"That shall be when an ass flies to heaven," replied the Count, and prepared for defence.
It was almost with a sense that we were to be present at one of the most terrible moments in mediæval history that we watched the flying landscape for a first sight of Carcassonne on its height.
Who could ever forget that first impression of it, as the train slowed up to the station of the lower town in the valley and a strange vision came into the sky of a double-walled mediæval city with a forest of towers rising tall and pointed through the mists and mystery of a far-away romance?
This was a return to the Middle Ages indeed!
The hotel omnibus trundled us—amid a vibrating heap of rugs, handbags, umbrellas—through the ancient streets of the lower town, which the natives spoke of as "modern" to distinguish it from "la Cité," which was far more ancient, seeing that it possessed more than one tower belonging to the misty times of the Visigothic kingdom, whose capital was at Toulouse.
As we drove, the turn of the road placed us at different angles with the City of Dreams; and it stood the test.
No sign of fading away, or of dwindling into anything less than its astonishing self.
At the hotel we were received by a most elegant landlady in widow's garb. If it had not been for her pressing us to have our lunch before we started, I feel sure that we should have been off and up to the cité without a moment's delay. However, we first made acquaintance with this lady's wonderful cuisine in the old, low-pitched salle-à-manger, where only a few Frenchmen of the commercial type were taking their luncheon. We were neither of us much given to what we called "fussing over our food," but it was impossible for the most benighted of women to fail to notice the delicate art which distinguished every detail of the repast. What we had I cannot remember, but it was a succession of masterpieces. Such modulation of flavours, such opposing of salt and sweet, acid and flat, creamy and piquant; such coquetry in the salad dressing, such sentiment in the sauces! It was wonderful, as all true art is.
Altogether Carcassonne was a place of artistic achievement.
The city, as we wended our way towards it, grew more and more dazzling to the sense of reality. That progress through the lower town, across the Aude, was like walking straight into the background of a mediæval painting—and who has not longed for that excursion? There was not a sight or a sound to mar the perfection of the place. Doubtless in the old days there would have been more stir as one approached the great double-towered gateway and crossed the bridge over what was once a moat. And there would have been sentries, and perhaps the flash of armour caught between the crenellations of the lower outer walls. Otherwise precisely the same sights and sounds met our senses as met those of the wayfarers of the thirteenth century.