The people of Die have been quarrelsome from the earliest times.  A century before the estates of the Dauphins of the Viennois were known as Dauphine,[92] the chronic contests between the Bishops and the Counts of Die had come to such a crisis, that the Dauphin Guiges Andre intervened, and produced a certain amount of peace; but, twenty years after, the people killed Bishop Humbert before the gate which thence received its name of Porte Rouge.  When the Counts of Valentinois had succeeded to the fiefs of the Counts of Die, Gregory X. became so weary of the constant wars, that he suppressed the bishopric, and united it to Valence in 1275; but the canons, who were not suppressed, raised a mercenary army and carried on the struggle.  Eventually, the canons and the people made common cause, and joined the Pope during the Seventy Years; but when he left Avignon they came to terms with Charles VI. of France, and so the Diois was united to Dauphine in 1404.  Louis XIV. restored the separate bishopric, but ruined the town by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

The large number of mosaics and inscriptions found in Die prove conclusively that in Roman times it was a favourite place of residence; and, so far as situation goes, it is not difficult to understand how this should have been the case.  But in the condition in which the town found itself in the pitiless heat of August 1864, the only question for an English visitor was whether he could live through the time it was absolutely necessary to spend there.  The poste arrived, as has been said, an hour and a half after its time; and the sole occupant of the coupe, who had lived on fruit and gooseberry syrup, and three penny worth of sweet cake at Crest, since a seven-o’clock breakfast, had wiled away the last hour by inventing choice bills of fare for the meditated supper.  When the lumbering vehicle stopped in the main street of Die, which is here something under seven yards wide, an elderly woman stepped out from the dim crowd, with an uncovered tallow candle in her hand, and asked if there was anyone for the hotel.  The unwonted ‘yes’ seemed to create some surprise; but she led the way promptly to her hotel, diplomatically meeting the rapid volley of questions respecting supper with an unpromising silence, and the first sight of the house itself dispelled for ever all hope.  An entrance was effected by the kitchen; and not only was there no fire, but there was no light of any description; and the one dip we brought on to the scene betrayed such squalor on all sides, that the suggestion of a salle-a-manger in connection with such a kitchen became at once an impudent mockery.  When this farther room was reached, it proved to be even worse than the kitchen.  It was shut up for the night—­had been shut up apparently for a week—­and was in the possession of the cats of the town, and the flies of Egypt.  Two monstrous hounds entered with us; and the cats fled hastily by a window which was slightly open at the top, spitting and howling with fear when they missed the first spring, and came within the cognisance of their mortal foes.