CHAPTER XIITARASCON

"A l'entrada del tems clar, eyaPer joya recommençar, eya,E per jelos irritar, eya,Vol la regina mostrarQ'el' est si amoroza,Alavi, alavia, jelosLaissaz nos, laissaz nosBallar entre nos, entre nos."

"A l'entrada del tems clar, eya

Per joya recommençar, eya,

E per jelos irritar, eya,

Vol la regina mostrar

Q'el' est si amoroza,

Alavi, alavia, jelos

Laissaz nos, laissaz nos

Ballar entre nos, entre nos."

("At the beginning of the bright season, eya,In order to begin again joy, eya,And to irritate the jealous, eya,The queen resolves to show how amorous she is,Away, away, ye jealous,Let us, let us dance by ourselves, by ourselves.")

("At the beginning of the bright season, eya,

In order to begin again joy, eya,

And to irritate the jealous, eya,

The queen resolves to show how amorous she is,

Away, away, ye jealous,

Let us, let us dance by ourselves, by ourselves.")

"Amo de longo renadivo,Amo jouiouso e fièro a vivo,Qu'endibes dins lou brut dóu Rose e dóu Rousau!Amo di séuvo armouniousoE di calanco souleiouso,De la patrio amo piouso,T'apelle! encarno-te dins mi vers prouvençau!""Calendau"—Mistral.

"Amo de longo renadivo,

Amo jouiouso e fièro a vivo,

Qu'endibes dins lou brut dóu Rose e dóu Rousau!

Amo di séuvo armouniouso

E di calanco souleiouso,

De la patrio amo piouso,

T'apelle! encarno-te dins mi vers prouvençau!"

"Calendau"—Mistral.

("Soul of my country ever new,Joyous and fiery, gallant, true,Who laughest in the waves of the Rhone,Upstirred by Rousau on his throne,Soul of the pine's wood harmony,And of each sun-creek of the sea;Soul of my Fatherland's dear shrine,Inspire Provençal verses mine.")Translation by Duncan Craig.

("Soul of my country ever new,

Joyous and fiery, gallant, true,

Who laughest in the waves of the Rhone,

Upstirred by Rousau on his throne,

Soul of the pine's wood harmony,

And of each sun-creek of the sea;

Soul of my Fatherland's dear shrine,

Inspire Provençal verses mine.")

Translation by Duncan Craig.

CHAPTER XII

TARASCON

"You seem to have found a very interesting book," said Barbara, with an amused smile, to which I had grown accustomed.

"You have been poring over it for half an hour. I suppose it's poetry," Barbara went on, with philosophical but not at all disdainful aloofness from that particular form of human aberration.

"No—o; not conventionally speaking, poetry."

In truth it was the local time-table.

But it was poetry after all. Consider the list of names: Avignon, Tarascon, Beaucaire, Arles, Nimes, Montpellier, Béziers, Carcassonne, Albi, Aigues Mortes, Carpentras, Cabestaing, Uzès, Vaucluse, L'Isle sur Sorgue, Aix-en-Provence—all printed irreverently in heartless columns, as if they were not worth mentioning except for their relation to time and tide.

"Now which of all these desecrated shrines of history shall we go to?"

Barbara said they were one and all Greek to her at present, and she would be happy with any of them.

"Suppose we just drift along this line—this bejewelled line—and let things happen to the south-east, with only a few tooth-brushes in a hand-bag?"

Barbara was perfectly willing, but said shemusttake a night-gown and a comb as well.

It was a glorious morning when the train puffed out of the station at Avignon and took a sharp swerve in order to give us a fine last view of that "little city of colossal aspect," as Victor Hugo calls it. Always that dominating palace on the height stretching long and massive across the hillside. The high mountains to the south-east stood entrancingly blue, Mont Ventoux looking as heavenly and innocent as if the bare thought of harbouring—much more of deliberately producing a mistral were a baseness of which she was utterly incapable. She would hesitate at so much as a stiff breeze! Yet we had caught her in the act but yesterday and had left behind in our boxes damning proof of her guilt in the remnants of two once quite respectable hats which herprotégéhad playfully divided into segments as we crossed the street to post our letters.

TARASCON FROM BEAUCAIRE, SHOWING KING RENÉ'S CASTLE.By E. M. Synge.

"Let us go to Tarascon!"

Barbara jumped at it, and we centred our hopes andimaginings on that most Provençal of Provençal cities as the train puffed along on its leisurely way.

The towers of Chateau Renard in the middle distance have a romantic, mysterious effect, standing as they do on a rocky little hill just far enough away to look strangely mysterious, with the soft bloom of the spaces and the peaked ranges behind it. The station of Barbentane is on the line, but we did not succeed in making out the village on the hill-top.

Ardouin-Dumazet writes:—

"Les cultures enveloppent jusqu'au Rhone le petit massif sur lequel se dresse la haute Tour de Barbentane."

This gives one at once the character of the country. Further on we come to La Montagnette de Tarascon, which "contrasts its bare slopes with the opulent plain. It is like an island rising out of verdure—the white calcined rock takes in an amusing fashion, the airs of a chain of rocky mountains. The Montagnette is a miniature of the Alpilles, those miniature Alps."

The Alpilles—strange little knobbly mountains—grow into greater prominence as we move eastward and the outline shows itself more than ever eccentric and altogether out of fashion, as one imagines fashion among mountains.

