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All the shops at Arles had curtains at the doors, a peculiarity which we had not previously observed in the towns of France. We went into a handsome church, where we found a few people, principally beggars, at prayers, and leaving a small donation in the poor-box, beguiled the time by walking and sitting in the boulevard of the town.
Ruins, said to be those of the palace of Constantine, were pointed out to us, as well as fragments of a forum and baths. Arles is certainly one of the most interesting towns I have ever seen, whether viewed as a place remarkable for the objects of antiquity it contains, or for the primitive manners of its inhabitants and its picturesque appearance.
Gervase of Tilbury, marshal of the kingdom of Arles, well known in every great town of Italy and Sicily, afterwards the writer of Otia Imperialia for the Emperor Otto IV., wrote a book of anecdotes, now lost, for the younger King Henry.
Description of Paris Departure by the Diligence The Country The Vineyards Hotels and fare Arrival at Lyons Description of the City Departure in the Steam-boat for Arles Descent of the Rhône Beauty and Variety of the Scenery Confusion on disembarking at Beaucaire A Passenger Drowned Arrival at Arles Description of the Town Embarkation in the Steamer for Marseilles Entrance into the Mediterranean Picturesque approach to Marseilles Arrival in the Harbour Description of Marseilles Observations upon the Journey through France by Ladies.
In everything except the husband involved, she was marrying excellently, and so all Arles that night was ornamented with flags and banners and chaplets and bright hangings and flaring lamps and torches, and throughout Provence there was festivity of every sort, and the Princess had great honor and applause. But in the darkness of Upper Morven they had happiness, no matter for how brief a while.
She saw him in the ruelle of Arles, with the light from the shuttered window falling on him in bars of yellow and black, fighting with Berserk fury against the bare knife of the Provençal youth. Here he was primitive man unchained a Rodin figure with muscles knotted in a riot of hot-blooded passion. He was battling for her. No, not for her, but for the duty that a man owes to womankind.
The great seaport described by Greek historians six centuries before our own era, the splendid capital of Narbonese Gaul, rival of the Roman Nimes and of the Greek Arles, is now as dull a provincial town as any throughout France. Invasions, sieges, plagues, incendiaries, most of all religious persecutions, ruined the mediaeval Narbonne.
I have read somewhere, however, that Tarascon is supposed to produce handsome men, as Arles is known to deal in handsome women. It may be that I should have found the Tarasconnais very fine fellows, if I had en- countered enough specimens to justify an induction. But there were very few males in the streets, and the place presented no appearance of activity.
At Arles, near the river, is a palace of Constantine the Great, now turned into cottages and sheds, and in a very ruinous condition, but sufficient of it is preserved to show what a falling off in architecture had ensued through the anarchy of rising and sinking emperors, and the destruction of the great families of the Patriciate.
There stands the silent skeleton, however, as impressive by what it leaves you to guess and wonder about as by what it tells you. It has not the sweetness, the softness of melancholy, of the theater at Arles; but it is more extraordinary, and one can imagine only tremendous tragedies being enacted there "Presenting Thebes' or Pelops' line."
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