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 complete 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 brownish-yellow
(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, brownish-yellow in hue, and mantled in scarlet Virginia-creeper. One of these towers, reputed to be of Saracenic origin, is isolated, and is only the more effective; the other