I think it is, I can hardly tell the reason why.
The straight-nosed Arlesiennes account for it in some degree; and the
remainder may be charged to the ruins of the arena and the theatre.
Beyond this, I remember with affection the ill-proportioned little Place
des Hommes; not at all monumental, and given over to puddles and to
shabby cafes. I recall with tenderness the tortuous and featureless
streets, which looked liked the streets of a village and were paved with
villainous little sharp stones, making all exercise penitential.
Consecrated by association is even a tiresome walk that I took the
evening I arrived, with the purpose of obtaining a view of the Rhone. I
had been to Arles before, years ago, and it seemed to me that I
remembered finding on the banks of the stream some sort of picture. I
think that on the evening on which I speak there was a watery moon,
which it seemed to me would light up the past as well as the present.
But I found no picture, and I scarcely found the Rhone at all. I lost my
way, and there was not a creature in the streets to whom I could appeal.
Nothing could be more provincial than the situation of Arles at ten
o'clock at night. At last I arrived at a kind of embankment where I
could see the great mud-coloured stream slipping along in the soundless
darkness. It had come on to rain, I know not what had happened to the
moon, and the whole place was anything but gay. It was not what I had
looked for; what I had looked for was in the irrecoverable past. I
groped my way back to the inn over the infernal _cailloux_, feeling like
a discomfited Dogberry. I remember now that this hotel was the one
(whichever that may be) which has the fragment of a Gallo-Roman portico
inserted into one of its angles. I had chosen it for the sake of this
exceptional ornament. It was damp and dark, and the floors felt gritty
to the feet; it was an establishment at which the dreadful _gras-double_
might have appeared at the table d'hote, as it had done at Narbonne.
Nevertheless I was glad to get back to it; and nevertheless too--and
this is the moral of my simple anecdote--my pointless little walk (I
don't speak of the pavement) suffuses itself, as I look back upon it,
with a romantic tone. And in relation to the inn I suppose I had better
mention that I am well aware of the inconsistency of a person who
dislikes the modern caravansary and yet grumbles when he finds a hotel
of the superannuated sort. One ought to choose,