First, then, of the general physical characteristics of the country with which we are concerned. The southern half of France is definitely bounded by great mountain chains. The Alps separate it from Italy, the Pyrenees from Spain. It is true that there is a little room for doubt in the Roussillon and around Nice where the Pyrenees and the Alps respectively approach the Mediterranean Sea, but, on the whole, the natural boundaries are quite clear, and modern France in establishing them has resumed the natural frontiers of ancient Gaul, one of those major divisions of Europe that go back beyond recorded history. This southern part of France, besides the mountains which limit it, contains within itself a lesser mountain mass central to itself, the Cévennes. It contains two principal river basins, on the east that of the Rhône, which flows almost due south to the Mediterranean, draining the country between the Cévennes and the Alps; on the west that of the Garonne, which flows in a general direction north-west to the Atlantic, draining the country between the Cévennes and the Pyrenees. It contains also a curved strip of coastal plain from the mouths of the Rhône west and south to the eastern Pyrenees, and between the Cévennes and the Pyrenees a region of moderate uplands, broken by a single notch, so low that the highest point of its watershed between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean lies below the 200-metre line.
With the upper basin of the Rhône this study has little to do. The lower Rhône country enters into our story, although not as the main theatre in which its events took place. We are mainly concerned with the upper Garonne basin, the strip of Mediterranean coastal plain curving from the lower Rhône to the Pyrenees, the mountain slopes which border upon these two regions and the passage, or gap, of Carcassonne which connects them. For in that space (roughly of a hundred by a little over a hundred and fifty English miles) was decided the failure of the first attempt to break the moral unity of mediæval Christendom. And in that struggle the Inquisition for the first time definitely appears.
Even this small stretch of country presents great differences of climate and of appearance.
The landscape of the coastal plain between the Rhône and the Pyrenees is of the typical Mediterranean sort which hardly changes all around the inland sea. The sea itself is intensely blue and the boats upon it are rigged with slim lateen sails pointed like sharks’ fins. Within sight of the sea are mountains, great stark masses of rock like the bare bones of the world. No forests, but between the sea and the mountains extends a strip of land systematically cultivated down to its last square inch, showing everywhere the vine and the olive, and built up in terraces wherever there is a slope. This strip of land is always narrow—from the town of Beziers, for instance, both mountains and sea are full in sight. When rain falls it comes down fiercely as it does in America, unlike the gentle misty rains of England and Northern France. Usually the air is so clear that all outlines come out sharp and strong—one thinks of the trenchant Latin phrase and the fixed lines of classic columns. The sun is dazzling and powerful, and the roads are full of white dust. The houses are of stone, flat topped or nearly so, and generally roofed in red tile.
The people, as befits the heirs of an immemorial and still vigorous civilization, are loud-voiced, vivacious in gesture, ceremonious in compliment, and both easy and dignified in repose.
Westward from Narbonne, a sharply defined valley, deep and regular like a vast trench, seems to open a path toward the Atlantic. A man going east or west is held to this valley; to leave it is to be caught in the deep irregular gorges of the Montagne Noire (which is the southernmost outlier of the Cévennes) to the north of the valley, or in the equally hopeless gorges of the Corbières (which are the north-eastern outliers of the Pyrenees) to the south of it.
This valley culminates in what may be called the gap of Carcassonne, for in the neighbourhood of that town it is deepest and most clearly marked, although the actual water parting between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean is somewhat to the west.
The Montagne Noire, the northern limit of the gap, is well named, for it is all of dark slatey rock. The Corbières, on the contrary, are of white limestone, and a man standing a little way above the valley floor can see behind them the snow peaks of the high Pyrenees.
To the west of Carcassonne the hills are lower but the gap continues none the less, with Montreal and Fanjeaux, each on an outstanding buttress of hill, for sentinels upon its southern side. Of these two Montreal stands out against the horizon as one looks west from Carcassonne, and in turn hides Carcassonne as one looks east from the height of Fanjeaux. West from Fanjeaux the hills become mere downs, and the landscape quite loses its Mediterranean look and becomes that of the Toulousain.
About Carcassonne itself the landscape is of an intermediate sort between the Mediterranean and the Toulousain. Between the bare hills one still sees the olive, but more rarely than on the Mediterranean side, and (as in the Toulousain) grain fields begin to alternate with the vine.