There Is A Por-
Tentous Amount Of History Embedded In Them, Begin-
Ning With Romans And Visigoths; Here And There Are
Marks Of Old Breaches, Hastily Repaired.
We passed
into the town, - into that part of it not included in the
citadel.
It is the queerest and most fragmentary little
place in the world, as everything save the fortifications
is being suffered to crumble away, in order that the
spirit of M. Viollet-le-Duc alone may pervade it, and
it may subsist simply as a magnificent shell. As the
leases of the wretched little houses fall in, the ground
is cleared of them; and a mumbling old woman ap-
proached me in the course of my circuit, inviting me
to condole with her on the disappearance of so many
of the hovels which in the last few hundred years
(since the collapse of Carcassonne as a stronghold)
had attached themselves to the base of the walls, in
the space between the two circles. These habitations,
constructed of materials taken from the ruins, nestled
there snugly enough. This intermediate space had
therefore become a kind of street, which has crumbled
in turn, as the fortress has grown up again. There
are other streets, beside, very diminutive and vague,
where you pick your way over heaps of rubbish and
become conscious of unexpected faces looking at you
out of windows as detached as the cherubic heads.
The most definite thing in the place was the little
cafe, where. the waiters, I think, must be the ghosts of
the old Visigoths; the most definite, that is, after the
little chateau and the little cathedral.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 158 of 276
Words from 43366 to 43637
of 75796
