THE PONT DU GARD
"Qui donc disait qu'il n'y a ni fraicheur ni ombre en Provence!
Il semble y avoir là-bas dans le tortueux lointain de la
rivière, un infini de rêverie, un paradis melancolique....
Je contemple la noble structure du Pont Géant, ces arcades
silencieuses qui semblent dévorer de l'azur."
PAUL MARIÉTON.
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:--
[Illustration: THE PONT DU GARD.
_By E. M. Synge._]
"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--
"'Coume au mas, coume au tems de
Moun Paire, ai! ai! ai!'"
("As at a farm in the time of my father, Alas, alas, alas!")
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.
[Illustration: THE ROMAN TOUR MAGNE, NIMES, FROM THE FOUNTAIN GARDEN.
_By Joseph Pennell._]
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--
"Plou, plou, souléio
Sus lou pont de Marseio."