[Illustration: "THE ANCIENT CROSS."--CARCASSONNE.]

Having lost much of his enthusiasm, the traveller asked for the old--he
had almost said the "real"--Cathedral, and with new directions, he
started afresh. Leaving the well-built, agreeable, commonplace "Lower
city" of the plain, he came to the bridge, and there, sitting on its
parapet, near the ancient Cross, he feasted his longing eyes on that
perfect vision of Mediaevalism. The high, arid, and almost isolated hill
of the Cite stood before him, and at the top rose battlements and
flanking towers in double range, bristling, war-like, and strong; yet
beautiful in their mass of uneven, peaked tower-roofs and crenellations.
He climbed wearily up the stony street of the hillside, and as he passed
through the open gate, he realised that Hunnewell had written truly when
he said "Carcassonne is a romance of travel." For he went into a town
so quiet, into streets so still, so weed-grown, and lonely, and yet so
well built, that he felt as a "fairy prince" who has penetrated into
some enchanted castle, and it seemed as if the inhabitants were asleep
in the upper rooms, behind those bowed windows, and as if, when the
mysterious word of disenchantment should be uttered, all would come
trooping forth, men-at-arms hurrying to clean their rusty swords, old
women trudging along to fill their dusty pitchers at the well, and
younger women staring from doors and windows to see the stranger within
their streets.

The Cadets de Gascogne knew the city before the evil spell of modern
times was cast about it. They know and miss it now. And although they
may no longer wear the plumed hat and clanking sword of their ancestors,
the spirit beneath their more conventional garb is as gay and daring as
that of Cadets more picturesque. They have conceived a plan as exciting
as any old adventure, an idea which they present to the world, not as
Cyrano, their most famous member, was wont to convey his thoughts at the
end of a sword, but none the less dexterously and delightfully. This
plan, like the magic word of the traveller's fancy, is to make the old
Carcassonne live again, not as the traveller had timidly imagined, in
time of peace, but in the stirring times of war and battle, and its
magic word is "the siege of Carcassonne." Truly it is but a matter of
bengal lights, blank cartridges, and fire-crackers, though for the
matter of that, Cinderella's coach was but a pumpkin, yet the effect was
none