第78章

It was the morning after this,I think (a certain Saturday),that when I came out of the Hotel de l'Europe,which lies in a shallow concavity just within the city gate that opens on the Rhone,came out to look at the sky from the little place before the inn,and see how the weather promised for the obligatory excursion to Vaucluse,I found the whole town in a terrible taking.I say the whole town advisedly;for every inhabitant appeared to have taken up a position on the bank of the river,or on the uppermost parts of the promenade of the Doms,where a view of its course was to be obtained.It had risen surprisingly in the night,and the good people of Avignon had reason to know what a rise of the Rhone might signify.

The town,in its lower portions,is quite at the mercy of the swollen waters;and it was mentioned to me that in 1856the Hotel de l'Europe,in its convenient hollow,was flooded up to within a few feet of the ceiling of the diningroom,where the long board which had served for so many a table d'hote floated disreputably,with its legs in the air.On the present occasion the mountains of the Ardeche,where it had been raining for a month,had sent down torrents which,all that fine Friday night,by the light of the innocentlooking moon,poured themselves into the Rhone and its tributary,the Durance.The river was enormous,and continued to rise;and the sight was beautiful and horrible.The water in many places was already at the base of the city walls;the quay,with its parapet just emerging,being already covered.

The country,seen from the Plateau des Doms,resembled a vast lake,with protrusions of trees,houses,bridges,gates.The people looked at it in silence,as I had seen people before on the occasion of a rise of the Arno,at Pisa appear to consider the prospects of an inundation."Il monte;il monte toujours,"there was not much said but that.It was a general holiday,and there was an air of wishing to profit,for sociability's sake,by any interruption of the commonplace (the popular mind likes "a change,"and the element of change mitigates the sense of disaster);but the affair was not otherwise a holiday.Suspense and anxiety were in the air,and it never is pleasant to be reminded of the helplessness of man.In the presence of a loosened river,with its ravaging,unconquerable volume,this impression is as strong as possible;and as I looked at the deluge which threatened to make an island of the Papal palace,I perceived that the scourge of water is greater than the scourge of fire.

A blaze may be quenched,but where could the flame be kindled that would arrest the quadrupled 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 sentimental tourist.Would the prospective inundation interfere with my visit to Vaucluse,or make it imprudent to linger twentyfour 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 undertaking it.This why I was vexed at the Rhone if vexed I was for representing as impracticable an excursion which I cared nothing about.How little Icared was manifest from my inaction on former occasions.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 Ihad 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 headspring of the Sorgues.When the critical moment arrived,the clouds were hanging over Avignon like distended waterbags,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,as I went,by hoping that with the return of insight I should be glad to have seen Vaucluse.Light has descended upon me since then,and I declare that the excursion is in every way to be recommended.

The place makes a great impression,quite apart from Petrarch and Laura.

There was no rain;there was only,all the afternoon,a mild,moist wind,and a sky magnificently black,which made a repoussoir for the paler cliffs of the fountain.The road,by train,crosses a flat,expressionless country,toward the range of arid hills which lie to the east of Avignon,and which spring (says Murray)from the mass of the MontVentoux.At IslesurSorgues,at the end of about an hour,the foreground becomes much more animated and the distance much more (or perhaps I should say much less)actual.