Then It Was That I Discovered That Arles Has
No General Physiognomy, And, Except The Delightful
Little Church Of Saint Trophimus, No Architecture, And
That The Rugosities Of Its Dirty Lanes Affect The Feet
Like Knife-Blades.
It was not then, on the other hand, that
I saw the arena best.
The second day of my stay at
Arles I devoted to a pilgrimage to the strange old hill
town of Les Baux, the mediaeval Pompeii, of which I
shall give myself the pleasure of speaking. The even-
ing of that day, however (my friend and I returned in
time for a late dinner), I wandered among the Roman
remains of the place by the light of a magnificent
moon, and gathered an impression which has lost little
of its silvery glow. The moon of the evening before
had been aqueous and erratic; but if on the present
occasion it was guilty of any irregularity, the worst it
did was only to linger beyond its time in the heavens,
in order to let us look at things comfortably. The
effect was admirable; it brought back the impression
of the way, in Rome itself, on evenings like that, the
moonshine rests upon broken shafts and slabs of an-
tique pavement. As we sat in the theatre, looking at
the two lone columns that survive - part of the decora-
tion of the back of the stage - and at the fragments
of ruin around them, we might have been in the
Roman forum.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 211 of 276
Words from 57626 to 57875
of 75796
