"Let us climb to the lantern," said Auguste, "and you will then see our silent land, and our poor dear old fading town lying at our feet."
Accordingly up we went; only poor Auguste stopped every three steps to cough; and before we had got half way, the perspiration came streaming down his yellow face, proving what might have been a matter of dispute before—that he had some moisture somewhere in his body. From the top we both gazed earnestly, and I curiously, around. On one side, the sea, blue—purple blue; on the other side, something which was neither sea nor land—water and swamp—pond and marsh—bulrush thickets, and tamarisk jungles, shooting in peninsular capes, points, and headlands, into the salt sea lakes; in the centre of them—like the ark grounding after the deluge—the grey walls of Aigues-Mortes. Between the great mare internum and the lagoons, rolling sand-hills—the barrier-line of the coast—and upon them, but afar off, moving specks—the semi-wild cattle of the country; white dots—the Arab-blooded horses which are used for flails; black dots—the wild bulls and cows, which the mounted herdsmen drive with couched lance and flying lasso.
"Is it not beautiful?" murmured Auguste; "I think it so. I was born here. I love this landscape—it is so grand in its flatness; the shore is as grand as the sea. Look, there are distant hills"—pointing to the shadowy outline of the Cevennes—"but the hills are not so glorious as the plain."
"But neither have they the fever of the plain."
"It is God's will. But, fever or no fever, I love this land—so quiet, and still, and solemn—ay, monsieur, as solemn as the deserts of the Arabs, or as a cathedral at midnight—as solemn, and as strange, and as awful, as the early world, fresh from the making, with the birds flying, and the fish swimming, on the evening of the fifth day, before the Lord created Adam."
[CHAPTER XIV.]
Flat Marsh Scenery, treated by Poets and Painters—Tavern Allegories—Nismes—The Amphitheatre and the Maison Carrée—Protestant and Catholic—The old Religious Wars alive still—The Silk Weaver of Nismes and the Dragonnædes.
As Launcelot Gobbo had an infection to serve Bassanio, so I somehow took ill with an infection to walk, instead of ride, back to Lunel. I suppose that Auguste had innoculated me, in some measure, with his mysterious love for the boundless swamps and primeval jungles of bulrush around; so that I felt a sort of pang in leaving them, and would willingly depart lingeringly and alone. Sending on my small baggage, then, by roulage, I strode forth out of the dead city, and was soon pacing alone the echoing causeway, like an Arab steering by the sun in the desert. There is one dead and one living English poet who would have made glorious use of this fen landscape, so repulsive to many, but which did, after all, possess a strange, undefinable attraction for me. The dead poet is Shelley, who had the true eye for sublimity in waste. Take the following picture-touch:—
"An uninhabited sea-side, Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried, Abandons; and no other object breaks The waste, but one dwarf tree, and some few stakes, Broken and unrepaired; and the tide makes A narrow space of level sand thereon."