It was a pleasure to feel one's self in Provence again,the land where the silvergray earth is impregnated with the light of the sky.To celebrate the event,as soon as I arrived at Nimes I engaged a caleche to convey me to the Pont du Gard.The day was yet young,and it was perfectly fair;it appeared well,for a longish drive,to take advantage,without delay,of such security.After I had left the town I became more intimate with that Provencal charm which I had already enjoyed from the window of the train,and which glowed in the sweet sunshine and the white rocks,and lurked in the smokepuffs of the little olives.The olivetrees in Provence are half the landscape.They are neither so tall,so stout,nor so richly contorted as I have seen them beyond the Alps;but this mild colorless bloom seems the very texture of the country.The road from Nimes,for a distance of fifteen miles,is superb;broad enough for an army,and as white and firm as a dinnertable.
It stretches away over undulations which suggest a kind of harmony;and in the curves it makes through the wide,free country,where there is never a hedge or a wall,and the detail is always exquisite,there is something majestic,almost processional.Some twenty minutes before I reached the little inn that marks the termination of the drive,my vehicle met with an accident which just missed being serious,and which engaged the attention of a gentleman,who,followed by his groom and mounted on a strikingly handsome horse happened to ride up at the moment.This young man,who,with his good looks and charming manner,might have stepped out of a novel of Octave Feuillet,gave me some very intelligent advice in reference to one of my horses that had been injured,and was so good as to accompany me to the inn,with the resources of which he was acquainted,to see that his recommendations were carried out.The result of our interview was that he invited me to come and look at a small but ancient chateau in the neighborhood,which he had the happiness not the greatest in the world,he intimated to inhabit,and at which I engaged to present myself after I should have spent an hour at the Pont du Gard.For the moment,when we separated,I gave all my attention to that great structure.You are very near it before you see it;the ravine it spans suddenly opens and exhibits the picture.The scene at this point grows extremely beautiful.The ravine is the valley of the Gardon,which the road from Nimes has followed some time without taking account of it,but which,exactly at the right distance from the aqueduct,deepens and expands,and puts on those characteristics which are best suited to give it effect.The gorge becomes romantic,still,and solitary,and,with its white rocks and wild shrubbery,hangs over the clear,colored river,in whose slow course there is here and there a deeper pool.
