Arles

“ With hearts beating in joyful excitement, eyes full of visions, we sallied forth on the road to Arles a numerous company of shock-headed urchins and blonde-headed maidens with little hoods and sabots, bearing our offerings of cakes for the kings, dried figs for their pages, and hay for the camels. ”

“ During the summer time he travelled over the Crau and the Camargue, now helping the shepherds to shear the sheep, now the mowers of the marshes to bind the rushes, or the salters to collect and heap up the salt. Certainly no one could equal him in knowledge of the country of Arles and its work. He knew the names of every farm, and every pasture, of the head shepherds, and of each stud of horses or of wild bulls. And he talked of it all with an eloquence, a picturesqueness, a richness of Provençal expression which it was a pleasure to hear. ”

“ I will quote the opinion on the Arles type of a very competent judge perfectly acquainted with the whole of Provence:—"It can be affirmed without contradiction that Greek beauty exists at Arles, and exists only among the women. The men are clumsy, small and vulgar, rude in form and rough in vocal intonation. The women, on the contrary, have preserved the ancestral delicacy. The face is that of a cameo, the nose is straight, the chin very Greek, the ear delicately modelled ”

“ Inquiring in Aix for the road to Arles we made a discovery, to wit: they do not always pronounce it "Arl" in the French way, but "Arlah," which is Provençal, I suppose, the remains of the old name "Arlate." One young man did not seem even to recognize the name Arles, though curiously it happened that he spoke English—enough, at least, to direct us when he found that it was his Provençal "Arlah" that we wanted. ”

“ Arles has a past unique in the annals of France. Every great movement that has taken place in the civilised world for the last two and a half thousand years helped to mould and shape the town one sees to-day. ”

“ He is recognizing that there is far more in life than being tied to his job without a let-up. He is relaxing now and then, and in his relaxation he is discovering the France that his wife and daughter know. He should come to Arles. He has begun to come a little. We hope he will come in far greater numbers in the future. It remains for you to spread broadcast the virtues of Arles. ”

“ One hears the clang of metal as one walks along the melancholy avenue, or stands in the empty ruined church. The glory has all departed, and most of the romance.
There are many other memories of the past in Arles, but they need not detain us. The ancient city has of late years been the centre of the Provençal revival of the Félibres, and we may take leave of it as well as of the charming land of Provence, with a glance at the Musée Arlaten, which owes its foundation to the patriotism and largely to the generosity of Mistral. ”

“ And I am glad, now I have seen so much, that I still think Arles by far the most interesting place in the south of France, and the excursion to Montmajour and Les Baux, which I made again on Saturday, quite incomparable—the former, as far as I have seen the world, one of its most beautiful ruins, the latter so glorious as to scenery. Yesterday there was what the French call a bull-fight in the amphitheatre, but there is nothing terrible: no horses, only men enticing bulls with handkerchiefs, and when they run at them, vaulting like chamois over the barriers ”

“ The amphitheatre at Arles, unlike that of Nîmes, was, if the evidence of the height of the wall of the Podium enclosing the Arena is trustworthy, used for the great fights of lions, tigers, elephants, and other animals, as well as for combats between the gladiators—elaborate and extravagant spectacles that riveted the attention and ministered to the enjoyment of the Roman world for a period extending over seven hundred years. The immense arenas at Arles and Nîmes are proof of the prosperity of these two colonies. ”

“ The interest that attaches to Christian Arles is deepened when we dip into the ancient traditions of the town. These old legends of the Saints period and the stones of Arles all speak of them, and keep alive many customs that a too prosaic common sense would soon allow to die.
Its population has diminished sadly since the Roman ramparts hemmed in and fortified the town, but the narrow streets and tightly packed houses seem hardly enough for the present population, which is barely one-third of what it was in its palmy days. ”

“ Now let us look at the remains of ancient Arles. But first of all let me observe that the Arles race prides itself on its singular purity of descent. There was, unquestionably, a Gaulish settlement there. The Keltic name Ar-lath, the "moist habitation," tells us as much. So does the legend of Protis and Gyptis, already related. But it was speedily occupied by a large Greek contingent, and the race was formed of Greek and Gaulish blood united. In the year B.C. 46 a Roman colony was planted at Arles. ”

