lly true of
the external walls, with their arches, pillars, cornices. I must add
that one should not speak of preservation, in regard to the arena at
Nimes, without speaking also of repair. After the great ruin ceased to
be despoiled it began to be protected, and most of its wounds have been
dressed with new material. These matters concern the archaeologist; and I
felt here, as I felt afterwards at Arles, that one of the profane, in
the presence of such a monument, can only admire and hold his tongue.
The great impression, on the whole, is an impression of wonder that so
much should have survived. What remains at Nimes, after all dilapidation
is estimated, is astounding. I spent an hour in the Arenes on that same
sweet Sunday morning, as I came back from the Roman baths, and saw that
the corridors, the vaults, the staircases, the external casing, are
still virtually there. Many of these parts are wanting in the Colosseum,
whose sublimity of size, however, can afford to dispense with detail.
The seats at Nimes, like those at Verona, have been largely renewed; not
that this mattered much, as I lounged on the cool surface of one of them
and admired the mighty concavity of the place and the elliptical
sky-line, broken by uneven blocks and forming the rim of the monstrous
cup--a cup that had been filled with horrors. And yet I made my
reflections: I said to myself that though a Roman arena is one of the
most impressive of the works of man, it has a touch of that same
stupidity which I ventured to discover in the Pont du Gard. It is
brutal; it is monotonous; it is not at all exquisite. The Arenes at
Nimes were arranged for a bull-fight--a form of recreation that, as I
was informed, is much _dans les habitudes Nimoises_, and very common
throughout Provence, where (still according to my information) it is the
usual pastime of a Sunday afternoon. At Arles and Nimes it has a
characteristic setting, but in the villages the patrons of the game make
a circle of carts and barrels, on which the spectators perch themselves.
I was surprised at the prevalence in mild Provence of the Iberian vice,
and hardly know whether it makes the custom more respectable that at
Nimes and Arles the thing is shabbily and imperfectly done. The bulls
are rarely killed, and indeed often are bulls only in the Irish sense of
the term--being domestic and motherly cows. Such an entertainment of
course does not supply to the arena that element of the exquisite wh