One Or Two Of The Nuns Were Passing In
And Out Of The House; They Wore Gray Robes, With A
Bright Red Cape.
I thought their situation most pro-
vincial.
I came away, and wandered a little over the
base of the hill, outside the walls. Small white stones
cropped through the grass, over which low olive-trees
were scattered. The afternoon had a yellow bright-
ness. I sat down under one of the little trees, on the
grass, - the delicate gray branches were not much
above my head, - and rested, and looked at Avignon
across the Rhone. It was very soft, very still and
pleasant, though I am not sure it was all I once should
have expected of that combination of elements: an old
city wall for a background, a canopy of olives, and,
for a couch, the soil of Provence.
When I came back to Avignon the twilight was
already thick; but I walked up to the Rocher des
Doms. Here I again had the benefit of that amiable
moon which had already lighted up for me so many
romantic scenes. She was full, and she rose over the
Rhone, and made it look in the distance like a silver
serpent. I remember saying to myself at this mo-
ment, 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 at-
tention. Presenting themselves to that silver sheen,
they could not fail to be impressive. So, at least, I
said to myself; but, unfortunately, I did not believe
what I said. It is a melancholy fact that the walls of
Avignon had never impressed me at all, and I had
never taken the trouble to make the circuit. They
are continuous and complete, but for some mysterious
reason they fail of their effect. This is partly because
they are very low, in some places almost absurdly so;
being buried in new accumulations of soil, and by
the filling in of the moat up to their middle. Then
they have been too well tended; they not only look at
present very new, but look as if they had never been
old. The fact that their extent is very much greater
makes them more of a curiosity than those of Carcas-
sonne; but this is exactly, as the same time, what is
fatal to their pictorial unity. With their thirty-seven
towers and seven gates they lose themselves too much
to make a picture that will compare with the ad-
mirable little vignette of Carcassonne. I may mention,
now that I am speaking of the general mass of Avignon,
that nothing is more curious than the way in which,
viewed from a distance, it is all reduced to nought by
the vast bulk of the palace of the Popes. From across
the Rhone, or from the train, as you leave the place,
this great gray block is all Avignon; it seems to occupy
the whole city, extensive, with its shrunken population,
as the city is.
XXXV.
It was the morning after this, I think (a certain
Saturday), that when I came out of the Hotel de
l'Europe, which lies in a shallow concavity just within
the city gate that opens on the Rhone, - came out to
look at the sky from the little _place_ before the inn,
and see how the weather promised for the obligatory
excursion to Vaucluse, - I found the whole town in a
terrible taking. I say the whole town advisedly; for
every inhabitant appeared to have taken up a position
on the bank of the river, or on the uppermost parts
of the promenade of the Doms, where a view of its
course was to be obtained. It had risen surprisingly
in the night, and the good people of Avignon had
reason to know what a rise of the Rhone might signify.
The town, in its lower portions, is quite at the mercy
of the swollen waters; and it was mentioned to me
that in 1856 the Hotel de l'Europe, in its convenient
hollow, was flooded up to within a few feet of the
ceiling of the dining-room, where the long board which
had served for so many a table d'hote floated dis-
reputably, with its legs in the air. On the present
occasion the mountains of the Ardeche, where it had
been raining for a month, had sent down torrents
which, all that fine Friday night, by the light of the
innocent-looking moon, poured themselves into the
Rhone and its tributary, the Durance. The river was
enormous, and continued to rise; and the sight was
beautiful and horrible. The water in many places
was already at the base of the city walls; the quay,
with its parapet just emerging, being already covered.
The country, seen from the Plateau des Doms, re-
sembled a vast lake, with protrusions of trees, houses,
bridges, gates. The people looked at it in silence, as
I had seen people before - on the occasion of a rise
of the Arno, at Pisa - appear to consider the prospects
of an inundation. "Il monte; il monte toujours," -
there was not much said but that. It was a general
holiday, and there was an air of wishing to profit, for
sociability's sake, by any interruption of the common-
place (the popular mind likes "a change," and the
element of change mitigates the sense of disaster); but
the affair was not otherwise a holiday. Suspense and
anxiety were in the air, and it never is pleasant to be
reminded of the helplessness of man. In the presence
of a loosened river, with its ravaging, unconquerable
volume, this impression is as strong as possible; and
as I looked at the deluge which threatened to make
an island of the Papal palace, I perceived that the
scourge of water is greater than the scourge of fire.
A blaze may be quenched, but where could the flame
be kindled that would arrest the quadrupled Rhone?
For the population of Avignon a good deal was at
stake, and I am almost ashamed to confess that in the
midst of the public alarm I considered the situation
from the point of view of the little projects of a senti-
mental tourist.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 65 of 75
Words from 65336 to 66402
of 75796
