Kipling was a serious driver and particularly enjoyed a stretch of road he found in the Rhône Valley that was "so mathematically straight, so barometrically level" for almost 20 miles that he'd take his various Royces there to check their top speeds, which occasionally crept into three digits. The Maserati will do 167 mph. No production sedan is faster, if only because the Germans voluntarily limit their monster limos to 155.

Vernet-les-Bains is so silent that the slam of a car door sounds like a distant rifle shot. Not because the town is deserted—since there are people wandering here and there, sweeping out shops and walking their dogs (this is the land of enormous brutes, no poodles in sight)—but because there is a total absence of mechanical noise. Silence will accompany us nearly everywhere in Roussillon.

In the gorge of the River Têt, hard by the highway to Mont-Louis, sits the odd fortified medieval town of Villefranche-de-Conflent, apparently sited by somebody who'd never figured out why soldiers take the high ground. Pinched between near cliffs to the north and south, the stout walls would have done well to keep out stray animals, but an invader needn't have used artillery; he could simply have dropped the cannonballs into Villefranche.

In 1665, Louis XIV sent ace fort-builder Marshal Vauban to do something about Villefranche's vulnerability, which Vauban basically did by putting a stout roof over the parapet that ran atop the wall so that the archers and musketeers would have protection from snipers above. Today, no cars are allowed into the tiny, walkable town. Some call it a living medieval museum; others have a more cynical view of its touristic commerce.

We turn around, retracing our route on our way to Molitg-les-Bains to spend the night. We'd come westbound through the spectacular gorge of the Têt, but now, descending back into it, the view is even more fabulous. The Pyrenees are a geologic maelstrom—older than the Alps even though they have the steep, massive, uneroded character of far fresher mountains, thanks to lots of granite, while rivers like the Têt have cut through lower layers of sedimentary marine limestone.

Day 3: Molitg-les-Bains to Carcassonne
"We're going to Carcassonne to see if it's Disneyland," I tell the clerk at the Château de Riell as we check out. She is shocked. But there is controversy: Is this restored medieval city a fanciful reconstruction or an honest restoration? We'll see.

The tiny but spectacular lane-and-a-half road toward Axat winds its way up to the Col de Jau mountain pass and then descends into a forest that must get lots of snow: The road is lined with six-foot-high red-and-white-striped guide poles to keep the plows out of ditches. At 9:30 in the morning, we and the mushroom pickers have the road to ourselves.

North of Ste-Colombe-sur-Guette, we're suddenly in the Gorges de St--Georges, the road carved out of limestone, with just enough rock hewn out overhead to let trucks tunnel through.