They have a style of their own, a marked personality that is very fascinating. They were yet to explore, with their memories of the campaign of Marius, their Courts of Love, their rock-hewn city of Les Baux, their Trou d'Enfer, their haunts of the famous witch Tavèn and her demon-companies. We had half a mind to divert from our route at once and take the little local train up into the heart of the range, but not liking to think ourselves lacking in decision of character, we nailed our colours to the mast, and resolved to see Tarascon first.

The famous town lies charmingly on the river-side; a mass of roofs and towers, with its castle of King René—that most delightful and lively of monarchs; a real drawing-master castle, absurdly picturesque, with two vast round machicolated towers (very troublesome to shade), and a frowning entrance between them. (Surely all drawing-masters have taken this castle as their model since time began!) On the landward side is a dry moat and a stretch of grass and weeds (the weeds worked in with a sharp professional touch in the foreground). Just across the Rhone the vast bridge, which Tartarin thought too long and slender, leads to the town and high up on the hill, proud and desolate, the rival castle of Beaucaire.

"Embarras de Beaucaire!"

Ardouin-Dumazet says that in his childhood his family had a neighbour, a good woman, whose exclamation on the smallest obstacle was invariably "Embarras de Beaucaire!" And that, he adds, "gave us a grand idea of the encumbered state of this famous town."

"Si vous aviez vu Beaucaire pendant la foire!"

As we looked across that stupendous bridge, the phrase brought with it the picture of a mass of booths along the quay, shipping and flags and merchandise; and crowds in holiday costumes of every colour, for people flocked from all countries to buy and sell at the great fair "celebrated even beyond the Syrian deserts."

"Lougres difformes,Galéaces énormes,Vaisseaux de toutes formes...."

"Lougres difformes,

Galéaces énormes,

Vaisseaux de toutes formes...."

Dumazet records a conversation he had with one old man who remembered the great fair in his childhood.

"Then one should see Beaucaire!"

He described the coming of hundreds of ships, carryingeach a whole stable full of horses for towing up the river on the return journey; and how the great canal brought boats from Aigues Mortes and Albi, and the sea brought Turks, Algerians, Greeks, Italians, Spaniards, with silk, pearls, figs, and a thousand objects of merchandise. Then the good people of Beaucaire were inundated with heretics and pagans. When there were disputes between the merchants, a tribunal on the spot settled the matter. All was arranged in departments: silks, wools, cottons, whole streets of booths devoted to jewellery, spices, coffee, and so forth. In the evening the company cooked their dinners between stones on the shores of the river; "and one shouted and one laughed, and the physicians and the acrobats and the bear-tamers called to the crowd with loud cries amid the noise of cymbals and tambourines. Fine ladies and gentlemen came from long distances to see all that!"

We heave a sigh of regret at the passing away of so many bright and cheering things, such as fairs and picturesque shipping, and turn to wander, as the fancy takes us, about the pleasant streets of Tarascon, visiting the tomb of St. Martha, but, through misdirection, missing the Tarasque. However, we knew all about his very singular personal appearance from descriptions and drawings. Tarascon is now probably more associated with Tartarin in our minds than with St. Martha, but it is a beautiful legend of the gentle saint who by sheer force of lovingness was able to change the ravaging Tarasque—a creature certainly born with no hereditary turn for polite usages—into a pleasant, regenerate animal of gentlemanly manners. Along the bright ways of the city, as the legend goes, the procession moved: a crowd of excited people, a beautiful woman with a light playing round her head, leading by a silken cord the reformed monster who ambles after her as quietly as if he were apet-lamb: this huge hybrid of a creature, with the body of an alligator, the legs of a grand-piano, the head of a dragon, and a "floreat tail" of heraldic design which he flourishes affably in response to the plaudits of the multitude.

And never again did he ravage the country round Tarascon or carry off so much as a single babe, after St. Martha had pointed out to him, with her usual sweet reasonableness, how wrong-headed and how essentially immoral such conduct had been.

It is disappointing to be told by an innovating savant that this sweet lady was not St. Martha at all, but merely the Christianised form of the ancient Phœnician goddess Martis, the patroness of sailors, who had for her symbols a ship and a dragon. Whatisone to be allowed to believe?

The Phœnicians, one has to admit, plied a busy trade along these coasts. Their language has left traces in the Provençal dialects, and images have been found at Marseilles of Melkarth and Melita, or Hercules and Venus, known in the Bible as Baal and Ashtaroth. There has even been discovered a tariff for sacrifices in the temple of Baal, giving a list of dues legally established for the payments of the priests.

(Barbara was utterly confounded to find these distinctly Biblical deities figuring so far from home.)

The tariff is a long affair, and goes into all possible details. But the following extract maybe worth quoting:—

"For an entire ox, the ordinary sacrifice, the priests are to receive 10 shekels. At the sacrifice, in addition, 300 shekels of flesh," and so on.

But it does not follow, from all this, that St. Martha did not subdue the Tarasque. Moreover, Tarasques are being subdued every day by Marthas not by any means arrived at saintship. The old legend, be its origin Christian, Phœnician, Celtic or classic, reads almost likea parable by which to convey the old truth that love and kindness have power to subdue evil which force has failed to overcome.

