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
around 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 neighboring 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.
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