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.
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_."
The resistance of the counts in the famous wars of the Albigeois only provoked the incursion of the troops of the cruel Simon de Montfort. The Comte de Foix fell back finally on his strong château; and, on the sixteenth of June, 1229, in the presence of the papal legate, representative of the king of France, Roger-Bernard II made his submission without reserve.