On the following morning we resumed our journey in high spirits from the prospect of arriving at Toulouse in the evening. We reached Agen for breakfast, which I understood to be a very fine city.
I was at this place much charmed with the manners and attentions of some young ladies at the inn, and I admit I did not depart without regret. Had I possessed the talents for acquiring languages of Joseph Scaliger, who was a native of this place, I might by this time have known sufficient French to have been enabled to talk with these young ladies to some purpose.
At six in the evening we entered Toulouse and were set down at a miserable inn named the Three Mules.
After supper I was conducted to one of the most comfortless rooms that could be imagined. Everything felt so damp, so antiquated and dusty. Some of the chairs were without legs, others without backs, and the windows were broken.
But as there was no remedy I was obliged to make the best of it and congratulated myself on having reached my destined winter residence and thus far negatived the doubts and kind apprehensions of my friends.
extract from The Narrative of a Journey through France, &c. (London, 1822) by James Holman FRS, pp.34-35, edited and read by Joe Rizzo Naudi.