Chapter 35 - Page 2

Rhone?
For the population of Avignon a good deal was at
stake, and I am almost ashamed to confess that in the
midst of the public alarm I considered the situation
from the point of view of the little projects of a senti-
mental tourist. Would the prospective inundation inter-
fere with my visit to Vaucluse, or make it imprudent
to linger twenty-four hours longer at Avignon? I must
add that the tourist was not perhaps, after all, so
sentimental. I have spoken of the pilgrimage to the
shrine of Petrarch as obligatory, and that was, in fact,
the light in which it presented itself to me; all the
more that I had been twice at Avignon without under-
taking it. This why I was vexed at the Rhone - if
vexed I was - for representing as impracticable an ex-
cursion which I cared nothing about. How little I
cared was manifest from my inaction on former oc-
casions. I had a prejudice against Vancluse, against
Petrarch, even against the incomparable Laura. I was
sure that the place was cockneyfied and threadbare,
and I had never been able to take an interest in the
poet and the lady. I was sure that I had known many
women as charming and as handsome as she, about
whom much less noise had been made; and I was
convinced that her singer was factitious and literary,
and that there are half a dozen stanzas in Wordsworth
that speak more to the soul than the whole collection
of his _fioriture_. This was the crude state of mind in
which I determined to go, at any risk, to Vaucluse.
Now that I think it over, I seem to remember that I
had hoped, after all, that the submersion of the roads
would forbid it. Since morning the clouds had gathered
again, and by noon they were so heavy that there was
every prospect of a torrent. It appeared absurd to
choose such a time as this to visit a fountain - a
fountain which, would be indistinguishable in the
general cataract. Nevertheless I took a vow that if
at noon the rain should not have begun to descend
upon Avignon I would repair to the head-spring of the
Sorgues. When the critical moment arrived, the clouds
were hanging over Avignon like distended water-bags,
which only needed a prick to empty themselves. The
prick was not given, however; all nature was too much
occupied in following the aberration of the Rhone to
think of playing tricks elsewhere. Accordingly, I started
for the station in a spirit which, for a tourist who
sometimes had prided himself on his unfailing supply
of sentiment, was shockingly perfunctory.

"For tasks in hours of insight willed
May be in hours of gloom fulfilled."

I remembered these lines of Matthew Arnold (written,
apparently, in an hour of gloom), and carried out the
idea,