St. Martha's tomb and shrine are in the church dedicated to her at Tarascon, and, until lately, there were yearly processions through the city, in which the gigantic creature was paraded in triumph, the legs of the man inside being ingeniously "dissimulated by a band of stuff."

"... les porteurs dansent et cabriolent de façon à faire agiter le queue et a renverser les curieux trop voisins. (Pour queue une poutre droite.)"

The Tarasque is furious on the second Sunday after Pentecost. But later, on the day of St. Martha, he passes, gentle as a lamb, led by a young girl. The man inside, with his "dissimulated legs," curvets and gambols amiably. And the people sing the "Lagagdigadeu," a song invented, it is said, by King René himself, inspired perhaps by the tumult of thefêtepassing his castle down by the Rhone. Or just the swish of the waters as they sweep past the walls of the donjon might easily set fancies ringing in a head like King René's, who saw things as they are, with the song and the radiance in them.

And the people went following the procession, shouting:—

"Lagagdigadeu!La Tarasco!LagagdigadeuLa Tarasco!De Casteu!Laissas la passa,La vieio masco!Laissas la passa—Che vai dansa...."

"Lagagdigadeu!

La Tarasco!

Lagagdigadeu

La Tarasco!

De Casteu!

Laissas la passa,

La vieio masco!

Laissas la passa—

Che vai dansa...."

And the Tarasque wags his tail (a straight beam, be it remembered) and overturns some of the crowd. And the people are delighted with the prowess of their beast. If one is injured they cry:

"A qua ben fe, la tarascoa rou un bré" ("Well done, the tarasque has broken his arm").

And the clumsy procession moves away and the crowds sing and shout: "Voulen mai nostro tarasco" ("We wish again for our tarasque"). And so they let off any amount of superfluous energy.

THE CHÂTEAU OF KING RENÉ, TARASCON.By Joseph Pennell.

It is a subject for reflection among sociologists whether the dying out of pageants and dancing, festivals of harvest and seed-time—all the natural expressions of human joy—does not constitute a serious danger to the modern state. For either that joy will find some less healthy kind of expression or it will be killed altogether; and in that casethe race, as a race, must be killed also, as a flower deprived of the sunshine and the airs of heaven. It is not joy, but the lack of it that drives a nation mad!

So much for Puritanism!

No one can be in the South, above all in Provence, knowing of its ancient festivals, its music, its farandoles and Saracenic dances, and fail to be startled into new realisation of this element that has passed out of our life, the menace that lies in the pervading dullness, that benumbed worship of sorrow, of "work" and "duty" without understanding and without freshness, that absence of fantasy and outcry that binds the modern world in a terrible and unnatural silence. Of what avail is it that the people are law-abiding at the cost of the very spring and essence of being? There is a Nemesis that follows this sort of virtue: and it visits the virtues of the fathers upon the children for many a hapless generation. There is a curious example of this in the experience of the Society of Friends who took upon themselves to banish colour and music from their lives, for righteousness' sake, and have now succeeded—according to the testimony of one of their number—in also destroying all response to those artistic appeals, so that whole realms of being are shut off from the children of a race that was afraid to accept their complete inheritance as human beings. It is to be hoped that the heart too has been atrophied, for it is difficult to imagine a hotter hell than that must be for a man or woman capable of the full tide of emotional life and yet unable to find expression for it in heaven or earth!

For the vast majority of mankind there are now no recurrent pleasures worthy of the name, no balance to the dead weight of mere toil andennui, no taste of that mysterious magnetism that dwells in throngs bent on the same object, inspired by the same joyous idea. With theworld of to-day has come a dulling of the aspect of things, a loss ofélanand fire; a perilous deprivation of the primitive form of artistic outpouring. And it is more than doubtful whether mankind can exist without it. Is there indeed any object in trying that dangerous experiment?

Why are the majority of moralists, who are so much concerned for the "good of humanity," so terrified at the sight of humanity a little happy and spontaneous?

It is at Tarascon, for some unknown Provençal reason, that the famous Arles sausages are made. We wondered if the accomplished city also provided Arles with its beautiful women.

There is some difficulty in persuading oneself of the great antiquity of the cheerful, sleepy little town. It looks indeed by no means new, but the wear and tear seems rather that of the life of to-day than of centuries ago. Yet Strabo (says Paul Mariéton) mentions ταραςκον as much frequented in his time. Moreover, at Beaucaire, just across the Rhone, there is a quarter calledRouanesse, which is said to be a corruption ofRhodanusia, an ancient Greek colony.

For some reason or other we happened, in our wanderings, to return and return again to the place till at last all strangeness seemed to depart from it. It was beginning to have for us more or less the aspect that it probably had for the natives, allowing, of course, always for the effect upon them of never having seen much besides the sunny main street and broad square, with their hotels and homely houses, and the plane-trees whose thin shade is grateful even on a November morning. To see a place too much is never to see it at all.

We grew familiar even with the faces of the people as they came and went along the ample pavement which sets back the houses pleasantly far from the road.

In the middle of this spreading, easy-going, desultory main street a row of carriages for hire stand waiting under a few small trees for the chance traveller who descends to see the sights of Tarascon between trains.

"Voulez-vous une voiture, Mesdames, pour voir la ville? l'Église de Ste. Marthe, le Château du Roi René, la tarasque, et Beaucaire; tout dans une heure et quart, ou vingt minutes sans Beaucaire."

