The Principal Entrance Was Locked, But We
Effected An Easy _Escalade_, Scaled A Low Parapet, And
Descended Into The Place Behind File Scenes.
It was
as light as day, and the solitude was complete.
The
two slim columns, as we sat on the broken benches,
stood there like a pair of silent actors. What I called
touching, just now, was the thought that here the
human voice, the utterance of a great language, had
been supreme. The air was full of intonations and
cadences; not of the echo of smashing blows, of riven
armor, of howling victims and roaring beasts. The
spot is, in short, one of the sweetest legacies of the
ancient world; and there seems no profanation in the
fact that by day it is open to the good people of
Arles, who use it to pass, by no means in great num-
bers, from one part of the town to the other; treading
the old marble floor, and brushing, if need be, the
empty benches. This familiarity does not kill the
place again; it makes it, on the contrary, live a little,
- makes the present and the past touch each other.
XXXI.
The third lion of Arles has nothing to do with the
ancient world, but only with the old one. The church
of Saint Trophimus, whose wonderful Romanesque
porch is the principal ornament of the principal _place_,
- a _place_ otherwise distinguished by the presence of
a slim and tapering obelisk in the middle, as well as
by that of the Hotel de Ville and the museum - the
interesting church of Saint Trophimus swears a little,
as the French say, with the peculiar character of
Arles.
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