CHAPTER XIII

THE PONT DU GARD

Barbara had heard of the approaching arrival of some cherished relations in Provence, and as blood is the thickest of all substances—impenetrable by the X or any other rays—it was arranged that she should meet them at an appointed rendezvous and stay with them till the common fluid that flowed in their veins had been satisfied. Then she was to return to continue our joint adventures.

So one fine day I found myself alone at Tarascon. It is supposed to be necessary to have some idea of what one is going to do with oneself in a place before electing to go there, but this I believe to be a superstition. It is only necessary to present oneself and destiny will do the rest.

Yet I had seen everything of note in Tarascon, and Tartarin was evidently concerned about me, for even he could suggest nothing further. We were discussing possibilities in a desultory manner when one of his professional brothers passed at a rattling pace with a fare evidently just returned from doing Tarascon in the twenty minutes—"sans Beaucaire."

The inmate of the fly was pale and lank, with colourless hair. I gave a start—my critical Englishman of the Pont du Gard! The hat went off, and I caught, as the carriage rolled by, the simple words, "Wretched hole; not a decent——" but the movement of the fly bereft me of the end of the sentence.

"How far is it to the Pont du Gard?" I asked, with the swiftness of inspiration.

Tartarin's face brightened.

"Est-ce que Madame dÉsire d'y aller?"

"Certainement."

Tartarin rubbed his hands. We could start after the dÉjeuner and be back at the HÔtel de la Couronne in the late afternoon. It was about eighteen kilometres; a fine long job for Tartarin, who usually had to take his chance with the many other drivers for quite a short round of the town. The Pont du Gard being more usually visited from Nimes, the expedition was a windfall for our friend.

So we set off. The carriage would not open, and as the day was warm with the sun in spite of a cold wind, it was annoying to be shut into a stuffy little box which hid from view half the long stretches of country, and allowed one no time to dwell upon the features of the farms and villages, for one could look neither back nor forward. But there were, as a matter of fact, but few villages, only farms. Mas is the ProvenÇal for a farm, as any reader of Mistral will soon learn, for the poet is never tired of dwelling on the simple and, it would seem, exceptionally happy life that is passed in these homesteads; the owner a sort of benevolent patriarch directing the labours of sowing, sheep-shearing, the vintage, the olive gathering, the treading of the corn, and the harvest. It is Mistral's own father whom he describes so often with so much affection and reverence:—

"When the old man came to die he said, 'Frederi que tems fai?' ('Frederick, what kind of weather is it?') I replied, 'Plou, moun paire.' 'Ah! ben, se plou fai ben tems per li semenco,' and rendered up his soul to God.[16] You won't wonder," added the poet, at my writing in Mireille this verse—

The carriage soon swallowed the eighteen kilometres of level road, the country changing in character as we neared the banks of the Gard. Here began the great cliffs which had inspired the Romans with the truly Imperial idea of carrying water to Nimes across the river from height to height, for with all their engineering skill this great people did not know that water will rise to its own level.

The magnificent bridge came suddenly into view, startling in its forty-nine metres of solid grandeur. Three tiers of arches lifted themselves one above the other; the lowest series short and solid, the second more slender and taller, rising in its haughty Roman way to carry the third and most towering of all, at whose summit in the sky used to run the water which supplied the people of Nimes when they were Roman citizens. It was there on hot summer days that they revelled in their splendid baths (fed by the great aqueduct) which may still be seen in the public gardens, with cool open marble courts some eight or ten feet below the level of the soil, where stone Tritons and Neptunes kept watch over the waters that flowed refreshingly among the white columns, and lay green and still in little murmuring grottoes well sheltered from the sun. It was then, too, that these luxurious citizens used to assemble in their thousands to see beasts and men fight for dear life in the great amphitheatre; and then that some Roman built the curious Tour Magne that puzzles the learned and dominates the town to this day. The Pont du Gard must have presented precisely the same aspect to those old Romans as it does to us, for scarcely a stone has been disturbed in all these centuries.

It is not surprising that its magnificent design should have been attributed in the middle ages to the devil.

The story is that the architect, overwhelmed with the difficulty of the task and the number of times the river had carried away the uncompleted arches, was almost thinking of abandoning it altogether, when the enterprising enemy of mankind approached with the offer to construct the bridge in such a way as never bridge had been constructed before, for the trifling consideration of the first soul that should cross it after its completion.

The architect went home to his wife in mingled elation and despair.

The couple had evidently not had traffic with the devil for nothing, for they hit upon the contemptibly mean device of thrusting the penalty of their evil compact upon helpless and innocent shoulders. The wife suggested that they should set free a hare at one end of the bridge and let it run across to the devourer of souls, who was to wait at the other end with an open sack to catch his prey. And the trick succeeded. When the poor hare arrived at the fatal end of the bridge the devil, recognising in a fury how he had been duped, flung the animal against the wall, where it is said its impress on the stone can be seen to this day.[17]

The task of the tourist is to cross the river on the topmost tier of arches, through the disused aqueduct, and I set forth to accomplish this apparently break-neck feat. It is in reality quite easy. One has but to walk over the bridge that runs along the lowest tier of arches and then scramble up the rough hill on the opposite side of the river. The arches seen thus in sharp perspective are sublime, and they seem never-ending.

On the hillside grow many sweet-smelling aromatic plants, and they tempt one to linger that one may bruise the leaves and so enjoy the fresh wholesomeness of the perfume. Below, at a dizzy distance, runs the Gard, the shores rich with woods over which now is a sort of mysterious bloom that seems in perfect keeping with the unseen Enchanted Castle filled with exquisite works of art from all the quarters of the globe, that hides somewhere among the foliage a little lower down the stream.

Ascending to the level of the aqueduct one sees traces of its route over the hill on the way to Nimes. To reach it one must mount a short stair, and then one finds oneself in an immensely long tunnel, about seven or eight feet high, roofed in with stone slabs, which, however, are lacking here and there, so that the passage is dimly lighted. Along this ruined watercourse I crossed the Gard. It was like walking through a catacomb open at intervals to the sky. Here and there through chinks between the slabs, or in places where they had been broken away, one could catch glimpses of beautiful reaches of the river.

One emerges at the end of the tunnel on to a rough hillside, covered with shrubs, brambles, shaggy trees, and masses of ivy, a sort of Salvator Rosa landscape under the clouded heavens; for the day had changed and a mantle of grey spread itself over the majestic scene.

Scrambling down by chance steep pathways among the shrubs—losing my way more than once by following tracks that led to the edge of some miniature precipice—I found myself wondering, in the foolish, insistent way that one does wonder about trivial things, whether our tourist friend had managed to feel as disappointed as he had expected he would be with the Pont du Gard.

It looked absolutely sublime as one retreated from it on the homeward way; its towering arches rearing themselves tier above tier, like some dauntless human life lived steadily for a great purpose. And the storms of centuries have not been able to touch its splendour, though for ever they assail it—rain and sun, rain and sun, as the ProvenÇal children sing—