第61章

Over the valley,from side to side,and ever so high in the air,stretch the three tiers of the tremendous bridge.They are unspeakably imposing,and nothing could well be more Roman.The hugeness,the solidity,the unexpectedness,the monumental rectitude of the whole thing leave you nothing to say at the time and make you stand gazing.You simply feel that it is noble and perfect,that it has the quality of greatness.A road,branching from the highway,descends to the level of the river and passes under one of the arches.This road has a wide margin of grass and loose stones,which slopes upward into the bank of the ravine.You may sit here as long as you please,staring up at the light,strong piers;the spot is extremely natural,though two or three stone benches have been erected on it.I remained there an hour and got a cornplete impression;the place was perfectly soundless,and for the time,at least,lonely;the splendid afternoon had begun to fade,and there was a fascination in the object I had come to see.It came to pass that at the same time I discovered in it a certain stupidity,a vague brutality.That element is rarely absent from great Roman work,which is wanting in the nice adaptation of the means to the end.The means are always exaggerated;the end is so much more than attained.The Roman rigidity was apt to overshoot the mark,and I suppose a race which could do nothing small is as defective as a race that can do nothing great.Of this Roman rigidity the Pont du Gard is an admirable example.It would be a great injustice,however,not to insist upon its beauty,a kind of manly beauty,that of an object constructed not to please but to serve,and impressive simply from the scale on which it carries out this intention.The number of arches in each tier is different;they are smaller and more numerous as they ascend.The preservation of the thing is extraordinary;nothing has crumbled or collapsed;every feature remains;and the huge blocks of stone,of a brownishyellow,(as if they had been baked by the Provencal sun for eighteen centuries),pile themselves,without mortar or cement,as evenly as the day they were laid together.All this to carry the water of a couple of springs to a little provincial city!The conduit on the top has retained its shape and traces of the cement with which it was lined.When the vague twilight began to gather,the lonely valley seemed to fill itself with the shadow of the Roman name,as if the mighty empire were still as erect as the supports of the aqueduct;and it was open to a solitary tourist,sitting there sentimental,to believe that no people has ever been,or will ever be,as great as that,measured,as we measure the greatness of an individual,by the push they gave to what they undertook.The Pont du Gard is one of the three or four deepest impressions they have left;it speaks of them in a manner with which they might have been satisfied.

I feel as if it were scarcely discreet to indicate the whereabouts of the chateau of the obliging young man I had met on the way from Nimes;I must content myself with saying that it nestled in an enchanting valley,dans le fond,as they say in France,and that I took my course thither on foot,after leaving the Pont du Gard.I find it noted in my journal as "an adorable little corner."The principal feature of the place is a couple of very ancient towers,brownishyellow in hue,and mantled in scarlet Virginiacreeper.One of these towers,reputed to be of Saracenic origin,is isolated,and is only the more effective;the other is incorporated in the house,which is delightfully fragmentary and irregular.It had got to be late by this time,and the lonely castellooked crepuscular and mysterious.An old housekeeper was sent for,who showed me the rambling interior;and then the young man took me into a dim old drawingroom,which had no less than four chimneypieces,all unlighted,and gave me a refection of fruit and sweet wine.When I praised the wine and asked him what it was,he said simply,"C'est du vin de ma mere!"Throughout my little joumey I had never yet felt myself so far from Paris;and this was a sensation I enjoyed more than my host,who was an involuntary exile,consoling himself with laying out a manege,which he showed me as I walked away.His civility was great,and I was greatly touched by it.On my way back to the little inn where I had left my vehicle,I passed the Pont du Gard,and took another look at it.Its great arches made windows for the evening sky,and the rocky ravine,with its dusky cedars and shining river,was lonelier than before.At the inn I swallowed,or tried to swallow,a glass of horrible wine with my coachman;after which,with my reconstructed team,I drove back to Nimes in the moonlight.It only added a more solitary whiteness to the constant sheen of the Provencal landscape.