One view of the _Cité_ not often had is from the Montagne Noire, where, from its supreme height of twelve hundred metres (the Pic de Nore) there is to be seen such a bird's-eye view as was never conceived by the imagination. On the horizon are the blue peaks of the Pyrenees cutting the sky with astonishing clearness; to the eastward is the Mediterranean; and northwards are the Cevennes; while immediately below is a wide-spread plain peopled here and there with tiny villages and farms all clustering around the solid walls of Carcassonne--the _Ville_ of to-day and the _Cité_ of the past. Over the blue hills, southward from Carcassonne, lies Limoux. Limoux is famous for three things, its twelfth-century church, its fifteenth-century bridge and its "_blanquette de Limoux_," less ancient, but quite as enduring. If one's hunger is ripe, he samples the last first, at the table d'hôte at the Hotel du Pigeon. "Blanquette de Limoux" is simply an ordinarily good white, sparkling wine, no better than Saumur, but much better than the hocks which have lately become popular in England, and much, much better than American champagne. The town itself is charming, and the immediate environs, the peasants' cottages and the vineyards, recall those verses of Nadaud's about that old son of the soil who prayed each year that he might make the journey over the hills to Carcassonne (it is only twenty-four kilometres) and refresh his old eyes with a sight of that glorious mediæval monument. North of Carcassonne, between the city and the peak of the Montagne Noire, is the old château of Lastours, a ruined glory of the days when only a hill-top situation and heavy walls meant safety and long life. CHAPTER X THE COUNTS OF FOIX The Comté de Foix and its civilization goes back to prehistoric, Gallic and Roman times. This much we know, but what the detailed events of these periods were, we know not. Archæology alone, by means of remaining monuments in stone, must supply that which history omits. The primitives of the stone age lived mostly in caverns, but here they lived in some species of rude huts or houses. This at any rate is the supposition. With the Romans came civic importance; and fortified towns and cities sprang up here and there of which existing remains, as at St. Lizier, tell a plain story. The principal historical events of the early years of the Middle Ages were religious in motive. Written records are few, however, and are mostly legendary accounts. Dynasties of great families began to be founded in the ninth century; and each region took on different manners and customs. The Couserans, a dismemberment of Comminges, became practically Gascon; while Foix cast off from Toulouse, had its own development. Victor Balaguer, the poet, expresses this better than most historians when he says: "_Provence et Pyrénées, s'écriet-il, portent le deuil du monde latin. Le jour où tombèrent ceux de Foix tomba aussi la Provence_."