. Travels in the Pyrenees : including Andorra and the coast from Barcelona to Carcassonne. is the old mansion of the Consulsof Villefranche, with a big clock above it, and a stone poolin its basement where the laundresses toil when they do notelect, as in these winter days, to warm themselves in the sun,under the big bridge and the bastions overlooking the Cadi. One can make a tour of the ramparts, and I did so, inthe rough company of the gatekeeper; but it is a stonyand interminable affair, and one soon sees enough. Hisdaughters society would have been far pleasanter. It wasingenious, no doub
. Travels in the Pyrenees : including Andorra and the coast from Barcelona to Carcassonne. is the old mansion of the Consulsof Villefranche, with a big clock above it, and a stone poolin its basement where the laundresses toil when they do notelect, as in these winter days, to warm themselves in the sun,under the big bridge and the bastions overlooking the Cadi. One can make a tour of the ramparts, and I did so, inthe rough company of the gatekeeper; but it is a stonyand interminable affair, and one soon sees enough. Hisdaughters society would have been far pleasanter. It wasingenious, no doubt, of Monsieur Vauban to plan loopholesfor guns, so as to command the pleasant apple-borderedhighway to Vernet, and all the other customary means ofdefence known to warfare in the days of Louis Quatorze ;but one gets a little tired now of all this old ferocity, as ourgrandchildren will, no doubt, of the Dreadnoughts andThunderers of our own times. For the days of such war-fare are over and past. No Spaniards now wish to comeover the mountain-passes and get fired at, as they ride, from. A DAY IN VILLEFRANCHE 101 Monsieur Vaubans guns. The Spaniard, as the gate-keeper tersely observes, is finished. We in France thinknow only of the Prussian ; but he is far from here. Forthe rest, the officers have no taste for barrack life in Ville-franche, so dull, so sombre, in winter. We have no theatres,no amusements here for them. The last detachment has beenmoved to Perpignan, and Villefranche—enfin c^est declass^ Roi Soleil has been dead these 200 years, and thegenius of M. de Vauban has had its hour. Villefranche was founded in the year of our Lord 1092 byCount William Raymond of the Cerdagne, grandson of himwho founded St. Martins Abbey. It had a predecessor ina hamlet of bad repute named Campilias, whose people werenot averse to waylaying the traveller along the great highwaywhich from time immemorial has passed up the valley of theTet. Its strategical position, here, at the junct
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectfranced, bookyear1913
