We now enter the old viscounty of Couserans, of which the civil capital was Massat, and the ecclesiastical was S. Lizier. It pertained for awhile to the counts of Carcassonne; Roger II gave both the district and the bishopric to his younger son, Bernard, with the title of viscount, in or about 990. But in 1257 Esquivat, Count of Bigorre, inherited the land from Roger, Count of Pallier, and thus the Couserans passed into the possession of the house of Foix-Béarn, and so to the kings of Navarre. The capital of the whole country in early days was Lugdunum Consoranorum, now S. Lizier, and one of the nine cities of Novempopulania. The Couserans, situated between the basins of the Ariège and the Garonne, has much the shape of a vine-leaf, having the valleys of the Arac, Garbet, Salat, and Lez converging at S. Girons into the one broad stream of the Salat, as the stalk of the leaf. If S. Bertrand de Cominges has fallen from its high estate to be a miserable village, it is not alone in its fall, in that S. Lizier has shared the same fate. But Lugdunum Convenarum went out in one tragic drama of blood and flame. Lugdunum Consoranorum is dying of slow decline, its life-blood sucked out of it by the parasitic growth of S. Girons. Indeed, so low is it fallen that the railway does not afford it a station, only a _halte_. Once the fifth in order of size and splendour of the cities of Novempopulania, it now shelters within its walls not more than five hundred inhabitants. This was a double town: one portion was the city, the other the _ville_; and what is more, it possessed two cathedrals--one in the city, Notre Dame; the other, S. Lizier, in the town. As just before death a patient often brightens up, puts on an appearance of renewed life, and enjoys buoyant hopes, only to sink in relapse to death, so was it with this Lyons of the Couserans. Bishop Bernard de Marmiesse (1653-80), not content with the medieval residence of the prelates, erected an enormous and splendid palace, commanding the whole town with its long façade flanked by semicircular towers, embracing the cathedral of S. Marie de la Sède within its walls. Where the bishops ruled and feasted in purple and fine linen lunatics are now installed. Lazarus has crept into the shell of Dives. The bishopric was suppressed at the Revolution and never restored. There had been on the cathedral staff twelve canons and twenty-four prebendaries, having under them a swarm of sacristans, _curés_ to relieve them of burdensome duties, and workmen. Ste. Marie de la Sède is a Renaissance church, but built when the spirit of Gothic architecture had not gone out of the land; but the portal is Romanesque. The interior woodwork is of the eighteenth century, and is fine for its period. To the north is the chapter-house, of the twelfth century. The materials of which cathedral and palace were built proceeded from the ruins of the Gallo-Roman city.