“ The flourishing state of Arles and Marseilles no doubt incited the Empire builders to covet the favourable positions occupied by the Greek settlers.
Cæsar, emulating and surpassing Marius in his campaigning zeal, conquered all Gaul, and under him the first Roman colonies took a firm hold upon the fertile regions in the valley of the Rhone. Arles became a maritime town, which rivalled Marseilles itself. The Celtic inhabitants, mixed strongly with the Phœnician element, were possessed of arts and crafts almost as highly developed as those of the conquering Romans. ”

“ The living only inhabit the tombs of the dead. At the end of the last century, when revolutionary effervescence was beginning to ferment, the people of Arles swept all its feudality away, defacing the very arms upon the town gate, and trampling the palace towers to dust.
The castle looks out across a vast extent of plain over Arles, the stagnant Rhone, the Camargue, and the salt pools of the lingering sea. In old days it was the eyrie of an eagle race called Seigneurs of Les Baux ”

“ What, never been to Arles! But I 've been there!
Ah, poor young lady! Couldst thou see how fair
And large a city that same Arles is grown!
She covers all the seven mouths of the Rhone.
Sea-cattle has she on the isles, who graze
Of the salt-meres. Wild horses, too, she has ”

“ After being united to France, and thus delivered from the incessant struggles maintained in earlier times between the Bishops, the Podestàs and the counts of Provence, Arles exhibited numerous signs of growing prosperity. The union with an established power seems to have imparted a considerable impulse to the prosperity of Provence, which began to revive under a settled government; and Arles, as the chief town, naturally benefited greatly from the improvement. Indications of this amelioration are met with at every turn in the narrow streets, which abound in fine examples of Renaissance work. ”

“ Arles is planted upon a nodule of limestone rock that rises out of the diluvium of rolled stones. In former times it was almost the sole dry spot to be found for miles round, and as the dead of Pagan and Christian times alike seem to have objected to wet beds, their bodies were transported from all the country round to the plateau east of Arles and there entombed. This plateau was called the Elysian Fields, now Alyscamp, and is so thick with tombs that you walk over them as you follow the road that runs along the plateau. You see the grass at the side dead in one place, there is a tomb there ”

“ I had no time to view the antiquities of the ancient city of Arles, so was fain to satisfy myself with a sufficiently lucid description of them, to be found in Murray’s hand-book. We had a delightful steam to Marseilles, though the change from the sweetness of the sea-breeze and blue water, to the stinks and exhalations of its closed harbour, was any thing but refreshing. From its very narrow outlet, the port of Marseilles is perhaps as bad in this respect as any in the Mediterranean. ”

“ We knew in advance, my companion and I, that Les Baux was a pearl of picturesqueness; for had we not read as much in the handbook of Murray, who has the testimony of an English nobleman as to its attractions? We also knew that it lay some miles from Arles, on the crest of the Alpilles, the craggy little mountains which, as I stood on the breezy platform of Beaucaire, formed to my eye a charming, if somewhat remote, background to Tarascon; this assurance [214] having been given us by the landlady of the inn at Arles, of whom we hired a rather lumbering conveyance. ”

“ D'Oliere, a young gentleman of Switzerland; and an edifying, and entertaining acquaintance, with Mons. Seguier. I left too, the best and most sumptuous lodgings I had seen in my whole tour; but a desire to see Arles, Aix, and Marseilles, &c. got the better of all. But I set out too soon after the snow and rains, and I found part of the road so bad, that I wonder how my horse dragged us through so much clay and dirt. When I gave you some account of the antiquities of Nismes, I did not expect to find Arles a town fraught with ten times more matter and amusement for an antiquarian ”

