A LITTLE TOUR IN FRANCE.
221
XXXII.
I find that I declared one evening, in a little
journal I was keeping at that time, that I was weary
of writing (I was probably very sleepy), but that it
was essential I should make some note of my visit to
Les Baux. I must have gone to sleep as soon as I
had recorded this necessity, for I search my small diary
in vain for any account of that enchanting spot. I
have nothing but my memory to consult,—a memory
which is fairly good in regard to a general impression,
but is terribly infirm in the matter of details and
items. We knew in advance, my companion and I,
that Les Baux was a pearl of picturesqueness; for
had we not read as much in the handbook of Murray,
who has the testimony of an English nobleman as to
its attractions? We also knew that it lay some miles
from Aries, on the crest of the Alpilles, the craggy
little mountains which, as I stood on the breezy plat-
form of Beaucaire, formed to my eye a charming, if
somewhat remote, background to Tarascon; this as-
surance having been given us by the landlady of the
inn at Aries, of whom we hired a rather lumbering
conveyance. The weather was not promising, but it
proved a good day for the mediaeval Pompeii; a gray,
melancholy, moist, but rainless, or almost rainless
day, with nothing in the sky to flout, as the poet
says,   the  dejected  and pulverized past.    The  drive