full of special knowledge, and yet remaining essentially of the people and showing his intelligence with a kind of ferocity, of defiance. Such a personage helps one to understand the red radicalism of France, the revolutions, the barricades, the sinister passion for theories. (I do not, of course, take upon myself to say that the individual I describe--who can know nothing of the liberties I am taking with him--is actually devoted to these ideals; I only mean that many such devotees must have his qualities.) In just the _nuance_ that I have tried to indicate here it is a terrible pattern of man. Permeated in a high degree by civilisation, it is yet untouched by the desire which one finds in the Englishman, in proportion as he rises in the world, to approximate to the figure of the gentleman. On the other hand, a _netteté_, a faculty of exposition, such as the English gentleman is rarely either blessed or cursed with. 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 [Illustration: CARCASSONNE]