual.

Attack upon the Protestant churches.

Some time before the death of General Lagarde, the Duke of d'Angoulême had visited Nîmes and other cities in the south, and at the former place honored the members of the Protestant consistory with an interview, promising them protection and encouraging them to reopen their temple so long shut up.

They have two churches at Nîmes, and it was agreed that the small one should be preferred on this occasion, and that the ringing of the bell should be omitted.

General Lagarde declared that he would answer with his head for the safety of his congregation.

The Protestants privately informed each other that worship was once more to be celebrated at ten o'clock, and they began to assemble silently and cautiously.

In one way or other, then, a great deal of rain sinks into the ground and when its downward progress is arrested by some impenetrable bed it soaks through the soil sideways and sometimes travels many miles before it finds an outlet, while by dint of often using the same road it frequently wears for itself an open channel along which it flows as rapidly as the rivers above ground do in theirs.

That this must be the case is evident from the fact that a large increase of water is observed in certain wells and fountains, as for instance at Nîmes, so soon after rain has fallen some miles off that it is impossible it should have passed through soil, however porous.

Moreover, in some places the water from time to time throws up seeds, vegetables, fresh water shells and even fishes which have evidently travelled a long way underground, as much sometimes as one hundred and fifty miles and this of course can only be by open channels.

Where such channels do not exist, the water spreads about in all directions in search of an outlet which it finds perhaps in the face of a cliff, the side of a hill or at the bottom of a slope so trifling as not to deserve the name of hill.

And Amanda Sue explained to us that it was illegal for Protestants to worship and so they had to go out into the bush to worship.

In 1756, and this is a true story, in the city of Nîmes, which is a beautiful old Roman city in the south of France, and it was also a bit of a Protestant heartland.

In 1756, the Protestants went out into the bush to worship as they did and the king's troops set an ambush and they captured a number of those who were worshipping and the women were condemned to prison, the men condemned to the galleys, including Pierre Fabre, who was 78.

It's an entirely true story.

Viking settlements, Europe and beyond.

Meanwhile, Viking armies remained active on the European continent throughout the 9th century, brutally sacking Nantes on the French coast in 842 and attacking towns as far inland as Paris, Limoges, Orleans, Tours, and Nimes.

In 844, Vikings stormed Seville, then controlled by the Arabs.

In 859, they plundered Pisa, though an Arab fleet battered them on the way back north.