The interior of the church is very solid and very dignified. It has little decoration, but the light that is let in on it is just enough to give it mystery and solemnity. The aisles are so narrow that looking up to the vaulting one has the impression of mere passages, but their narrowness is effective, and the whole structure conveys an uplifting sense of austerity.
The richness of the famous cloister, happily in good preservation, comes as something of a surprise when one steps into it from the dark church, though its earliest "walk" is of the same date as the portal and not less luxuriant in decoration. This beautiful cloister is one of the most satisfying things in all ecclesiastical Provence, and would make a visit to Arles memorable if there were nothing else there to see. A chapter might be written on its carvings alone, and its irregularities of date and of construction provide constant fresh interest. The photographs of the north and south walks will show the great variety that exists. The north is of the twelfth century, the south as it was altered at the end of the fourteenth, and the west is later still. At the south-east corner is a well, said to have been originally fed by a Roman aqueduct which was older than the amphitheatre, for the water rose in a channel cut through the rock beneath it.
Mr. Henry James speaks of the Musée Lapidaire as the most Roman thing he knows of outside Rome, and, indeed, its contents, which are not so numerous as to confuse the mind, show what Arles had lost in the way of beauty centuries before St. Trophimus and other mediæval glories were bestowed upon it. I was pleased to come across, in Mr. James's pages, mention of the delightful little boy's head in marble, of the second century, which had particularly struck me. There is another similar one, not quite in such perfection, but even more tender and "naturalistique". One seems to know these little children, who died close upon two thousand years ago, and almost to love them.
In the Musée are some of the finest of the early Christian tombs from the Alyscamps, which has enriched half the museums in Europe with its treasures. This ancient burying-place lies a little outside the town. It is a rather mournful avenue of poplars underneath which are the rows of stone coffers, all empty now, which remain of the many that once stood there, and an ancient ruined church at the end of it.
"Here," writes Mr. T. A. Cook, "was the true necropolis of Gaul, consecrated, as the legend runs, by the blessing of the Christ Himself, who appeared to St. Trophime upon this sacred spot.... At first a Roman burial-place, this cemetery gradually became the chosen bourne of every man who wished his body to await in peace the coming of the resurrection. By the twelfth century it was sufficient to place the corpse of some beloved dead, from Avignon or further, into a rude coffin, fashioned like a barrel, and to commit it to the Rhône, which brought its quiet charge in safety to the beach of La Roquette. No sacrilegious hands were ever laid upon that travelling bier; for once a man of Beaucaire had robbed the coffin that was floating past his bridge, and straightway the corpse remained immovable in the current of the river, and stayed there until the thief confessed his crime and put the jewels back."[37]
THE CLOISTERS, SOUTH WALK, ST. TROPHIME
