ENTRANCE TO KING RENÉ'S CASTLE, TARASCON
By E. M. Synge.
The immense block of masonry from its roots in the soil to its battlements in the sky stands clear against the mysterious spaces, and presently it seems to stir and lean forward, as if it might fall or drift away in emulation of some free-born cloud that swims over its head. It is delightful to loiter in the road by the moat just below the hillock that rises to the river-bank and opposite the last of the towers, which stands at the angle of the castle between land and water. At this spot nothing can be seen of hill and river, only the tower and sky. They meet at the magic line—inexorable stone and quivering ether; substance enthralled and infinity in motion!
Floods of light from the steady tumult of the waters are reflected upon the cream-white walls and fill the whole atmosphere. It seems to tremble against the tower as one watches. And one knows that more obviously than usual one stands at the gate of the Eternal Mystery.
At the top of the hillock the river bursts into view, incredibly broad, hurrying, joyous, with Beaucaire on its opposite shore watched over by the ruined keep on the height: the scene of that most charming of old French romances, "Aucassin and Nicolette."
Just before the eye, a little below King René's Castle, is the famous bridge; it might be the bridge between this world and the next, between Good and Evil, between Heaven and Hell, so long it is. The great whisper of the tide is audible now to any one who elects to pause here in the sunshine and listen. There is a little hidden corner at the angle between the castle and a curtain of wall that meets it into which the water sweeping along the castle side is flung and repulsed with a great back-surge, meeting, as it returns, the edges of the main current and so falling into an immense conflict, fascinating to watch with its hundred whirlpools and hollows, swellings and eddies, and all the babbling and complaining of torrents detained in their ever-pressing errand. One could spend hours on the spot, and in adventurous moods might yield to the temptation of walking along the broad ledge of the curtain-wall till one stood just above the dizzy spot where the waters swing together and hurl themselves back with anger and trembling into the great stream.
"Mais radieux
Et ivre de votre lumière du Rhone,
Haussez les verres à la cause vaincue."
Truly the spot in which to drink to lost causes!