e at
Montpellier; and to complete the effect, the extraordinary aqueduct,
charmingly fore-shortened--all this is worthy of a capital, of a little
court-city. The whole place, with its repeated steps, its balustrades,
its massive and plentiful stonework, is full of the air of the last
century--_sent bien son dix-huitieme siecle_; none the less so, I am
afraid, that, as I read in my faithful Murray, after the revocation of
the Edict of Nantes the block, the stake, the wheel had been erected
here for the benefit of the desperate Camisards.
[Illustration]
Chapter xxvi
[The Pont du Gard]
It was a pleasure to feel one's self in Provence again--the land where
the silver-grey earth is impregnated with the light of the sky. To
celebrate the event, as soon as I arrived at Nimes I engaged a caleche
to convey me to the Pont du Gard. The day was yet young and was
exceptionally fair; it appeared well, for a longish drive, to take
advantage, without delay, of such security. After I had left the town I
became more intimate with that Provencal charm which I had already
enjoyed from the window of the train, and which glowed in the sweet
sunshine and the white rocks and lurked in the smoke puffs of the little
olives. The olive-trees in Provence are half the landscape. They are
neither so tall, so stout, nor so richly contorted as you have seen them
beyond the Alps; but this mild colourless bloom seems the very texture
of the country. The road from Nimes, for a distance of fifteen miles, is
superb; broad enough for an army and as white and firm as a
dinner-table. It stretches away over undulations which have a kind of
rhythmic value, and in the curves it makes through the wide, free
country, where there is never a hedge or a wall and the detail is always
exquisite, there is something majestic, almost processional. Some twenty
minutes before I reached the little inn that marks the termination of
the drive my vehicle met with an accident which just missed being
serious, and which engaged the attention of a gentleman who, followed by
his groom and mounted on a strikingly handsome horse, happened to ride
up at the moment. This young man, who, with his good looks and charming
manner, might have stepped out of a novel of Octave Feuillet, gave me
some very intelligent advice in reference to one of my horses that had
been injured, and was so good as to accompany me to the inn, with the
resources of which he was acquainted, to see
|