With the World's Great Travellers, Volume 3

by Unknown

The trees along the Boulevard—running here through the town—wore a spring-like air (there must have been olives or evergreen oaks among them), and though I cannot say if the peach-trees were in bloom, yet I know I picked a bright red rose in the garden by the fountain,—the great Roman fountain which supplies the whole town with water,—and it lies pressed for a witness in my journal yet. And there were a hundred other roses in bloom all around,—and a little girl was passing through the garden at the time, with one in her hair, and was playing with another in her hand. And the old soldier who limps, and lives in the little cottage at the gate of the garden, as patrol, was sunning himself on the bench by the door; and a canary-bird that hung over it was singing as blithely in his cage as the sparrows had been singing in the ruin.

And what was there in that charming garden spot of Nismes, with its wide walks and shade of trees, and fresh with the sound of running water and the music of birds? There was an old temple of Diana, and fountain of the Nymphs. Both were embowered in trees at the foot of the hill which lords it over the town.

The fountain rises almost a river, and alone supplies a city of forty thousand inhabitants. The guide-books will tell one that it is some fifty or sixty feet in depth, and surrounded with walls of masonry,—now green with moss and clinging herbs; and from this, its source, it passes in a gushing flood over the marble floors of old Roman baths, as smooth and exact now as the day on which they were laid. The old soldier will conduct you down and open the door-way, so that you may tread upon the smooth marble where trod the little feet of the unknown Roman girls. For none know when the baths were built, or when this temple of Diana was founded. Not even of the great arena, remarkable in many respects as the Roman Coliseum, is there the slightest classic record. Nothing but its own gigantic masonry tells of its origin.

Upon the top of the hill, from whose foot flows the fountain, is still another ruin,—a high, cumbrous tower. And as I wandered under it, full of classic fervor, and looked up,—with ancient Rome in my eye, and the gold Ægis, and the banner of triumph,—behold, an old woman with a red handkerchief tied round her head was spreading a blue petticoat over the edge of the tower to dry.

But from the ground beneath was a rich view over the town and valley. The hill and the garden at its base were cloaked with the deep black green of pines and firs; beyond was the town, just veiled in the light smoke of the morning fires; here peeped through a steeple, there a heavy old tower, and looming with its hundred arches and circumference of broken rocks—bigger than them all—was the amphitheatre of the Latin people, whose language and monuments alone remain. Beside the city—through an atmosphere clear as a morning on the valley of the Connecticut—were the stiff velvety tops of the olive-orchards and the long brown lines of vineyards;—away the meadows swept, with here and there over the level reach an old gray town, with tall presiding castle, or a glittering strip of the bright branches of the Rhone.

But not only is there pleasant December sun and sunny landscape in and about the Provençal town of Nismes, there are also pleasant streets and walks; there is a beautiful Roman temple,—La Maison Carrée,—than which there is scarce a more perfect one through all Italy, among the neat white houses of the city. Within it are abundance of curiosities, for such as are curious about dates and inscriptions that cannot be made out; and there are Roman portals still left in the vestiges of the Roman walls....

There is the Grand Theatre for such as wish a stall for a month; and there is the grander theatre of the old Roman Arêne. True, the manager is dead, and the actors are but bats and lizards, with now and then a grum old owl for prompter. But what scenes the arched openings blackened by the fires of barbarians, and the stunted trees growing where Roman ladies sat, paint to the eye of fancy! What an orchestra the birds make at twilight, and the recollections make always!

It was better than Norma, it was richer than Robert le Diable, to sit down on one of the fragments in front of where was the great entrance and look through the iron grating, and follow the perspective of corridors opening into the central arena, where the moonlight shone on a still December night,—glimmering over the ranges of the seats and upon the shaking leaves. And there was a rustle, a gentle sighing of the night wind among the crevices, that one could easily believe was the echo of a distant chorus behind the scenes:—and so it was,—a chorus of Great Dead Ones,—mournful and slow,—listened to by no flesh ear, but by the delicate ear of Memory.

There are rides about Nismes. There is Avignon with its brown ramparts and its gigantic Papal towers bundling up from the banks of the Rhone, only a half-day’s ride away; and half a day more will put one down at the fountain of Vaucluse; where, if it be summer-time,—and it is summer-time there three-quarters of the year,—you may sit down under the shade of a fig-tree, or a fir, and read—undisturbed save by the dashing of the water under the cliff—the fourteenth Canzonet of Petrarch....

Coming back at nightfall, [the traveller] will have a mind to hunt through the narrow, dim-lighted streets of Avignon in search of the tomb of Laura, and he will find it embowered with laurels and shut up by a thorn hedge and wicket; and to get within this, he will ring the bell of the heavy, sombre-looking mansion close by, when a shuffling old man with keys will come out and do the honors of the tomb. He will take a franc,—not absolutely disdainfully, but with a world of sang-froid, since it is not for himself (he says) but for the poor children within the mansion, which is a foundling hospital. He puts the money in his red waistcoat-pocket, suiting to the action a sigh, “Mes pauvres enfans!” Perhaps you will add in the overflowing of your heart, “Poor children!”