Chapter 30

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 ill-concealed dis-
approval; 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, I
wished 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
straight-nosed 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 ill-proportioned 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. I
think 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 pic-
ture, 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 pro-
vincial 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 mud-colored stream slip-
ping 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 dis-
comfited Dogberry. I remember now that this hotel
was the one (whichever that may be) which has the
fragment of a Gallo-Roman portico inserted into one
of its angles. I had chosen it for the sake of this ex-
ceptional ornament. It was damp and dark, and the
floors felt gritty to the feet; it was an establishment at
which the dreadful _gras-double_ might have appeared