Surely this is a more noble monument to the Abbé Arnaud than that in marble at Quillan. The actual "Gorge" is not more than fifteen hundred metres in length, but even this impresses itself more profoundly by reason of the great height of the rock walls on either side of the gushing river. At Saint Martin-Lys, midway between Quillan and Axat, is the church where the Abbé Arnaud served a long and useful life as the pastor of his mountain flock. Axat, at the upper end of the Gorge, will become a mountain summer resort of the very first rank if a boom ever strikes it; but at present it is simply a delightful little, unspoiled Pyrenean town, where one eats brook trout and ortolans in the dainty little Hotel Saurel-Labat, and is lulled to sleep by the purling waters of the Aude directly beneath his windows. This quiet little town has a population of three hundred, and is blessed with an electric supply so abundant and so cheap, apparently, that the good lady who runs the all-satisfying little hotel does not think it worth while to turn off the lamps even in the daytime. This is not remarkable when one considers that the electricity is a home-made product of the power of the swift flowing Aude, which rushes by Axat's dooryards at five kilometres an hour. [Illustration: AXAT] Two kilometres above the town are the Gorges de St. Georges, also with a superb roadway burrowed out of the rock. Here is the gigantic _usine-hydro-électrique_ of 6,000 horse-power obtained from a three-hundred-foot fall of water. That such things could be, here in this unheard of little corner of the Pyrenees, is far from the minds of most European travellers who know only the falls of the Rhine at Schaffhausen. Axat has a ruined château on the height above the town which is a wonderful ruin although it has no recorded history. To imagine its romance, however, is not a difficult procedure if you know the Pyrenees and their history. Its attractions are indeed many; but it would be a paradise for artists who did not want to go far from their inn to search their subjects. There are in addition a quaint old thirteenth-century church, a magnificently arched stone bridge, and innumerable twisting vaulted passages high aloft near the château. Away above Axat is the plateau region known as the Capcir, thought to be the ancient bed of a mountain lake. It is closed on all sides by a great fringe of mountains, and is comparatively thickly inhabited because of its particularly good pasture lands; and has the reputation of being the coldest inhabited region in France, though it may well divide this honour with the Alpine valleys of the Tarentaise in Savoie. One passes from the Capcir into the Cerdagne lying to the eastward by the Col de Casteillon. CHAPTER IX THE WALLS OF CARCASSONNE