And Yet I Made My Reflections; I Said To
Myself That Though A Roman Arena Is One Of The Most
Impressive Of The Works Of Man, It Has A Touch Of That
Same Stupidity Which I Ventured To Discover In The
Pont Du Gard.
It is brutal; it is monotonous; it is
not at all exquisite.
The Arenes at Nimes were ar-
ranged for a bull-fight, - a form of recreation that, as
I was informed, is much _dans les habitudes Nimoises_,
and very common throughout Provence, where (still
according to my information) it is the usual pastime
of a Sunday afternoon. At Arles and Nimes it has a
characteristic setting, but in the villages the patrons
of the game make a circle of carts and barrels, on
which the spectators perch themselves. I was sur-
prised at the prevalence, in mild Provence, of the
Iberian vice, and hardly know whether it makes the
custom more respectable that at Nimes and Arles the
thing is shabbily and imperfectly done. The bulls
are rarely killed, and indeed often are bulls only in
the Irish sense of the term, - being domestic and
motherly cows. Such an entertainment of course does
not supply to the arena that element of the exquisite
which I spoke of as wanting. The exquisite at Nimes
is mainly represented by the famous Maison Carree.
The first impression you receive from this delicate
little building, as you stand before it, is that you have
already seen it many times. Photographs, engravings,
models, medals, have placed it definitely in your eye,
so that from the sentiment with which you regard it
curiosity and surprise are almost completely, and per-
haps deplorably, absent. Admiration remains, how-
ever, - admiration of a familiar and even slightly
patronizing kind. The Maison Carree does not over-
whelm you; you can conceive it. It is not one of the
great sensations of the antique art; but it is perfectly
felicitous, and, in spite of having been put to all sorts
of incongruous uses, marvellously preserved. Its slender
columns, its delicate proportions, its charming com-
pactness, seemed to bring one nearer to the century
that built it than the great superpositions of arenas
and bridges, and give it the interest that vibrates from
one age to another when the note of taste is struck.
If anything were needed to make this little toy-temple
a happy production, the service would be rendered by
the second-rate boulevard that conducts to it, adorned
with inferior cafes and tobacco-shops. Here, in a
respectable recess, surrounded by vulgar habitations,
and with the theatre, of a classic pretension, opposite,
stands the small "square house," so called because it
is much longer than it is broad. I saw it first in the
evening, in the vague moonlight, which made it look
as if it were cast in bronze. Stendhal says, justly,
that it has the shape of a playing-card, and he ex-
presses his admiration for it by the singular wish
that an "exact copy" of it should be erected in Paris.
He even goes so far as to say that in the year 1880
this tribute will have been rendered to its charms;
nothing would be more simple, to his mind, than to
"have" in that city "le Pantheon de Rome, quelques
temples de Grece." Stendhal found it amusing to
write in the character of a _commis-voyageur_, and some-
times it occurs to his reader that he really was one.
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