The Writer Makes
A Jump To The Year 1209, When Carcassonne, Then
Forming Part Of The Realm Of The Viscounts Of Beziers
And Infected By The Albigensian Heresy, Was Besieged,
In The Name Of The Pope, By The Terrible Simon De
Montfort And His Army Of Crusaders.
Simon was ac-
customed to success, and the town succumbed in the
course of a fortnight.
Thirty-one years later, having
passed into the hands of the King of France, it was
again besieged by the young Raymond de Trincavel,
the last of the viscounts of Beziers; and of this siege
M. Viollet-le-Duc gives a long and minute account,
which the visitor who has a head for such things may
follow, with the brochure in hand, on the fortifications
themselves. The young Raymond de Trincavel, baffled
and repulsed, retired at the end of twenty-four days.
Saint Louis and Philip the Bold, in the thirteenth cen-
tury, multiplied the defences of Carcassonne, which
was one of the bulwarks of their kingdom on the
Spanish quarter; and from this time forth, being re-
garded as impregnable, the place had nothing to fear.
It was not even attacked; and when, in 1355, Edward
the Black Prince marched into it, the inhabitants had
opened the gates to the conqueror before whom all
Languedoc was prostrate. I am not one of those who,
as I said just now, have a head for such things, and
having extracted these few facts had made all the
use of M. Viollet-le-Duc's, pamphlet of which I was cap-
able.
I have mentioned that my obliging friend the
_amoureux-fou_ handed me over to the door-keeper of
the citadel. I should add that I was at first committed
to the wife of this functionary, a stout peasant-woman,
who took a key down from a nail, conducted me to a
postern door, and ushered me into the presence of her
husband. Having just begun his rounds with a party
of four persons, he was not many steps in advance. I
added myself perforce to this party, which was not
brilliantly composed, except that two of its members
were gendarmes in full toggery, who announced in the
course of our tour that they had been stationed for a
year at Carcassonne, and had never before had the
curiosity to come up to the Cite. There was something
brilliant, certainly, in that. The _gardien_ was an extra-
ordinarily typical little Frenchman, who struck me even
more forcibly than the wonders of the inner enceinte;
and as I am bound to assume, at whatever cost to my
literary vanity, that there is not the slightest danger
of his reading these remarks, I may treat him as public
property. With his diminutive stature and his per-
pendicular spirit, his flushed face, expressive protuber-
ant eyes, high peremptory voice, extreme volubility,
lucidity, and neatness of utterance, he reminded me of
the gentry who figure in the revolutions of his native
land. If he was not a fierce little Jacobin, he ought
to have been, for I am sure there were many men of
his pattern on the Committee of Public Safety.
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