South of Carcassonne and Limoux, just over "the mountains blue" of which the old peasant sang, is St. Hilaire, the market town of a canton of eight hundred inhabitants. It is more than that. It is a mediæval shrine of the first rank; for it is the site of an abbey founded in the fifth or sixth century. This abbey was under the direct protection of Charlemagne in 780, and he bestowed upon it "_lettres de sauvegarde_," which all were bound to respect. The monastery was secularized in 1748, but its thirteenth-century church, half Romanesque and half Gothic, will ever remain as one of the best preserved relics of its age. For some inexplicable reason its carved and cut stone is unworn by the ravages of weather, and is as fresh and sharp in its outlines as if newly cut. Within is the tomb of St. Hilaire, the first bishop of Carcassonne. The sculpture of the tomb is of the ninth century, and it is well to know that the same thing seen in the Musée Cluny at Paris is but a reproduction. The original still remains here. The fourteenth-century cloister is a wonderful work of its kind, and this too in a region where this most artistic work abounds. One's entrance into Quillan by road is apt to be exciting. The automobile is no novelty in these days; but to run afoul of a five kilometre procession of peasant folk with all their traps, coming and going to a market town keeps one down to a walking pace. [Illustration: _Château de Puylaurens_] On the particular occasion when the author and artist passed this way, all the animals bought and sold that day at the cattle fair of Quillan seemed to be coming from the town. The little men who had them in tow were invariably good-natured, but everybody had a hard time in preventing horses, cows and sheep from bolting and dogs from getting run over. Finally we arrived; and a more well-appreciated haven we have never found. The town itself is quaint, picturesque and quite different from the tiny bourgs of the Pyrenees. It is in fact quite a city in miniature. Though Quillan is almost a metropolis, everybody goes to bed by ten o'clock, when the lights of the cafés go out, leaving the stranger to stroll by the river and watch the moon rise over the Aude with the ever present curtain of the Pyrenees looming in the distance. It is all very peaceful and romantic, for which reason it may be presumed one comes to such a little old-world corner of Europe. And yet Quillan is a gay, live, little town, though it has not much in the way of sights to attract one. Still it is a delightful idling-place, and a good point from which to reach the château of Puylaurens out on the Perpignan road.