a hint
of it in the early Christian relics, among which, according to M.
Joanne, of the Guide, are to be found more fine sarcophagi than in any
collection but that of St. John Lateran. In two or three of the Roman
fragments there is a noticeable distinction; principally in a charming
bust of a boy, quite perfect, with those salient eyes that one sees in
antique portraits, and to which the absence of vision in the marble mask
gives a look, often very touching, as of a baffled effort to see; also
in the head of a woman, found in the ruins of the theatre, who, alas!
has lost her nose and whose noble, simple contour, barring this
deficiency, recalls the great manner of the Venus of Milo. There are
various rich architectural fragments which indicate that that edifice
was a very splendid affair. This little Museum at Arles, in short, is
the most Roman thing I know of out of Rome.

[Illustration: ARLES--THE CLOISTERS]

[Illustration]

Chapter xxxii

[Les Baux]

I find that I declared one evening, in a little journal I was keeping at
that time, that I was weary of writing (I was probably very sleepy), but
that it was essential I should make some note of my visit to Les Baux. I
must have gone to sleep as soon as I had recorded this necessity, for I
search my small diary in vain for any account of that enchanting spot. I
have nothing but my memory to consult--a memory which is fairly good in
regard to a general impression, but is terribly infirm in the matter of
details and items. 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 having been
given us by the landlady of the inn at Arles, of whom we hired a rather
lumbering conveyance. The weather was not promising, but it proved a
good day for the mediaeval Pompeii; a grey, melancholy, moist, but
rainless, or almost rainless day, with nothing in the sky to flout, as
the poet says, the dejected and pulverised past. The drive itself was
charming, for there is an inexhaustible sweetness in the grey-green
landscape of Provence. It is never absolutely flat and yet is neve