We made this classic round on our first visit, including Beaucaire, and a wonderful circlet of picturesque mediævalism it is; but afterwards we preferred to find our own way; to wander through the great stone gate on the left and glance or saunter down dozens of alluring byways, where one would come upon fine old doors, carved lintels, canopies, shrines at the street corners, flowers on the window-sills, the quick perspective of street line dark against the sky, and everywhere the sharp lights and shadows of the south.

Sometimes, indeed, we would take a drive if only to please the good-natured "Tartarins" who drove the carriages. Their black eyes and bronzed skin were very impressive at first, but when the effect of these had begun to wear off, we realised that close resemblance to the tenor of an opera did not involve anything dramatic in type of character. They were quiet, industrious, polite fellows, earning their meagre living by a somewhat precarious industry. But of that presently.

Our particular Tartarin was somewhat shocked that we had not yet seen the tarasque, so there was nothing for it but to set forth in quest of the monster.

There is in the museum at Avignon a strange, uncanny beast carved in stone which is called the tarasque, butthe effigy that is, or used to be, carried round the town at Tarascon is quite a young and giddy creature, built of painted wood, and passes its existence during the intervals of public function in a sort of large stable which is kept under lock and key.

We were driven solemnly through the narrow streets, till at length the fly drew up and we alighted at a stately portal, where, after a few moments of waiting, the custodian appeared with his keys, and then back the doors scrooped on their hinges.

Laughter was out of keeping with the occasion; our poorcocherwould have been cut to the heart, but it was hard work to behave decorously. Out of an old-Dutch-master gloom of background loomed forth a grotesquely terrible monster, whose proper sphere was certainly the pantomime. Enormous red-rimmed eyes stared ferociously at the intruders from a round, cat-like face rayed with bristling white whiskers. There was also a touch of hippopotamus in the cast of countenance, only it lacked the sweeter expression of that more philosophic beast. The creature had evidently had a new coat of paint—black with red facings—for the huge body was beautifully glossy.

"La voilà, la tarasque!" said our coachman, with pardonable pride.

We hesitated in our comments. Barbara, rather from lack of familiarity with thenuancesof the language than from any want of frankness, murmured something about "très jolie"; and Tartarin said, "En effet, Madame, mais on devait la voir quand on fait le tour de la ville au jour de fête, mais c'est épatant!"

"Je le crois bien," I murmured appreciatively.

Tartarin suggested that we might like to see the rest of the animal before leaving, and so we made the round (he extended far into the depths of his gloomy dwelling),admiring the pose and the noble proportions of the creature—rather like an old-fashioned locomotive—and the formidable nature of the tail. Then we felt that without indiscretion we might depart. As we drove off we caught a last glimpse of that unspeakably ridiculous beast who stood glaring at nothing in the darkness, silent and steadily ferocious to the last. Then the great doors were swung together and the pride of Tarascon was hidden from our view.

One could but laugh, and yet that absurd effigy was the representative of the beginnings of our history as a race!

The Christian version of the story is of yesterday: the arrival of the saints on the shores of pagan Gaul and the conversion of Tarascon to the new faith by St. Martha. Some trace the legend to Phœnician sources, as has been already mentioned; more frequently the animal is regarded as a Celtic deity or demon, and there are stories of Hercules and a giant named Taras or Tauriskos: the classic form of the tradition. In any case it belongs to the Twilight of the Gods, and if one could really trace the family tree of that mongrel monster to its roots one would possibly acquire a good deal of knowledge that would startle archæologists.

It was not till late in the fifteenth century, however, that thefêteof the tarasque was instituted by King René, that most artistic of monarchs, who loved to see his people gay and happy; so it was somewhat later than the real troubadour days that our cat-hippopotamus began to enjoy a sort of established position; which shows that no one need despair of appreciation if only he will wait long enough.

We visited more than once the shrine of the gentle conqueror of the tarasque: standing—it was startling to remember—on the very spot where Clovis, King of theFranks, once stood, when newly converted to Christianity by his saintly wife Clothilde. The shrine is in a quiet, half-subterranean chapel in the church of her name. The tomb is under a low vault and the marble figure of the saint rests on the big stone slab with joined hands and a look of deep peace on her beautiful face. Certainly it is the face of a woman who might win over ravaging monsters to sweetness and light. Above the tomb is the inscription:

Solicita non turbima.

Broad steps flecked with colour from the stained-glass window opposite lead down to the dim little crypt where she sleeps, and one hanging lamp burns in the twilight and the silence which seems too deep and too far below the surface of the life of the moment to be disturbed by the irrelevant steps and voices of visitors, or by the troops of little girls who come under the care of a nun to visit the shrine.

The regions down by the Castle of King René are delightful to loiter in on a warm day. Of vast size and solidity, this fourteenth-century fortress is full of the atmosphere of romance. The southern wall plunges sheer into the Rhone; at right angles to this river front stretches the mass of the building; tower and barbican and battlement in splendid array, the dry moat and the road running alongside.

What observant traveller passing at the foot of some ancient tower has not noticed the magical aspect of its line of luminous contact with the fields of the air?

ENTRANCE TO KING RENÉ'S CASTLE, TARASCONBy E. M. Synge.

