The constructive elements of the grim ramparts are Roman, but mediæval additions and copings have been interpolated from time to time so that they scarcely look their age. In the _Ville Haute_ were built the cathedral and its dependencies, the château of the seigneurs, and the houses of the noblesse. Beyond these, but within another encircling wall, were the houses of the adherents of the counts; while outside of this wall lived the mere hangers-on. This was the usual feudal disposition of things. Eighty thousand people once made up the population of St. Bertrand. And three great highways, to Agen, to Dax, and to Toulouse, led therefrom. This was the epoch of its great prosperity. It is one of the most ancient Roman colonies in Aquitaine, and its history has been told by many chroniclers, one of the least profuse being St. Gregoire, Archbishop of Tours. [Illustration: _St. Bertrand de Comminges_] After a frightful massacre in the ninth century the city, its churches, its château and its houses became deserted. It was a century later that Saint Bertrand de l'Isle, who had just been sanctified by his uncle the archbishop at Auch, undertook to reconstruct the old city on the ruins of its past. He re-established first the fallen bishopric, and elected himself bishop. This gave him power, and he started forthwith to build the singularly dignified and beautiful cathedral which one sees to-day. Comminges was made a comté in the tenth century, and the fief contained two hundred and eighty-eight towns and villages and nine castellanies, all owing allegiance to the Comte de Comminges. The episcopal jurisdiction varied somewhat from these limits, for it included twenty Spanish communes beyond the frontier as well. One enters St. Bertrand to-day by the great arched gateway, or Porte Majou, which bears over its lintel the arms of the Cardinal de Foix. As a grand historical monument St. Bertrand commences well. Narrow, crooked, little streets climb to the platform terrace above where sits the cathedral. It is a sad, grim journey, this mounting through the deserted streets, with here and there a Gothic or Renaissance column built helter-skelter into a house front, and the suggestion of a barred Gothic window or a delicate Renaissance doorway now far removed from its original functions. At last one reaches a great mass of tumbled stones which one is told is the ruin of the episcopal palace built by St. Bertrand himself. But what would you? It is just this atmosphere of antiquity that one comes here to breathe, and certainly a more musty and less worldly one it would be difficult to find outside the catacombs of Rome.