Castelsarrasin and Moissac are hardly attractive towns, but their square and sturdy brick and stucco vernacular has a certain appeal. Castelsarrasin has an octagonal brick tower to its church, castellated, with a small turret; other towns have Tolosan façade-clochers, pyramidal brutalities.
The landscape is almost Anglian; rolling and windy, open fields under an immense sky. There are no hedges; just dikes and dusty pathways between the fields. But the distant view is of spires and octagonal clochers, instead of the greyflinted towers of home.
At Angeville I found that the gîte was not a gîte at all, but the bachelor bungalow of the Vicomte Trescazes of St-Bertrand-de-Comminges. A huge beaky nose, a pointy beard, a soigné dressing-gown, a cravat, a messy divorce and some very interesting opinions made up this quirky relation of the Counts of Foix; a toxicologist, an Arabist, and a reader of Maimonides and the Zohar. Books piled the room; on the chairs, on the floor, on the mantelpiece - everywhere except the cat's chair. I was offered chocolate - or tea, this house running on Anglophile lines - and a fire was got ready. Dinner was excellent; pâté, gigot aux flageolets, tournedos Rossini. Lunch the next day was omelette aux cêpes, picked in the woods; dinner, a veal escalope. Talking till two and exploiting the cellar of Gascon wines, and vintage armagnac.