The Next Morning The Lower Quarters Of
The Town Were In A Pitiful State; The Situation Seemed
To Me Odious.
To express my disapproval of it, I lost
no time in taking the train for Orange, which, with its
other attractions, had the merit of not being seated on
the Rhone.
It was my destiny to move northward;
but even if I had been at liberty to follow a less un-
natural course I should not then have undertaken it,
inasmuch, as the railway between Avignon and Mar-
seilles was credibly reported to be (in places) under
water. This was the case with almost everything but
the line itself, on the way to Orange. The day proved
splendid, and its brilliancy only lighted up the desola-
tion. Farmhouses and cottages were up to their middle
in the yellow liquidity; haystacks looked like dull little
islands; windows and doors gaped open, without faces;
and interruption and flight were represented in the
scene. It was brought home to me that the _popula-
tions rurales_ have many different ways of suffering,
and my heart glowed with a grateful sense of cockney-
ism. It was under the influence of this emotion that
I alighted at Orange, to visit a collection of eminently
civil monuments.
The collection consists of but two objects, but these
objects are so fine that I will let the word pass. One
of them is a triumphal arch, supposedly of the period
of Marcus Aurelius; the other is a fragment, magnifi-
cent in its ruin, of a Roman theatre. But for these
fine Roman remains and for its name, Orange is a
perfectly featureless little town; without the Rhone -
which, as I have mentioned, is several miles distant -
to help it to a physiognomy. It seems one of the
oddest things that this obscure French borough -
obscure, I mean, in our modern era, for the Gallo-
Roman Arausio must have been, judging it by its
arches and theatre, a place of some importance -
should have given its name to the heirs apparent of
the throne of Holland,and been borne by a king of
England who had sovereign rights over it. During
the Middle Ages it formed part of an independent
principality; but in 1531 it fell, by the marriage of
one of its princesses, who had inherited it, into the
family of Nassau. I read in my indispensable Mur-
ray that it was made over to France by the treaty of
Utrecht. The arch of triumph, which stands a little
way out of the town, is rather a pretty than an im-
posing vestige of the Romans. If it had greater purity
of style, one might say of it that it belonged to the
same family of monuments as the Maison Carree at
Nimes. It has three passages, - the middle much
higher than the others, - and a very elevated attic.
The vaults of the passages are richly sculptured, and
the whole monument is covered with friezes and
military trophies. This sculpture is rather mixed;
much of it is broken and defaced, and the rest seemed
to me ugly, though its workmanship is praised.
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