The immense block of masonry from its roots in the soil to its battlements in the sky stands clear against themysterious spaces, and presently it seems to stir and lean forward, as if it might fall or drift away in emulation of some free-born cloud that swims over its head. It is delightful to loiter in the road by the moat just below the hillock that rises to the river-bank and opposite the last of the towers, which stands at the angle of the castle between land and water. At this spot nothing can be seen of hill and river, only the tower and sky. They meet at the magic line—inexorable stone and quivering ether; substance enthralled and infinity in motion!

Floods of light from the steady tumult of the waters are reflected upon the cream-white walls and fill the whole atmosphere. It seems to tremble against the tower as one watches. And one knows that more obviously than usual one stands at the gate of the Eternal Mystery.

At the top of the hillock the river bursts into view, incredibly broad, hurrying, joyous, with Beaucaire on its opposite shore watched over by the ruined keep on the height: the scene of that most charming of old French romances, "Aucassin and Nicolette."

Just before the eye, a little below King René's Castle, is the famous bridge; it might be the bridge between this world and the next, between Good and Evil, between Heaven and Hell, so long it is. The great whisper of the tide is audible now to any one who elects to pause here in the sunshine and listen. There is a little hidden corner at the angle between the castle and a curtain of wall that meets it into which the water sweeping along the castle side is flung and repulsed with a great back-surge, meeting, as it returns, the edges of the main current and so falling into an immense conflict, fascinating to watch with its hundred whirlpools and hollows, swellings and eddies, and all the babbling andcomplaining of torrents detained in their ever-pressing errand. One could spend hours on the spot, and in adventurous moods might yield to the temptation of walking along the broad ledge of the curtain-wall till one stood just above the dizzy spot where the waters swing together and hurl themselves back with anger and trembling into the great stream.

"Mais radieuxEt ivre de votre lumière du Rhone,Haussez les verres à la cause vaincue."

"Mais radieux

Et ivre de votre lumière du Rhone,

Haussez les verres à la cause vaincue."

Truly the spot in which to drink to lost causes!

"Qui donc disait qu'il n'y a ni fraicheur ni ombre en Provence! Il semble y avoir là-bas dans le tortueux lointain de la rivière, un infini de rêverie, un paradis melancolique.... Je contemple la noble structure du Pont Géant, ces arcades silencieuses qui semblent dévorer de l'azur."Paul Mariéton.

Paul Mariéton.

CHAPTER XIII

THE PONT DU GARD

Barbara had heard of the approaching arrival of some cherished relations in Provence, and as blood is the thickest of all substances—impenetrable by the X or any other rays—it was arranged that she should meet them at an appointed rendezvous and stay with them till the common fluid that flowed in their veins had been satisfied. Then she was to return to continue our joint adventures.

So one fine day I found myself alone at Tarascon. It is supposed to be necessary to have some idea of what one is going to do with oneself in a place before electing to go there, but this I believe to be a superstition. It is only necessary to present oneself and destiny will do the rest.

Yet I had seen everything of note in Tarascon, and Tartarin was evidently concerned about me, for even he could suggest nothing further. We were discussing possibilities in a desultory manner when one of his professional brothers passed at a rattling pace with a fare evidently just returned from doing Tarascon in the twenty minutes—"sans Beaucaire."

The inmate of the fly was pale and lank, with colourless hair. I gave a start—my critical Englishman of the Pont du Gard! The hat went off, and I caught, as thecarriage rolled by, the simple words, "Wretched hole; not a decent——" but the movement of the fly bereft me of the end of the sentence.

"How far is it to the Pont du Gard?" I asked, with the swiftness of inspiration.

Tartarin's face brightened.

"Est-ce que Madame désire d'y aller?"

"Certainement."

Tartarin rubbed his hands. We could start after thedéjeunerand be back at the Hôtel de la Couronne in the late afternoon. It was about eighteen kilometres; a fine long job for Tartarin, who usually had to take his chance with the many other drivers for quite a short round of the town. The Pont du Gard being more usually visited from Nimes, the expedition was a windfall for our friend.

So we set off. The carriage would not open, and as the day was warm with the sun in spite of a cold wind, it was annoying to be shut into a stuffy little box which hid from view half the long stretches of country, and allowed one no time to dwell upon the features of the farms and villages, for one could look neither back nor forward. But there were, as a matter of fact, but few villages, only farms.Masis the Provençal for a farm, as any reader of Mistral will soon learn, for the poet is never tired of dwelling on the simple and, it would seem, exceptionally happy life that is passed in these homesteads; the owner a sort of benevolent patriarch directing the labours of sowing, sheep-shearing, the vintage, the olive gathering, the treading of the corn, and the harvest. It is Mistral's own father whom he describes so often with so much affection and reverence:—

THE PONT DU GARD.By E. M. Synge.

"When the old man came to die he said, 'Frederi que tems fai?' ('Frederick, what kind of weather is it?') I replied, 'Plou, moun paire.' 'Ah! ben, se plou fai ben tems per li semenco,' and rendered up his soul toGod.[16]You won't wonder," added the poet, at my writing in Mireille this verse—

"'Coume au mas, coume au tems deMoun Paire, ai! ai! ai!'"

"'Coume au mas, coume au tems de

Moun Paire, ai! ai! ai!'"

("As at a farm in the time of my father, Alas, alas, alas!")

