第68章

There are two shabby old inns at Arles,which compete closely for your custom.I mean by this that if you elect to go to the Hotel du Forum,the Hotel du Nord,which is placed exactly beside it (at a right angle)watches your arrival with illconcealed disapproval;and if you take the chances of its neighbor,the Hotel du Forum seems to glare at you invidiously from all its windows and doors.I forget which of these establishments I selected;whichever it was,Iwished very much that,it had been the other.The two stand together on the Place des Hommes,a little public square of Arles,which somehow quite misses its effect.As a city,indeed,Arles quite misses its effect in every way;and if it is a charming place,as I think it is,I can hardly tell the reason why.The straightnosed Arlesiennes account for it in some degree;and the remainder may be charged to the ruins of the arena and the theatre.Beyond this,I remember with affection the illproportioned little Place des Hommes;not at all monumental,and given over to puddles and to shabby cafes.I recall with tenderness the tortuous and featureless streets,which looked like the streets of a village,and were paved with villanous little sharp stones,making all exercise penitential.Consecrated by association is even a tiresome walk that I took the evening I arrived,with the purpose of obtaining a view of the Rhone.I had been to Arles before,years ago,and it seemed to me that I remembered finding on the banks of the stream some sort of picture.Ithink that on the evening of which I speak there was a watery moon,which it seemed to me would light up the past as well as the present.But I found no picture,and I scarcely found the Rhone at all.I lost my way,and there was not a creature in the streets to whom I could appeal.Nothing could be more provincial than the situation of Arles at ten o'clock at night.At last I arrived at a kind of embankment,where I could see the great mudcolored stream slipping along in the soundless darkness.It had come on to rain,I know not what had happened to the moon,and the whole place was anything but gay.It was not what I had looked for;what I had looked for was in the irrecoverable past.I groped my way back to the inn over the infernal cailloux,feeling like a discomfited Dogberry.I remember now that this hotel was the one (whichever that may be)which has the fragment of a GalloRoman portico inserted into one of its angles.I had chosen it for the sake of this exceptional ornament.It was damp and dark,and the floors felt gritty to the feet;it was an establishment at which the dreadful grasdouble might have appeared at the table d'hote,as it had done at Narbonne.Nevertheless,I was glad to get back to it;and nevertheless,too,and this is the moral of my simple anecdote,my pointless little walk (I don't speak of the pavement)suffuses itself,as I look back upon it,with a romantic tone.And in relation to the inn,I suppose I had better mention that I am well aware of the inconsistency of a person who dislikes the modern caravansary,and yet grumbles when he finds a hotel of the superannuated sort.One ought to choose,it would seem,and make the best of either alternative.The two old taverns at Arles are quite unimproved;such as they must have been in the infancy of the modern world,when Stendhal passed that way,and the lumbering diligence deposited him in the Place des Hommes,such in every detail they are today.Vieilles auberges de France,one ought to enjoy their gritty floors and greasy windowpanes.Let it be put on record,therefore,that I have been,I won't say less comfortable,but at least less happy,at better inns.

To be really historic,I should have mentioned that before going to look for the Rhone I had spent part of the evening on the opposite side of the little place,and that I indulged in this recreation for two definite reasons.One of these was that I had an opportunity of conversing at a cafe with an attractive young Englishman,whom I had met in the afternoon at Tarascon,and more remotely,in other years,in London;the other was that there sat enthroned behind the counter a splendid mature Arlesienne,whom my companion and I agreed that it was a rare privilege to contemplate.There is no rule of good manners or morals which makes it improper,at a cafe,to fix one's eyes upon the dame de comptoir;the lady is,in the nature of things,a part of your consommation.We were therefore feee to admire without restriction the handsomest person I had ever seen give change for a fivefranc piece.She was a large quiet woman,who would never see forty again;of an intensely feminine type,yet wonderfully rich and robust,and full of a certain physical nobleness.Though she was not really old,she was antique,and she was very grave,even a little sad.