ps makes access impossible, or at least
unlawful. Aigues-Mortes, however, has its citadel, an immense tower,
larger than any of the others, a little detached

[Illustration: AIGUES-MORTES]

and standing at the north-west angle of the town. I called upon the
_casernier_--the custodian of the walls--and in his absence I was
conducted through this big Tour de Constance by his wife, a very mild,
meek woman, yellow with the traces of fever and ague--a scourge which,
as might be expected in a town whose name denotes "dead waters," enters
freely at the nine gates. The Tour de Constance is of extraordinary
girth and solidity, divided into three superposed circular chambers,
with very fine vaults, which are lighted by embrasures of prodigious
depth, converging to windows little larger than loopholes. The place
served for years as a prison to many of the Protestants of the south
whom the revocation of the Edict of Nantes had exposed to atrocious
penalties, and the annals of these dreadful chambers in the first half
of the last century were written in tears and blood. Some of the
recorded cases of long confinement there make one marvel afresh at what
man has inflicted and endured. In a country in which a policy of
extermination was to be put into practice this horrible tower was an
obvious resource. From the battlements at the top, which is surmounted
by an old disused lighthouse, you see the little compact rectangular
town, which looks hardly bigger than a garden-patch, mapped out beneath
you, and follow the plain configuration of its defences. You take
possession of it, and you feel that you will remember it always.

[Illustration]

Chapter xxviii

[Nimes]

After this I was free to look about me at Nimes, and I did so with such
attention as the place appeared to require. At the risk of seeming too
easily and too frequently disappointed, I will say that it required
rather less than I had been prepared to give. It is a town of three or
four fine features rather than a town with, as I may say, a general
figure. In general Nimes is poor; its only treasures are its Roman
remains, which are of the first order. The new French fashions prevail
in many of its streets; the old houses are paltry, and the good houses
are new; while beside my hotel rose a big spick-and-span church, which
had the oddest air of having been intended for Brooklyn or Cleveland. It
is true that this church looked out on a square completely French--a