The carriage soon swallowed the eighteen kilometres of level road, the country changing in character as we neared the banks of the Gard. Here began the great cliffs which had inspired the Romans with the truly Imperial idea of carrying water to Nimes across the river from height to height, for with all their engineering skill this great people did not know that water will rise to its own level.

The magnificent bridge came suddenly into view, startling in its forty-nine metres of solid grandeur. Three tiers of arches lifted themselves one above the other; the lowest series short and solid, the second more slender and taller, rising in its haughty Roman way to carry the third and most towering of all, at whose summit in the sky used to run the water which supplied the people of Nimes when they were Roman citizens. It was there on hot summer days that they revelled in their splendid baths (fed by the great aqueduct) which may still be seen in the public gardens, with cool open marble courts some eight or ten feet below the level of the soil, where stone Tritons and Neptunes kept watch over the waters that flowed refreshingly among the white columns, and lay green and still in little murmuring grottoes well sheltered from the sun. It was then, too, that these luxurious citizens used to assemble in their thousands to see beasts and men fight for dear life in the great amphitheatre; and then that some Roman built the curious Tour Magne that puzzles the learned and dominates the town to this day. The Pontdu Gard must have presented precisely the same aspect to those old Romans as it does to us, for scarcely a stone has been disturbed in all these centuries.

THE ROMAN TOUR MAGNE, NIMES, FROM THE FOUNTAIN GARDEN.By Joseph Pennell.

It is not surprising that its magnificent design should have been attributed in the middle ages to the devil.

The story is that the architect, overwhelmed with the difficulty of the task and the number of times the river had carried away the uncompleted arches, was almost thinking of abandoning it altogether, when the enterprising enemy of mankind approached with the offer to construct the bridge in such a way as never bridge had been constructed before, for the trifling consideration of the first soul that should cross it after its completion.

The architect went home to his wife in mingled elation and despair.

The couple had evidently not had traffic with the devil for nothing, for they hit upon the contemptibly mean device of thrusting the penalty of their evil compact upon helpless and innocent shoulders. The wife suggested that they should set free a hare at one end of the bridge and let it run across to the devourer of souls, who was to wait at the other end with an open sack to catch his prey. And the trick succeeded. When the poor hare arrived at the fatal end of the bridge the devil, recognising in a fury how he had been duped, flung the animal against the wall, where it is said its impress on the stone can be seen to this day.[17]

The task of the tourist is to cross the river on the topmost tier of arches, through the disused aqueduct, and Iset forth to accomplish this apparently break-neck feat. It is in reality quite easy. One has but to walk over the bridge that runs along the lowest tier of arches and then scramble up the rough hill on the opposite side of the river. The arches seen thus in sharp perspective are sublime, and they seem never-ending.

On the hillside grow many sweet-smelling aromatic plants, and they tempt one to linger that one may bruise the leaves and so enjoy the fresh wholesomeness of the perfume. Below, at a dizzy distance, runs the Gard, the shores rich with woods over which now is a sort of mysterious bloom that seems in perfect keeping with the unseen Enchanted Castle filled withexquisite works of art from all the quarters of the globe, that hides somewhere among the foliage a little lower down the stream.

Ascending to the level of the aqueduct one sees traces of its route over the hill on the way to Nimes. To reach it one must mount a short stair, and then one finds oneself in an immensely long tunnel, about seven or eight feet high, roofed in with stone slabs, which, however, are lacking here and there, so that the passage is dimly lighted. Along this ruined watercourse I crossed the Gard. It was like walking through a catacomb open at intervals to the sky. Here and there through chinks between the slabs, or in places where they had been broken away, one could catch glimpses of beautiful reaches of the river.

One emerges at the end of the tunnel on to a rough hillside, covered with shrubs, brambles, shaggy trees, and masses of ivy, a sort of Salvator Rosa landscape under the clouded heavens; for the day had changed and a mantle of grey spread itself over the majestic scene.

Scrambling down by chance steep pathways among the shrubs—losing my way more than once by following tracks that led to the edge of some miniature precipice—I found myself wondering, in the foolish, insistent way that one does wonder about trivial things, whether our tourist friend had managed to feel as disappointed as he had expected he would be with the Pont du Gard.

It looked absolutely sublime as one retreated from it on the homeward way; its towering arches rearing themselves tier above tier, like some dauntless human life lived steadily for a great purpose. And the storms of centuries have not been able to touch its splendour, though for ever they assail it—rain and sun, rain and sun, as the Provençal children sing—

"Plou, plou, souléioSus lou pont de Marseio."

"Plou, plou, souléio

Sus lou pont de Marseio."

"How many a rustic Milton has passed byStifling the speechless longing of his heart,In unremitting drudgery and care.How many a vulgar Cato has compelledHis energies, no longer tameless thenTo mould a pin or fabricate a nail.How many a Newton to whose passive kenThese mighty spheres that gem infinityWere only specks of tinsel fixed in heavenTo light the midnights of his native town."Shelley, "Queen Mab."

"How many a rustic Milton has passed by

Stifling the speechless longing of his heart,

In unremitting drudgery and care.

How many a vulgar Cato has compelled

His energies, no longer tameless then

To mould a pin or fabricate a nail.

How many a Newton to whose passive ken

These mighty spheres that gem infinity

Were only specks of tinsel fixed in heaven

To light the midnights of his native town."

