Horace Moule

“ Two or three comrades assist the first brave by pulling the bull’s tail, or hallooing at him from a short distance. The bull makes a dig at the basket, and very likely succeeds in burying his horns in it, when he becomes the prey of half a hundred persecutors, who fearlessly pull his tail and ears or poke his sides, until he can again withdraw his horns, and cause a general retreat to the palings. Whenever he pursues A for a few yards, B is at hand to make a nimble diversion in A’s favour, so that it is but rarely the bull has a chance of running his game fairly to earth at the staging. ”

“ One of the animals was to be received at the outer end of the flanked passage leading into the arena by a net, into which he was to plunge “comme un lapin se prend dans la bourse en sortant du terrier.” Another was to wear a cockade mounted on his horn; and a twenty-franc piece was to reward that skilful youth who might pluck the cockade from the horn within ten feet (trois mètres) of the barricades.
Our determination was at once taken to be present at the “grande course,” the proper study of mankind being man, even man the bull-aggravator. ”

“ Birds were at roost, and all stray winds asleep;
The busy uproar of the town was still;
Scarcely they heard the distant feeding sheep
Upon the shaded hill.
The kindly-thoughted mariners did not wait,
But manned a little boat with rowers four:
Therein the silent Founding-master sate,
And gazed towards the shore.
Anon the dreaming quiet everywhere
So wrought upon the men that, with one will,
They rested, and amid the tranquil air
The little boat stood still. ”

“ But Arles is now sadly degraded from the regal and vice-regal state of other days. She ranks simply as capital of an arrondissement in the department of Bouches du Rhone, and Tarascon takes, municipally, precedence of the older city. Still there is an air of busy life about the narrow, quaint, and most intricate streets. If Arles had been constructed with the express purpose of deluding the stranger, a more effectual labyrinth could hardly have been produced. ”

“ Hopeless indeed is the task of conveying by words any adequate notion of this, or the closely similar building at Nismes. The amphitheatre at Arles is a vast oval construction, 460 feet in length of the greater axis, by 338 of the lesser. The gigantic walls running round the entire circumference are more than 60 feet in height. And the width of this mass of masonry is so great as to allow of ample corridors, two storeys high, opening out upon the interior in two beautiful tiers of arches, sixty to each tier. ”

“ Her face shone clear as the light:
“Now who comes walking thro’ merry Troy town,
A boy full fair to sight.
“All men may see by his bearing free
He comes of a royal race,—
By the eyes below his forehead of snow,
And the charm of his god-like face.” ”

“ The first fellow that enters looks about him, puzzled and almost terrified, until some nimble youngster, stepping from the staging, rolls a kind of basket-barrel at him, and follows suit by waving a handkerchief in his face. ”

“ And seemed a-listening, till her little maid
Might call her soul away.
V.
I’m now alone; but sometimes in the night
Around my head familiar voices roam,
And win me, with a mystical delight,
To dream I am at home. ”

“ And take this mantle thy shoulder upon,
I doubt it will make him glad.”
She gave him a mantle so bright, so bright,
Her hands wove long ago:
“Pardy,” she said, “he will love the lad
That I have engirded so.” ”

“ These remain out of four built here by the Saracens in the eighth century, when the amphitheatre was used as a fortress, as it subsequently was, in all likelihood, by Charles Martel, who dislodged the invaders.
The view of the Rhone valley, and of the Camargue, or vast delta reaching away below the city towards the Mediterranean, is fine in the extreme. The interior of the building exceeds, if possible, the impressive effect of a first sight of the outer shell. The inner oval, or arena proper, is not so charmingly proportioned as that at Nismes ”

“ It was the custom, during the times of the Empire, for each successive troop of gladiators, before beginning their conflict, to advance to the Imperial box when the Emperor was present, and to salute him with the words, “Ave, Cæsar Imperator; morituri te salutant.” ”

“ Well to reward who could so well create;
They gave him house and field, and vineyard fair,
Beside the convent gate.
O gentle ghosts of long departed bliss,
That float among us when the night-wind swells ”

“ In the arena itself about two hundred men and boys were walking leisurely about, waiting with apparent coolness the entry of the bull. A timber staging, affording a rough kind of retreat in case of too hot pursuit, ran round the sides of the oval ”

“ If he succeeds in doing this, he is instantly scared by a score of booted legs thrust out in the direction of his head, and despairingly seeks the open, only to go through a series of precisely similar troubles. ”