After that I am free to say that the restoration of Carcassonne is a
splendid achievement. The little custodian dismissed us at last,
after having, as usual, inducted us into the inevitable repository of
photographs.
After leaving it and passing out of the two circles of walls, I
treated myself, in the most infatuated manner, to another walk round
the Cite. It is certainly this general impression that is most
striking--the impression from outside, where the whole place detaches
itself at once from the landscape. In the warm southern dusk it looked
more than ever like a city in a fairy-tale. To make the thing perfect,
a white young moon, in its first quarter, came out and hung just over
the dark silhouette. It was hard to come away--to incommode one's self
for anything so vulgar as a railway train; I would gladly have spent
the evening in revolving round the walls of Carcassonne.
BIARRITZ[A]
[Footnote A: From "Castles and Chateaux of Old Navarre." By special
arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, L.C. Page &
Co. Copyright, 1907.
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