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As Louis traversed his kingdom on his way to Aigues-Mortes, where the army of the crusaders was to embark, he was everywhere hailed by the benedictions of his people, and gratified by hearing their ardent prayers for the success of his arms. The clergy and the faithful, assembled in the churches, prayed for the King and his children and all that should follow him.
Within a certain distance of Aigues-Mortes they give place to wide salt-marshes, traversed by two canals; and over this expanse the train rumbles slowly upon a narrow causeway, failing for some time, though you know you are near the object of your curiosity, to bring you to sight of anything but the horizon.
When in after-life Charles had received from the Pope the Imperial Crown, and when, on his return, he put into Aigues-Mortes in Doria's galley, he there met with Francis, who, in a burst to confidence, advised the Cæsar never to part with his admiral.
Within a certain distance of Aigues-Mortes they give place to wide salt-marshes, traversed by two canals; and over this expanse the train rumbles slowly upon a narrow causeway, failing for some time, though you know you are near the object of your curiosity, to bring you to sight of anything but the horizon.
Louis turned the rock into a mere stronghold, strengthened it, built new towers, and curtained them into that unsurpassable masonry of the central Middle Ages which you may yet admire in Aigues-Mortes and in Carnarvon.
Indeed, it is even more like an image and less like a reality than Carcassonne; for by position and prospect it seems even more detached from the life of the present day. It is true that Aigues-Mortes does a little business; it sees certain bags of salt piled into barges which stand in a canal beside it, and which carry their cargo into actual places.
On this absolute level, covered with coarse grass, Aigues-Mortes presents quite the appearance of the walled town that a school-boy draws upon his slate, or that we see in the background of early Flemish pictures, a simple parallelogram, of a contour almost absurdly bare, broken at intervals by angular towers and square holes.
No such transformation was near taking place in the case of the invasions of the Saracens in Southern Gaul; they continued to infest Aquitania, Septimania, and Provence; their robber-hordes appeared frequently on the coasts of the Mediterranean and the banks of the Rhone, at Aigues-Mortes, at Marseilles, at Arles, and in Camargue; they sometimes penetrated into Dauphine, Rouergue, Limousin, and Saintonge.
I remember saying to myself at this moment that it would be a beautiful evening to walk round the walls of Avignon the remarkable walls which challenge comparison with those of Carcassonne and Aigues-Mortes, and which it was my duty, as an observer of the picturesque, to examine with some attention. Presenting themselves to that silver sheen, they could not fail to be impressive.
When Louis arrived at Aigues-Mortes, he found neither the Genoese fleet nor the principal nobles who were to embark with him; the ambassadors of Palæologus were the only persons who did not cause themselves to be waited for; for a great dread of the crusade was entertained at Constantinople, and this fear was more active than the enthusiasm of the crusaders.
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