e crest of its defences seems to rise straight
out of the ground; and it is not till the train stops close before them
that you are able to take the full measure of its walls.

Aigues-Mortes stands on the edge of a wide _etang_, or shallow inlet of
the sea, the farther side of which is divided by a narrow band of coast
from the Gulf of Lyons. Next after Carcassonne, to which it forms an
admirable _pendant_, it is the most perfect thing of the kind in France.
It has a rival in the person of Avignon, but the ramparts of Avignon are
much less effective. Like Carcassonne, it is completely surrounded with
its old fortifications; and if they are far simpler in character (there
is but one circle), they are quite as well preserved. The moat has been
filled up, and the site of the town might be figured by a billiard-table
without pockets. On this absolute level, covered with coarse grass,
Aigues-Mortes presents quite the appearance of the walled town that a
school-boy draws upon his slate or that we see in the background of
early Flemish pictures--a simple parallelogram, of a contour almost
absurdly bare, broken at intervals by angular towers and square holes.
Such, literally speaking, is this delightful little city, which needs to
be seen to tell its full story. It is extraordinarily pictorial, and if
it is a very small sister of Carcassonne, it has at least the essential
features of the family. Indeed, it is even more like an image and less
like a reality than Carcassonne; for by position and prospect it seems
even more detached from the life of the present day. It is true that
Aigues-Mortes does a little business; it sees certain bags of salt piled
into barges which stand in a canal beside it, and which carry their
cargo into actual places. But nothing could well be more drowsy and
desultory than this industry as I saw it practised, with the aid of two
or three brown peasants and under the eye of a solitary douanier, who
strolled on the little quay beneath the western wall. "C'est bien
plaisant, c'est bien paisible," said this worthy man, with whom I had
some conversation; and pleasant and peaceful is the place indeed, though
the former of these epithets may suggest an element of gaiety in which
Aigues-Mortes is deficient. The sand, the salt, the dull sea-view,
surround it with a bright, quiet melancholy. There are fifteen towers
and nine gates, five of which are on the southern side, overlooking the
water. I walked all round