wonderful avenue of acacias
leads to it from the station--leads past it, rather, and conducts you to
a little high-backed bridge over the Aude, beyond which, detached and
erect, a distinct mediaeval silhouette, the Cite presents itself. Like a
rival shop on the invidious side of a street, it has "no connection"
with the establishment across the way, although the two places are
united (if old Carcassonne may be said to be united to anything) by a
vague little rustic faubourg. Perched on its solid pedestal, the perfect
detachment of the Cite is what first strikes you. To take leave, without
delay, of the _ville-basse_, I may say that the splendid acacias I have
mentioned flung a summerish dusk over the place, in which a few
scattered remains of stout walls and big bastions looked venerable and
picturesque. A little boulevard winds round the town, planted with
trees and garnished with more benches than I ever saw provided by a
soft-hearted municipality. This precinct had a warm, lazy, dusty,
southern look, as if the people sat out-of-doors a great deal and
wandered about in the stillness of summer nights. The figure of the
elder town at these hours must be ghostly enough on its neighbouring
hill. Even by day it has the air of a vignette of Gustave Dore, a
couplet of Victor Hugo. It is almost too perfect--as if it were an
enormous model placed on a big green table at a museum. A steep, paved
way, grass-grown like all roads where vehicles never pass, stretches up
to it in the sun. It has a double enceinte, complete outer walls and
complete inner (these, elaborately fortified, are the more curious); and
this congregation of ramparts, towers, bastions, battlements, barbicans,
is as fantastic and romantic as you please. The approach I mention here
leads to the gate that looks toward Toulouse--the Porte de l'Aude. There
is a second, on the other side, called, I believe, the Porte
Narbonnaise, a magnificent gate, flanked with towers thick and tall,
defended by elaborate outworks; and these two apertures alone admit you
to the place--putting aside a small sally-port, protected by a great
bastion, on the quarter that looks toward the Pyrenees.

As a votary, always, in the first instance, of a general impression, I
walked all round the outer enceinte--a process on the very face of it
entertaining. I took to the right of the Porte de l'Aude, without
entering it, where the old moat has been filled in. The filling-in of
the moat has cr