_Vieilles Auberges De France_, One Ought To Enjoy Their Gritty Floors And Greasy Window-Panes.

Let it be put on re- cord, therefore, that I have been, I won't say less com- fortable, but at least less happy, at better inns.

To be really historic, I should have mentioned that before going to look for the Rhone I had spent part of the evening on the opposite side of the little place, and that I indulged in this recreation for two definite reasons. One of these was that I had an opportunity of conversing at a cafe with an attractive young Eng- lishman, whom I had met in the afternoon at Tarascon, and more remotely, in other years, in London; the other was that there sat enthroned behind the counter a splendid mature Arlesienne, whom my companion and I agreed that it was a rare privilege to contem- plate. There is no rule of good manners or morals which makes it improper, at a cafe, to fix one's eyes upon the _dame de comptoir_; the lady is, in the nature of things, a part of your _consommation_. We were there- fore feee to admire without restriction the handsomest person I had ever seen give change for a five-franc piece. She was a large quiet woman, who would never see forty again; of an intensely feminine type, yet wonderfully rich and robust, and full of a certain phy- sical nobleness. Though she was not really old, she was antique, and she was very grave, even a little sad. She had the dignity of a Roman empress, and she handled coppers as if they had been stamped with the head of Caesar. I have seen washerwomen in the Trastevere who were perhaps as handsome as she; but even the head-dress of the Roman contadina con- tributes less to the dignity of the person born to wear it than the sweet and stately Arlesian cap, which sits at once aloft and on the back of the head; which is accompanied with a wide black bow covering a con- siderable part of the crown; and which, finally, accom- modates itself indescribably well to the manner in which the tresses of the front are pushed behind the cars.

This admirable dispenser of lumps of sugar has distracted me a little; for I am still not sufficiently historical. Before going to the cafe I had dined, and before dining I had found time to go and look at the arena. 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. The arena at Arles, with its great magnitude, is less complete than that of Nimes; it has suffered even more the assaults of time and of the children of time, and it has been less repaired. The seats are almost wholly wanting; but the external walls minus the topmost tier of arches, are massively, rug- gedly, complete; and the vaulted corridors seem as solid as the day they were built. The whole thing is superbly vast, and as monumental, for place of light amusement - what is called in America a "variety- show" - as it entered only into the Roman mind to make such establishments. The _podium_ is much higher than at Nimes, and many of the great white slabs that faced it have been recovered and put into their places. The proconsular box has been more or less recon- structed, and the great converging passages of approach to it are still majestically distinct: so that, as I sat there in the moon-charmed stillness, leaning my elbows on the battered parapet of the ring, it was not im- possible - to listen to the murmurs and shudders, the thick voice of the circus, that died away fifteen hun- dred years ago.

The theatre has a voice as well, but it lingers on the ear of time with a different music. The Roman theatre at Arles seemed to me one of the most charm- ing and touching ruins I had ever beheld; I took a particular fancy to it. It is less than a skeleton, - the arena may be called a skeleton; for it consists only of half a dozen bones. The traces of the row of columns which formed the scene - the permanent back-scene - remain; two marble pillars - I just mentioned them - are upright, with a fragment of their entablature. Be fore them is the vacant space which was filled by the stage, with the line of the prosoenium distinct, marked by a deep groove, impressed upon slabs of stone, which looks as if the bottom of a high screen had been in- tended to fit into it.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 57 of 75
Words from 57210 to 58223 of 75796