By the time Arles was reached the sun was burning with a midsummer glare, as it does here for three hundred or more days in the year.
At Arles one is in the very cauldron of the atmosphere of things Provençal, art, letters, history, and romance, all of which are kept alive by the Félibres and their fellows.
Mistral, the poet, is the master-singer of them all, and whether he chants of his "Own glad Kingdom of Provence," at Maillane among the olive-trees, far inland, or of:
"The peace which descends upon the troubled ocean
And he his wrath forgets,
Flock from Martigues the boats with wing-like motion,
And fishes fill their nets,"
it is all the same; the subtle, penetrating atmosphere and sentiment of Provence is over all.
Arles is the head centre. It is a city of monumental and celebrated art, and one may spend a day, a week, or a month, wandering in and out and about its old Roman arena (still so well preserved that it presents its occasional bull-fight for the delectation of the bloodthirsty), its antique theatre, its museums, its cathedral and its cloister, or among the tombs of the Aliscamps.
We did all these things, indeed we had done them before, but they were ever marvellous just the same, and in the museum we were always running on Mistral himself, who, in his waning years, finds his greatest delight in arranging and rearranging the exhibits of his newly founded Musée Arletan.
The hotels of Arles are a disappointment. The Hôtel du Nord, with a portico of the old Forum built into its walls, and the Hôtel du Forum, on the Place du Forum, are well enough in their way,—they are certainly well conducted,—but they lack "atmosphere," and instead of the cuisine du pays, you get ham and eggs and bifteck served to you. This is wrong and bad business, if the otherwise capable proprietors only knew it.
One does better in the environs. At St. Rémy, at the Grand Hôtel de Provence, you will get quite another sort of fare: hors d'œuvres of a peculiarly pungent variety, not forgetting the dark purple, over-ripe olives, a ragoût en casserole, a filet d'agneau with a sauce Provençale, and a poulet and a salad which will make one dream of the all but lost art of Brillat-Savarin. They are good cooks, the chefs of Provence, of the small cities and large towns like St. Rémy, Cavaillon, Salon, and Carpentras, but everybody will not like their liberal douches of oil any more than they will the penetrating garlic flavour in everything.
We took a turn backward on our route from Arles and went to Les Baux, the now dismal ruin of a once proud feudal city whose seigneurs held sway over some sixty cities of Provence.