Its Memories Are Buried Under Its
Ponderous Stones.
As we drove away from it in the
gloaming, my friend and I agreed that the two or three
hours we had spent there were among the happiest
impressions of a pair of tourists very curious in the
picturesque.
We almost forgot that we were bound to
regret that the shortened day left us no time to drive
five miles further, above a pass in the little mountains
- it had beckoned to us in the morning, when we
came in sight of it, almost irresistibly - to see the Ro-
man arch and mausoleum of Saint Remy. To compass
this larger excursion (including the visit to Les Baux)
you must start from Arles very early in the morning;
but I can imagine no more delightful day.
XXXIII.
I had been twice at Avignon before, and yet I was
not satisfied. I probably am satisfied now; neverthe-
less, I enjoyed my third visit. I shall not soon forget
the first, on which a particular emotion set indelible
stamp. I was travelling northward, in 1870, after four
months spent, for the first time, in Italy. It was the
middle of January, and I had found myself, unexpected-
ly, forced to return to England for the rest of the
winter. It was an insufferable disappointment; I was
wretched and broken-hearted. Italy appeared to me
at that time so much better than anything else in the
world, that to rise from table in the middle of the
feast was a prospect of being hungry for the rest of
my days. I had heard a great deal of praise of the
south of France; but the south of France was a poor
consolation. In this state of mind I arrived at Avignon,
which under a bright, hard winter sun was tingling -
fairly spinning - with the _mistral_. I find in my journal
of the other day a reference to the acuteness of my
reluctance in January, 1870. France, after Italy, ap-
peared, in the language of the latter country, _poco sim-
patica_; and I thought it necessary, for reasons now in-
conceivable, to read the "Figaro," which was filled
with descriptions of the horrible Troppmann, the mur-
derer of the _famille_ Kink. Troppmann, Kink, _le crime
do Pantin_, very names that figured in this episode
seemed to wave me back. Had I abandoned the so-
norous south to associate with vocables so base?
It was very cold, the other day, at Avignon; for
though there was no mistral, it was raining as it rains
in Provence, and the dampness had a terrible chill in
it. As I sat by my fire, late at night - for in genial
Avignon, in October, I had to have a fire - it came
back to me that eleven years before I had at that
same hour sat by a fire in that same room, and, writ-
ing to a friend to whom I was not afraid to appear
extravagant, had made a vow that at some happier
period of the future I would avenge myself on the _ci-
devant_ city of the Popes by taking it in a contrary
sense. I suppose that I redeemed my vow on the oc-
casion of my second visit better than on my third; for
then I was on my way to Italy, and that vengeance, of
course, was complete. The only drawback was that I
was in such a hurry to get to Ventimiglia (where the
Italian custom-house was to be the sign of my triumph),
that I scarcely took time to make it clear to myself at
Avignon that this was better than reading the "Figaro."
I hurried on almost too fast to enjoy the consciousness
of moving southward. On this last occasion I was un-
fortunately destitute of that happy faith. Avignon was
my southernmost limit; after which I was to turn round
and proceed back to England. But in the interval I
had been a great deal in Italy, and that made all the
difference.
I had plenty of time to think of this, for the rain
kept me practically housed for the first twenty-four
hours. It had been raining in, these regions for a
month, and people had begun to look askance at the
Rhone, though as yet the volume of the river was not
exorbitant. The only excursion possible, while the
torrent descended, was a kind of horizontal dive, ac-
companied with infinite splashing, to the little _musee_
of the town, which is within a moderate walk of the
hotel. I had a memory of it from my first visit; it
had appeared to me more pictorial than its pictures.
I found that recollection had flattered it a little, and
that it is neither better nor worse than most provincial
museums. It has the usual musty chill in the air, the
usual grass-grown fore-court, in which a few lumpish
Roman fragments are disposed, the usual red tiles on
the floor, and the usual specimens of the more livid
schools on the walls. I rang up the _gardien_, who ar-
rived with a bunch of keys, wiping his mouth; he un-
locked doors for me, opened shutters, and while (to
my distress, as if the things had been worth lingering
over) he shuffled about after me, he announced the
names of the pictures before which I stopped, in a
voice that reverberated through the melancholy halls,
and seemed to make the authorship shameful when it
was obscure, and grotesque when it pretended to be
great. Then there were intervals of silence, while I
stared absent-mindedly, at hap-hazard, at some indis-
tinguishable canvas, and the only sound was the down-
pour of the rain on the skylights. The museum of
Avignon derives a certain dignity from its Roman frag-
ments. The town has no Roman monuments to show;
in this respect, beside its brilliant neighbors, Arles and
Nimes, it is a blank. But a great many small objects
have been found in its soil, - pottery, glass, bronzes,
lamps, vessels and ornaments of gold and silver.
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