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I do not pretend to judge the performance, carried out on a scale and in a spirit which really impose themselves on the imagination. Few architects have had such a chance, and M. Viollet-le-Duc must have been the envy of the whole restoring fraternity. The image of a more crumbling Carcassonne rises in the mind, and there is no doubt that forty years ago the place was more affecting.
I had never thought about it until I heard Leonora state that I might now marry her. But, from that moment until her worse than death, I do not suppose that I much thought about anything else. I don't mean to say that I sighed about her or groaned; I just wanted to marry her as some people want to go to Carcassonne.
He left his luggage at the station, warily determined to look at the inn before committing himself to it. When I say the town, I mean the towns; there being two at Carcassonne, perfectly distinct, and each with excellent claims to the title.
Aigues-Mortes stands on the edge of a wide etang, or shallow inlet of the sea, the further side of which is divided by a narrow band of coast from the Gulf of Lyons. Next after Carcassonne, to which it forms an admirable pendant, it is the most perfect thing of the kind in France. It has a rival in the person of Avignon, but the ramparts of Avignon are much less effective.
The acropolis of Carcassonne is crowned with Gothic battlements, the golden polygon of whose walls, rising from Roman foundations and layers of ruddy Visigoth brick to the stately marvel of its fifty towers, forms a whole that few can view unmoved.
When butterflies were dancing on the air, and the sun neared the zenith, pavilions were pitched, and all the warriors rested; and then they feasted again, and then played knightly games, and late in the afternoon marched on once more, singing of Carcassonne.
You may walk round the enceinte of Aigues-Mortes both outside and in; but you may not, as at Carcassonne, make a portion of this circuit on the chemin de ronde, the little projecting footway attached to the inner face of the battlements.
Such, literally speak- ing, is this delightful little city, which needs to be seen to tell its full story. It is extraordinarily pictorial, and if it is a very small sister of Carcassonne, it has at least the essential features of the family.
During these fifteen years, in the region situated between the Rhone, the Pyrenees, the Garonne, and even the Dordogne, nearly all the towns and strong castles, Beziers, Carcassonne, Castelnaudary, Lavaur, Gaillac, Moissae, Minerve, Termes, Toulouse, &c., were taken, lost, retaken, given over to pillage, sack, and massacre, and burnt by the crusaders with all the cruelty of fanatics and all the greed of conquerors.
The most celebrated fortified town in France is the Cité of Carcassonne, yet, even in the days of its practical strength, it was scarcely a type. It was rather a marvel, a wonder, the "fairest Maid of Languedoc," "the Invincible." And now the citadel is almost deserted.
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