The famous town lies charmingly on the river-side; a mass of roofs and towers, with its castle of King René—that most delightful and lively of monarchs; a real drawing-master castle, absurdly picturesque, with two vast round machicolated towers (very troublesome to shade), and a frowning entrance between them. (Surely all drawing-masters have taken this castle as their model since time began!) On the landward side is a dry moat and a stretch of grass and weeds (the weeds worked in with a sharp professional touch in the foreground). Just across the Rhone the vast bridge, which Tartarin thought too long and slender, leads to the town and high up on the hill, proud and desolate, the rival castle of Beaucaire.
"Embarras de Beaucaire!"
Ardouin-Dumazet says that in his childhood his family had a neighbour, a good woman, whose exclamation on the smallest obstacle was invariably "Embarras de Beaucaire!" And that, he adds, "gave us a grand idea of the encumbered state of this famous town."
"Si vous aviez vu Beaucaire pendant la foire!"
As we looked across that stupendous bridge, the phrase brought with it the picture of a mass of booths along the quay, shipping and flags and merchandise; and crowds in holiday costumes of every colour, for people flocked from all countries to buy and sell at the great fair "celebrated even beyond the Syrian deserts."
"Lougres difformes,
Galéaces énormes,
Vaisseaux de toutes formes...."
Dumazet records a conversation he had with one old man who remembered the great fair in his childhood.
"Then one should see Beaucaire!"