The Curtain Drops Without A
Fold Upon The Quiet Grass, Which Was Dotted Here And
There With A Humble Native, Dozing Away The Golden
Afternoon.
The natives of the elder Carcassonne are
all humble; for the core of the Cite has shrunken and
decayed, and there is little life among the ruins.
A
few tenacious laborers, who work in the neighboring
fields or in the _ville-basse_, and sundry octogenarians
of both sexes, who are dying where they have lived,
and contribute much to the pictorial effect, - these
are the principal inhabitants. The process of con-
verting the place from an irresponsible old town into
a conscious "specimen" has of course been attended
with eliminations; the population has, as a general
thing, been restored away. I should lose no time in
saying that restoration is the great mark of the Cite.
M. Viollet-le-Duc has worked his will upon it, put it
into perfect order, revived the fortifications in every
detail. I do not pretend to judge the performance,
carried out on a scale and in a spirit which really
impose themselves on the imagination. Few archi-
tects have had such a chance, and M. Viollet-le-Duc
must have been the envy of the whole restoring fra-
ternity. The image of a more crumbling Carcassonne
rises in the mind, and there is no doubt that forty
years ago the place was more affecting. On the other
hand, as we see it to-day, it is a wonderful evocation;
and if there is a great deal of new in the old, there
is plenty of old in the new.
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