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CHAPTER XVI

COUSERANS

Cobweb of lines—The Viscounty—S. Lizier—S. Girons—S. Lizier a double town—Two cathedrals—Bishop Bernard—His palace—S. Marie de la Sède—The other cathedral—Bridge and inscription—Ramparts—The training of dancing bears—Bear hunting—Mendicity—Improvidence—Factory of La Moulasse—Job cigarette papers—Vic—Sully tree—Oust—The Nine Springs—Aulus—The Planturel.

THE railway lines in the central portion of the Pyrenees converge on Toulouse, and to get across country from west to east is no easy matter. In the Eastern Pyrenees they form a cobweb amidst which the traveller gets entangled and spends a day unprofitably in endeavours to extricate himself, for French railway directors ingeniously contrive to make through travelling by branch lines most difficult, or at least most tedious. To reach S. Girons it is necessary to run northwards from S. Gaudens to Boussens, then change trains and turn the face due south, following up the Salat, past the salt springs of Salies.

We now enter the old viscounty of Couserans, of which the civil capital was Massat, and the ecclesiastical was S. Lizier. It pertained for awhile to the counts of Carcassonne; Roger II gave both the district and the bishopric to his younger son, Bernard, with the title of viscount, in or about 990. But in 1257 Esquivat, Count of Bigorre, inherited the land from Roger, Count of Pallier, and thus the

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