1936 On the Continent

sitting there, and will be almost sorry to have to take the road back again into the town.
    If you like walking, it is worth your while walking to Orange from Avignon. The country is lovely and the silence after the bustle and noise of a Provençal town is just what is wanted to enable your impressions to get sorted out before new ones come piling on to them.
    Orange was a favourite town of Shelley’s and you will see why immediately. Anyone so soaked as he was in classical art is bound to find it irresistible. It is not often one gets the chance of seeing a Roman theatre in really good preservation, and that is one of Orange’s chief attractions. In fact, plays are still given in the old open-air theatre, and if you can arrange to be there when there is a play on, I need hardly say, don’t miss it.
    The Triumphal Arch of Tiberius is there too, and one of the very finest of its kind. Despite yourself, you’ll probably be reminded of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris,and if you’re not careful, you may even find yourself saying: “What a tiny little thing, compared with …!” If you do feel that temptation come over you, remember that Queen Victoria herself, the first time she saw the Triumphal Arch of Orange, exclaimed: “As soon as I get to Paris, I shall go to the Invalides and tell Napoleon that the Triumphal Arch in Orange is infinitely grander than the one he put up in Paris!” She was right, and I’m sure you’ll agree with her, if you really use your eyes.
ARLES—MONTMAJOUR—LES-BAUX
    Avignon is the town I admire most in Provence. Arles is the town I love most.
    Perhaps one of the agreeable things about it to the man jaded with living in a big capital or big modern city is the fact that although it used to be one of the most important and wealthiest cities in the South of France, it has no longer any importance at all industrially and commercially. The people there just carry on in incomparable surroundings, impregnated with the history of Rome and medieval Europe, doing small jobs and being happy about it. What a relief!
    Arles is another place that I am almost inclined to leave it to you to discover. It is a place to browse in, to stand and stare in. But there are so many unique things of beauty and interest, that I must mention some of them.
    First and foremost, there is the old Cathedral of Saint Trophime, perhaps the finest Romanesque church in the whole of Southern France, dating in parts from the seventh century. The main portal is just a riot of lovely carving, not quite so riotous as the portals of Chartres, but reminiscent of them nevertheless. When you enter, after that first glimpse of intricate medieval carving, the contrast of the interior is like a sudden plunge into cold water. It is utterly plain. Massive pillars supporting squat, rounded arches—the whole church seems to be made up of huge slabs of rounded stone. But the beauty of that simplicity! Sit in that dim, almost grim, atmosphere a moment, and let the inspiration of it get hold of your heart. Then another abrupt contrast! Out through a side door and through a dark passage and you are suddenly confronted with one of the most gracefullittle cloisters in the world. Again the intricate ornament, and again the sunshine, striking brightly down on the green patch of grass in the middle. You will want to come there again and again, and repeat
ad infinitum
this succession of sharply contrasting lovelinesses.
The Roman Amphitheatre
    Another unforgettable impression Arles will give you is of the Roman amphitheatre. I like it better myself than the one at Nîmes, though the latter is in better condition. It is a striking sight, this half-ruined arena which will seat some 25,000 spectators. The best way to visit it is to go there when it is in use, in the evening sometime, when the young men of Arles go there to have a bit of fun with the bulls. I am not asking you to a bull-fight—though there are bull-fights in Arles as well as in Nîmes—but to the swift and thrilling game the Arlesians play when they send the young bulls, or more usually young cows, into the arena with cockades between their shoulders and padded horns, and run and shout and dart around the flurried and angry animal in their efforts to pluck the cockade off and carry it away as a trophy. The arena is only semi-lighted, and the people in the arena and looking on really seem to belong intimately to those old walls and worn stone steps, as if there had never been any