As you go out of the garden, a box at the gate, which had escaped your notice, solicits offerings in behalf of the institution from strangers visiting the tomb. The box has a lock and key; the old man does not keep the key. You have a sudden suspicion of his red waistcoat-pocket, and sigh as you go out, Les pauvres enfans!
Pont du Gard is the finest existing remain of a Roman aqueduct, and spans a quite deep stream, good for either fishing or bathing. Profusion of wild flowers grow about and over it, and fig-trees and brambles make a thicket together on the slope that goes down to the water.
One may walk over the top of the ruin—two yards wide, without parapet or rail—and look over into the depth three hundred feet below. The nerves must be strong to endure it, then the enjoyment is full. Less than half a day’s ride will bring one from the Pont du Gard to the Hôtel du Luxembourg of Nismes.
Montpellier is in Provence, the city of summer-like winters, and upon the river is Arles, with its Arena, larger even than that of Nismes, but far less perfect; and its pretty women—famous all over France—wear a mischievous look about them, and the tie of their red turbans, as if coquetry were one of their charms.
It is a strange, mixed-up town, that of Arles,—ruins and dirt and narrowness and grandeur, an old church in whose yard they dig up Roman coffins, and a rolling bridge of boats. Not anywhere in France are there dirtier and more crooked streets, not anywhere such motley array of shops amid the filth, red turbans and meat, bread and blocks, old coins and silks. Within the museum itself are collected more odd scraps of antiquity than can be found elsewhere together; there are lead pipes and stone fountains, old inscriptions and iron spikes, and the noblest monument of all is a female head that has no nose; but the manager very ingeniously supplies with his hand the missing feature.
Opposite the doors of this museum stands an obelisk of granite, which was fished out of the Rhone, and boasts a high antiquity, and upon its top is a brilliant sun with staring eyes. To complete the extraordinary grouping, upon another side of the same square is a church with the strangest bas-relief over its central door-way that surely madcap fancy ever devised. It is a representation of the Last Judgment; on the right, the angels are leading away the blessed in pairs, and on the left a grinning devil with horns, and with a stout rope passed over his shoulder and clinched in his teeth, is tugging away at legions of condemned souls.
There is rare Gothic sculpture within some old cloisters adjoining, and a marble bas-relief within the church, with a Virgin and Child in glory, was—I say it on the authority of an ingenious valet de place—of undoubtedly Roman origin.
Ancient sarcophagi may be seen here and there in the streets, serving as reservoirs at the fountains; and many a peasant of the adjoining country makes the coffin of a Roman noble his water-trough.
There belongs another antiquity to Provence besides that of Roman date,—it is that of the gay, chivalrous times of William IX., Count of Poitou, and all the gallant Troubadours who came after him. Then helmets glittered over the Provençal plains, and ladies wove silken pennants in princely halls. Then the tournament drew its throngs, and knights contended not only with their lances for martial fame but with their songs for the ears of love. Even monarchs—Barbarossa and Cœur de Lion—vied with Troubadours, and the seat of the Provençal court was the great centre of Southern chivalry. Arles had its court of love, more splendid than now, and its arrêt d’amour was more binding than the charms of the brightest eyes that shine in Provence to-day.
Little remains of the luxurious tastes of the old livers at Arles. The café, dirty and dim, assembles the chivalry of the city, and a stranger Western knight, in place of baronial hall, is entertained at the Hôtel du Forum, where, with excess of cheatery, they give him for St. Peray a weak, carbonated Moselle.