These facts I derived from a source no more recondite than a pamphlet by M. Viollet-le-Duc—­a very luminous description of the fortifications, which you may buy from the accomplished custodian.  The writer makes a jump to the year 1209, when Carcassonne, then forming part of the realm of the viscounts of Beziers and infected by the Albigensian heresy, was besieged, in the name of the Pope, by the terrible Simon de Montfort and his army of crusaders.  Simon was accustomed to success, and the town succumbed in the course of a fortnight.  Thirty-one years later, having passed into the hands of the King of France, it was again besieged by the young Raymond de Trincavel, the last of the viscounts of Beziers; and of this siege M. Viollet-le-Duc gives a long and minute account, which the visitor who has a head for such things may follow, with the brochure in hand, on the fortifications themselves.

The young Raymond de Trineavel, baffled and repulsed, retired at the end of twenty-four days.  Saint Louis and Philip the Bold, in the thirteenth century, multiplied the defenses of Carcassonne, which was one of the bulwarks of their kingdom on the Spanish quarter; and from this time forth, being regarded as impregnable, the place had nothing to fear.  It was not even attacked; and when, in 1355, Edward the Black Prince marched into it, the inhabitants had opened the gates to the conqueror before whom all Languedoc was prostrate.  I am not one of those who, as I said just now, have a head for such things, and having extracted these few facts had made all the use of M. Viollet-le-Duc’s pamphlet of which I was capable....

My obliging friend the “mad lover” [of la Cite] handed me over to the doorkeeper of the citadel.  I should add that I was at first committed to the wife of this functionary, a stout peasant woman, who conducted me to a postern door and ushered me into the presence of her husband.

This brilliant, this suggestive warden of Carcassonne marched us about for an hour, haranguing, explaining, illustrating, as he went; it was a complete little lecture, such as might have been delivered at the Lowell Institute, on the manner in which a first-rate “place forte” used to be attacked and defended.  Our peregrinations made it very clear that Carcassonne was impregnable; it is impossible to imagine, without having seen them, such refinements of immurement, such ingenuities of resistance.  We passed along the battlements and “chemins de ronde,” ascended and descended towers, crawled under arches, peered out of loopholes, lowered ourselves into dungeons, halted in all sorts of tight places, while the purpose of something or other was described to us.