no
profanation in the fact that by day it is open to the good people of
Arles, who use it to pass, by no means in great numbers, from one part
of the town to the other; treading the old marble floor and brushing, if
need be, the empty benches. This familiarity does not kill the place
again; it makes it, on the contrary, live a little--makes the present
and the past touch each other.

[Illustration]

Chapter xxxi

[Arles: the Museum]

The third lion of Arles has nothing to do with the ancient world, but
only with the old one. The church of Saint Trophimus, whose wonderful
romanesque porch is the principal ornament of the principal _place_--a
_place_ otherwise distinguished by the presence of a slim and tapering
obelisk in the middle, as well as by that of the hotel de ville and the
museum--the interesting church of Saint Trophimus swears a little, as
the French say, with the peculiar character of Arles. It is very
remarkable, but I would rather it were in another place. Arles is
delightfully pagan, and Saint Trophimus, with its apostolic sculptures,
is rather a false note. These sculptures are equally remarkable for
their primitive vigour and for the perfect preservation in which they
have come down to us. The deep recess of a round-arched porch of the
twelfth century is covered with quaint figures which have not lost a
nose or a finger. An angular Byzantine-looking Christ sits in a
diamond-shaped frame at the summit of the arch, surrounded by little
angels, by great apostles, by winged beasts, by a hundred sacred symbols
and grotesque ornaments. It is a dense embroidery of sculpture, black
with time, but as uninjured as if it had been kept under glass. One good
mark for the French Revolution! Of the interior of the church, which has
a nave of the twelfth century and a choir three hundred years more
recent, I chiefly remember the odd feature that the romanesque aisles
are so narrow that you literally--or almost--squeeze through them. You
do so with some eagerness, for your natural purpose is to pass out to
the cloister. This cloister, as distinguished and as perfect as the
porch, has a great deal of charm. Its four sides, which are not of the
same period (the earliest and best are of the twelfth century), have an
elaborate arcade, supported on delicate pairs of columns, the capitals
of which show an extraordinary variety of device and ornament. At the
corners of the quadrangle these columns take the form of