he _chaussee_; and in the middle I see the little ochre-coloured trio
of apertures, which, in spite of its antiquity, looks bright and gay, as
everything must look in France of a fresh Sunday morning.

It is true that this was not exactly the appearance of the Roman
theatre, which lies on the other side of the town; a fact that did not
prevent me from making my way to it in less than five minutes, through a
succession of little streets concerning which I have no observations to
record. None of the Roman remains in the south of France are more
impressive than this stupendous fragment. An enormous mound rises above
the place, which was formerly occupied--I quote from Murray--first by a
citadel of the Romans, then by a castle of the princes of Nassau, razed
by Louis XIV. Facing this hill a mighty wall erects itself, thirty-six
metres high and composed of massive blocks of dark brown stone simply
laid one on the other; the whole naked, rugged

[Illustration: ORANGE--THE THEATRE.]

surface of which suggests a natural cliff (say of the Vaucluse order)
rather than an effort of human or even of Roman labour. It is the
biggest thing at Orange--it is bigger than all Orange put together--and
its permanent massiveness makes light of the shrunken city. The face it
presents to the town--the top of it garnished with two rows of brackets
perforated with holes to receive the staves of the _velarium_--bears the
traces of more than one tier of ornamental arches; though how these flat
arches were applied, or incrusted, upon the wall, I do not profess to
explain. You pass through a diminutive postern--which seems in
proportion about as high as the entrance of a rabbit-hutch--into the
lodge of the custodian, who introduces you to the interior of the
theatre. Here the mass of the hill affronts you, which the ingenious
Romans treated simply as the material of their auditorium. They inserted
their stone seats, in a semicircle, in the slope of the hill, and
planted their colossal wall opposite to it. This wall, from the inside,
is, if possible, even more imposing. It formed the back of the stage,
the permanent scene, and its enormous face was coated with marble. It
contains three doors, the middle one being the highest and having above
it, far aloft, a deep niche apparently intended for an imperial statue.
A few of the benches remain on the hillside, which, however, is mainly a
confusion of fragments. There is part of a corridor built into the