looked unnaturally, almost
wickedly, blue. It was a glimpse which has left a picture in my mind:
the little closed houses, the place empty and soundless in the autumn
dusk but for the noise of waters, and in the middle, amid the blackness
of the shade, the gleam of the swift, strange tide. At the station every
one was talking of the inundation being in many places an accomplished
fact, and, in particular, of the condition of the Durance at some point
that I have forgotten. At Avignon, an hour later, I found the water in
some of the streets. The sky cleared in the evening, the moon lighted up
the submerged suburbs, and the population again collected in the high
places to enjoy the spectacle. It exhibited a certain sameness, however,
and by nine o'clock there was considerable animation in the Place
Crillon, where there is nothing to be seen but the front of the theatre
and of several cafes--in addition indeed to a statue of this celebrated
brave, whose valour redeemed some of the numerous military disasters of
the reign of Louis XV. The next morning the lower quarters of the town
were in a pitiful state: the situation seemed to me odious. To express
my disapproval of it I lost no time in taking the train to Orange,
which, with its other attractions, had the merit of not being seated on
the Rhone. It was destiny to move northward; but even if I had been at
liberty to follow a less unnatural course I should not then have
undertaken it, inasmuch as the railway between Avignon and Marseilles
was credibly reported to be (in places) under water. This was the case
with almost everything but the line itself on the way to Orange. The day
proved splendid, and its brilliancy only lighted up the desolation.
Farmhouses and cottages were up to their middle in the yellow liquidity;
haystacks looked like dull little islands; windows and doors gaped open,
without faces; and interruption and flight were represented in the
scene. It was brought home to me that the _populations rurales_ have
many different ways of suffering, and my heart glowed with a grateful
sense of cockneyism. It was under the influence of this emotion that I
alighted at Orange to visit a collection of eminently civil monuments.
The collection consists of but two objects, but these objects are so
fine that I will let the word pass. One of them is a triumphal arch,
supposedly of the period of Marcus Aurelius; the other is a fragment,
magnificent in its ruin, of a Roman the