Shelley, "Queen Mab."

CHAPTER XIV

A HUMAN DOCUMENT

The inside of the fly being stuffy and the view impeded from that position, I decided to make the return journey from the Pont du Gard on the box. Tartarin was too philosophic and too polite to show any surprise at this new form of Britannic madness, so we set off, and the goodcocherproved a most entertaining companion.

He had read a great deal in one way and another, and had developed quite a philosophy of his own, Epicurean in the true, not the popular sense of the word, strange as it may appear. Hard experience had wrung it out of him as wine from the wine-press. He was born at Tarascon, and had one sister who had also lived in the city of St. Martha since her birth. The two did not live together; no, she was a little—enfin, she had her ways of living and he had his. He liked his liberty, and she—well, she didnotlike it:hisliberty,bien entendu. She could not support that he should have a key of the house; she would always sit up for him if he was out in the evenings, and it wasgênant. Not that Tartarin cared to stay out late, he was quiet in his tastes. "Je ne fais pas la noce moi," he explained; "c'est vide tout ça; néomoins il faut que je suis maître de moi-même; quoique je ne le suis pas," he added with a philosophic shrug and a good-natured "Ain!" to his horse. He lodged "chez Bottin"in the main street with a number of his colleagues. They were hired to drive the carriages, and if they did not get many fares thepatronreproached them for laziness. Most of the drivers were eager to make a good haul, for if they were very unsuccessful the employer might discharge them. Tartarin's attitude was characteristic. He made his effort; set forth the attractions of Tarascon and the Castle of Beaucaire, and calmly awaited the result. If the visitors took the carriage he was pleased; if one after another passed him, "Eh! bien, tant pis"; he hoped for better luck next time. And resolutely he abstained from adding to the little turn of ill-fortune the pain of regret.

After all, he had "le bon soleil." When it was cold—and itcanbe cold in the Midi—he needed all his philosophy: to wait and wait for visitors who never came, to pass hours and days in the bitter wind, and to have time to think about life and what it must always be for him! Yes, there were moments, "Mais que voulez-vous? C'est la vie." One thing he was sure of:la viewas always more or less like thatmême pour les riches(Oh! deep-visioned Tartarin!).

He had not always lived at Tarascon. When he was a boy he had been full of ambition. He would make his fortune and have a merry time of it. He had wandered far and wide in his own country, seeking fortune and experience. And he had found experience but not fortune. Among other adventures, he joined a band of athletes and used to perform in the streets of Paris, in tights, with two other youths and a girl in spangles. She was the daughter of the employer, his first love, "c'est à dire le premier amour sérieux. Ah! comme elle était belle!" But he had no luck; she loved another, "un animal de joueur sur le mandolin." And she would not look at Tartarin when the gay rival was present.

The rejected one wandered farther afield for fresh adventures; engaged himself with a travelling theatrical company, first in the capacity of scene-shifter, but later he was offered a temporary post as walking-gentleman, and probably he would have gone far in the profession but for another amorous complication. The leading-lady had pleased his fancy and appeared to reciprocate his sentiments. But one day, in the side-scenes, he discovered her in a non-professional love episode with the permanent villain, and after a painful interview, during which he and the villain came to blows, Tartarin resolved to leave the perfidious one and the troupe, and throw up such chances as might there offer themselves. Dispirited and disillusioned, he returned to his native town, where he engaged himself to Bottin and earned his little crust of bread in peace, if not too gaily. He had given up all idea of marriage, not because he was indifferent toles femmes, "au contraire," but he did not care to ask a woman to share so poor a life. "Je suis mieux seul." As it was, he had not to reproach himself for bringing another into the struggle of life.

"Et quelque fois on va au marché et on achette des enfants," he added fantastically, "et alors, que voulez-vous?" After that the deluge, he seemed to imply.

"Je gagne 40 francs," he said, "avec le logement."

"Par semaine?"

"Et mon Dieu non: si c'etait par semaine!" He raised his eyes to heaven as if he had a vision of beatitude. "Non, par mois."

That and a few tips given him by his clients was all he had to live upon.

But that did not trouble him, in itself. His fear was of losing his health and not being able to work. But he put away black thoughts, and turned his mind to the good that he possessed. After all, he had his health and hislivelihood, so where was the profit of thinking of a possible time when he might lose both? Would that help him? He had suffered when he was young and full of ambition;mon Dieu, he had always desired something he did not possess, and if after great efforts he acquired what he wanted, always the desire ceased and there was some new thing that made him restless.

"A quoi bon se tourmenter toujours de cette façon?"

And so he came to see that all his happiness, if ever he was to enjoy any, was stored in his own consciousness, and that nothing from without would avail him, though it were riches and honours without end.

"Néomoins," he added, with a naïve little gesture, "néomoins, if chancewereto make him the possessor of a little fortune, he would buy a little house—toute petite, with a garden; he would have one servant whom he would treat very well, and he would have a little trap and horse which he would drive himself. And then he would envy no man!"

After all then a desire still lingered.

"Ah ça ne me fait pas de mal!" he said with a shrug, "ç'a m'amuse." "I am not unhappy in knowing it can never come.Voilà la différence!"