“ It is a very satisfactory little mountain climb from the surrounding plain up to the little plateau just below the peak at Les Baux, though the entire distance from Arles is scarcely more than fifteen kilometres, and the actual climb hardly more than four. The razor-back mountain chain, upon one peak of which Les Baux sits, is known as the Alpilles.
All of the immediate neighbourhood (scarce a dozen kilometres from where the beaten track passes through Arles) is a veritable museum of relics of the glory of the heroic age. ”

“ ARLES, a town of south-eastern France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Bouches-du-Rhône, 54 m. N.W. of Marseilles by rail. Pop. (1906) 16,191. A canal unites Arles with the harbour of Bouc on the Mediterranean. Arles stands on the left bank of the Rhone, just below the point at which the river divides to form its delta. A tubular bridge unites it with the suburb of Trinquetaille on the opposite bank. The town is hemmed in on the east by the railway line from Lyons to Marseilles, on the south by the Canal de Craponne. ”

“ On leaving this famous city, our pilgrim directed his course towards Thoulouse, passing by Auch—from Thoulouse to Narbonne, passing by Carcassonne—and from Narbonne to Arles, passing by Beziers and Nîmes. Arles was then a city of great note, being called the Little Rome of the Gauls. He continues his route towards Italy, and after having passed through the cities of Avignon, Orange, Valence, Die, Gap, and Embrun, he arrives at the foot of the Cottian Alps (Alpes Cottiæ) ; at Briançon he begins to climb Mount Genevre, and soon finds himself at Susa in Italy. ”

“ The face is haughty, noble, somewhat imperious. Queens these Arelaises feel themselves to be, down to the fishwives in the market-place; they walk as queens, as well as the cobble stones will permit, and bear themselves, their black mantillas cast over their arms, in a queen-like manner.
I had a fine opportunity of studying them, for I went to the first bull-fight of the season in the old Roman arena, and all Arles was there, male and female, down to the babies in arms. ”

“ At Arles, about the time of Saint John’s Day, thousands of these harvest labourers might be seen{144} assembled in the Place des Hommes, their scythes slung on their backs, standing and lying about while waiting to be hired.
In the mountain districts a man who had never done his harvesting in the plains of Arles found it hard, so they said, to get any girl to marry him, and it was on this custom Félix Gras founded the story of his epic poem “Les Charbonniers.”
On our own farm we hired from seven to eight of these groups every year at harvest-time. ”

“ It was as late as the sixth century when the Ostrogoths held the brilliant sunlit city of Arles; when follows a history—applicable as well to most of all southern France—of many dreary centuries of discordant races, of varying religious faiths, and adherence now to one lord and master, and then to another. ”

“ O fertile land of Arles, Heaven gives pure beauty to thy daughters, as it gives grapes to the autumn, and perfumes to the mountains and wings to the bird." The little fellow talks of many things and leads her to his home. From here the fisherman ferries her over the broad Rhone, and we accompany her over the Camargue, down to the sea. A mirage deceives her for a time, she sees the town and church, but it soon vanishes in air, and the maiden hurries on in the fierce heat. ”

“ Of all the larger towns in Provence, Arles is perhaps the one that creates the deepest impression upon the visitor. Avignon is much finer, and its interest is at least as great as that of Arles, although it lacks that of Roman remains. And the Roman remains of Nîmes are finer than those of Arles, although Nîmes has very little mediæval interest. ”

“ I cannot say that the Greek type lingers in Marseilles, certainly the women who hover about the Vieux port are as ugly as women can well be, nor have the natives of Aix a peculiarly Roman character of face and head. The only people who retain any distinguishing features of their ancestry are those of Arles, of whom I have already told. ”

“ These matters concern the archæologist; and I felt here, as I felt afterwards at Arles, that one of the profane, in the presence of such a monument, can only admire and hold his tongue. The great impression, on the whole, is an impression of wonder that so much should have survived. What remains at Nîmes, after all dilapidation is estimated, is [192] astounding. I spent an hour in the Arènes on that same sweet Sunday morning, as I came back from the Roman baths, and saw that the corridors, the vaults, the staircases, the external casing, are still virtually there. ”