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We found the Cadets lunching on the platform of the great western keep, while a historic pageant organized in their honor was winding through the steep mediæval streets-a cavalcade of archers, men at arms, and many-colored troubadours, who, after effecting a triumphal entrance to the town over lowered drawbridges, mounted to unfurl their banner on our tower. As the gaudy standard unfolded on the evening air, Mounet-Sully’s incomparable voice breathed the very soul of the “Burgraves” across the silent plain and down through the echoing corridors below. While we were still under the impression of the stirring lines, he changed his key and whispered:-

Le soir tombe. . . . L’heure douce
Qui s’èloigne sans secousse,
Pose à peine sur la mousse
Ses pieds.
Un jour indècis persiste,
Et le crèpuscule triste
Ouvre ses yeux d’améthyste
Mouillès.

Night came on ere the singing and reciting ended, a balmy Southern evening, lit by a thousand fires from tower and battlement and moat, the old walls glowing red against the violet sky.

Picture this scene to yourself, reader mine, and you will understand the enthusiasm of the artists and writers in our clan. It needed but little imagination then to reconstruct the past and fancy one’s self back in the days when the “Trancavel” held this city against the world.

Sleep that night was filled with a strange phantasmagoria of crenelated ch�teaux and armored knights, until the bright Proven�al sunlight and the call for a hurried departure dispelled such illusions. By noon we were far away from Carcassonne, mounting the rocky slopes of the Cevennes amid a wild and noble landscape; the towering cliffs of the “Causses,” zebraed by zig-zag paths, lay below us, disclosing glimpses of fertile valley and vine-engarlanded plain.

One asks one’s self in wonder why these enchanting regions are so unknown. En route our companions were like children fresh from school, taking haphazard meals at the local inns and clambering gayly into any conveyance that came to hand. As our way led us through the Cevennes country, another charm gradually stole over the senses.

“I imagine that Citheron must look like this,” murmured Catulle Mendès, as we stood looking down from a sun-baked eminence, “with the Gulf of Corinth there where you see that gleam of water.” As he spoke he began declaiming the passage from Sophocles’s Œdipus the King descriptive if that classic scene.

Two thousand feet below lay Ispanhac in a verdant valley, the River Tarn gleaming amid the cultivated fields like a cimeter thrown on a Turkish carpet. Our descent was an avalanche of laughing, singing “Cadets,” who rolled in the fresh-cut grass and chased each other through the ripening vineyards, shouting lines from tragedies to groups of open-mouthed farm-hands, and invading the tiny inns on the road with song and tumult. As we neared our goal its entire population, headed by the curé, came out to meet us and offer the hospitality of the town.

In the market-place, one of our number, inspired by the antique solemnity of the surroundings, burst into the noble lines of Hugo’s Devant Dieu, before which the awestruck population uncovered and crossed themselves, imagining, doubtless, that it was a religious ceremony.

Another scene recurs vividly to my memory. We were at St. Enimie. I had opened my window to breathe the night air after the heat and dust of the day and watch the moonlight on the quaint bridge at my feet. Suddenly from out the shadows there rose (like sounds in a dream) the exquisite tone of Sylvain’s voice, alternating with the baritone of d’Esparbes. They were seated at the water’s edge, intoxicated by the beauty of the scene and apparently oblivious of all else.

The next day was passed on the Tarn, our ten little boats following each other single file on the narrow river, winding around the feet of mighty cliffs, or wandering out into sunny pasture lands where solitary peasants, interrupted in their labors, listened in astonishment to the chorus thundered from the passing boats, and waved us a welcome as we moved by.