From the railway station at Nîmes the broad Boulevard Feuchiers, lined with four rows of plane-trees, leads to a large open space, the Esplanade. Round this public circus there is an oval balustrade, the designer of which seems, perhaps unconsciously, to have been influenced by the great Arena which stands quite near. Even the stone seats preserve the Roman traditions in their heavy construction. The most important café in the town stands in the Esplanade, and in winter the pavement outside is covered with a thick mat upon which the chairs and table stand. A great coke stove stands in the middle, and customers sit round the tables and fire listening to the music until the small hours of the morning. Paris herself can offer no better fare.
The “Pont du Gard,” which was one of Agrippa’s greatest engineering feats, remains the most colossal Roman monument in France. Remoulins, the little village that lies nearest to the bridge, is easily reached by train either from Nîmes or Avignon, and the road along the banks of the Gard is full of rural charm, for it passes vineyards, homesteads, ploughed fields, and green pastures. Great steep hills rising up on either side of the river enclose the valley, and when one suddenly catches sight of the towering masonry of the aqueduct that spans the river the sensations aroused are bewildering.
Three great tiers of arches stretch across the river, and frame in the whole horizon. The wonderful warm colour of the masonry contrasts against the sky, which, framed in the fifty golden arches, assumes an intensity that no pigment could reproduce. On closer inspection it is seen that the stones of which this giant is composed are laid one upon the other, fitted and adjusted without the aid of mortar, and that even the smaller arches of the third tier are laid in the same fashion. The channel, however, which carried the water along the top is lined with hard cement. This tunnel is partly roofed with large flat stones placed at intervals, and leaving gaps open to the sky.
To stand on the top of this immense pile of masonry and survey the valley and distant country is to add a unique sensation to life’s experiences. The river is far below with a toylike mill upon its edge, the winding roadway is dotted with specks that look like insects, and the far-off mountains float like clouds in the distant haze. From whatever point of view it is contemplated—from above or below—from a distance or from at hand it fills the mind with an unbounded respect for the genius of its builders. As in the case of the arenas, mere measurement fails to convey any idea of its vastness. That it is 880 feet or so long and 160 feet high may be interesting to builders and engineers, but to the majority of spectators these figures utterly fail to express anything of the magnificence of the Pont du Gard. Like the Maison Carrée and the amphitheatres of Nîmes and Arles, the aqueduct has figured in many a picture and engraving.
The rainbow of stone that fills the sky in Robert’s romantic picture now in the Louvre conveys some of the beauty of the “Bridge,” but fails to suggest the grandeur or its size. Agrippa and his soldiers accomplished more than a difficult engineering feat when they carried the waters of Uzès through hills and over valleys to their much-honoured colony of Nemausus. The Pont du Gard is far too noteworthy and imposing a structure to have escaped the attentions of the romantic imaginations of the Middle Ages, and a legend has been handed down to the effect that the Devil himself built it, and required as payment for his stupendous task the soul of the first living creature who should cross it. The first living creature was a hare (the natives presumably being backward in risking their souls); and the Devil, exasperated at the poor reward for all his trouble, turned the hare into stone, and to-day ingenious natives point to a curious Roman device carved on the keystone of one of the arches and call it the hare of the Pont du Gard.