Poor Tartarin! And yet in truth was he to be pitied or envied? He must have seemed somewhat strange to his comrades. They would get excited and troubled over all sorts of trivial things, and they would offend one another and flare up into quarrels. Not so Tartarin. He would quietly evade points of difference, laugh off some threatening dispute, make peace between hot-headed combatants. Such things seemed to him needless, foolish. "A quoi bon?" as he asked. "Ça ne vaut pas la peine, mon Dieu!"

As we were nearing our destination his confidences grew more rapid. After all a man who had thought andfelt about things to this extent must have badly needed a means of expression at times.

One is so apt to imagine that the lives one touches thus casually are all more or less what one calls "normal." But when the veil is lifted by some accident, it is not often the purely normal that one finds below it. When Tartarin mentioned that he and his sister were born at Tarascon, I had vaguely pictured an ordinary well-conducted French family. But I found my mistake. The man spoke hesitatingly of his childhood. He had the Frenchman's conventional and inconsequent respect for his mother—inconsequent considering the unceremonious manner in which she has previously been treated, as a woman. In this case the conduct of the mother had been painfully out of order. The Frenchman reverences his mother surprisingly indeed, but on strict condition that she carries out herrôlein absolute conformity with expected sentiments.La mèreisla mère, neither more nor less, an esteemed functionary rather than a private individual. Is this to be doubted in the country under whose laws the mother is unhesitatingly sacrificed in the case of having to choose between her life and the child's?

So poor Tartarin's state of mind must have been most complex, for his mother had shown a spirit anything but official. She could not stand uninterrupted family life, it appears, and used to go off at intervals in a sort of exasperation, for a week or a month of solitude. Tartarin spoke of it with bated breath, not severely, but sadly, for was she notla mère? She appears to have shown singularly small appreciation of the creditable fact. What she had, at moments, permitted herself to remark aboutles enfants et la famillegenerally, her good son refrained from quoting, but I gathered that it was something truly appalling! Of course this led toquarrels; the neighbours were scandalised, and incited the husband to take strong measures, and that was the end.

"If you had but let me go now and then I would not have left you," she cried, as she fled from the house never to return. And thus Tartarin and his sister had been deprived in their early years ofla tendresse d'une mère. He spoke of it with a sort of self-pity, evidently engendered by the comments of indignant neighbours and by the sentiments of a maiden-aunt who joyfully seized the happy opportunity to fill the place thus left vacant. The brother and sister had therefore enjoyed all thetendressethat they could have desired, and evidently it was as like the ordinarytendresse d'une mereas one egg is like another. For there was nothing in the way of alternate embracings and irrelevant punishments that had been lacking in the system of education of that admirable aunt. She had worshipped the children; so altogether it was difficult to see what the pair had missed. They had certainly gained the prestige of their misfortune, for all Tarascon had petted and pitied them.

"And where doIcome in?" the aunt might have inquired, but she never did. On the contrary, she started the chorus and shed the signal-tear, so that little Tartarin and Antoinette evidently had a splendid time of it.

And was the truant mother still living? Yes, she had a little property, a little house at Arles where she passed her days. And now and then Tartarin and his sister went to see her. The mother was glad to welcome them, and, as far as I could gather, she was fond of Tartarin, not exactly as a son, but as a good fellow whosebonhomieand urbane philosophy appealed to her. It was a curious story, and a most unexpected one in this out of the way city of the south.

The drive had taken about a couple of hours, time wellspent, apart from the charm of the country we had passed through, for a human life, in its emotions as well as in its events, had been unrolled before me.

And strangely pathetic it was; the life of this good-hearted, disillusioned, unembittered philosopher, who, with a sort of sad cheerfulness, waited in fair weather and foul under the plane-trees in the main street, trying to tempt the tourist to take the round of the sights—preferably the whole round, but if that piece of good-luck failed him, then "sans Beaucaire."

Yes, sometimes his heart was a little heavy; he was more or less dependent on his employer, he was solitary though he had many good comrades among the people of his native town. But he was spared anxiety in that his risks were his own and his alone; but he had no one to live for, no one to care for. A wife, as he had before declared, he would not have;la misère à deuxwas not the route to happiness; and in his casela famillehad not proved comforting. Often when he went back to Bottin's after the day's work, he felt a sinking of the heart, for, after all, was it a life, this? But "enfin, que voulez-vous?" He was better off than many a poor devil, and so he said to himself: "Raphael" (for that was poor Tartarin's real name), "Raphael, mon vieux, tu es donc un imbécile."

And that usually restored him to a more satisfactory frame of mind; though there were times when even this rousing adjuration lost its efficacy. At these moments the gloom would last the night and pursue him when he went to his work next morning, and he would feel as if he could endure the empty monotony no longer.

Then suddenly—a ray of sunshine, the flight of a bird, and all the dark thoughts would melt away!

I almost started as Tartarin said these words. As a philosopher I already knew him, but here was an artist!

We parted with many expressions of good-will, I promising to send him a copy of Maeterlinck's "La Sagesse et la Destinée," for I thought he might gain comfort and enjoyment from a philosophy which had many points in common with his own. Perhaps the Belgian poet would help him a step or two further on his road, and teach him to know the value of the wisdom he had already won.

In acknowledgment, he sent me an illustrated post-card of the Pont du Gard, with a charming little inscription expressing his gratitude for my having thus remembered "le pauvre cocher."

And this good-hearted philosopher will hereafter always be to me the real Tartarin de Tarascon.

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