The sand,the salt,the dull seaview,surround it with a bright,quiet melancholy.There are fifteen towers and nine gates,five of which are on the southern side,overlooking the water.I walked all round the place three times (it doesn't take long),but lingered most under the southern wall,where the afternoon light slept in the dreamiest,sweetest way.I sat down on an old stone,and looked away to the desolate saltmarshes and the still,shining surface of the etang,and,as I did so,reflected that this was a queer little outoftheworld corner to have been chosen,in the great dominions of either monarch,for that pompous interview which took place,in 1538,between Francis I.
and Charles V.It was also not easy to perceive how Louis IX.,when in 1248and 1270he started for the Holy Land,set his army afloat in such very undeveloped channels.An hour later I purchased in the town a little pamphlet by M.Marius Topin,who undertakes to explain this latter anomaly,and to show that there is water enough in the port,as we may call it by courtesy,to have sustained a fleet of crusaders.I was unable to trace the channel that he points out,but was glad to believe that,as he contends,the sea has not retreated from the town since the thirteenth century.
It was comfortable to think that things are not so changed as that.M.Topin indicates that the other French ports of the Mediterranean were not then disponsibles,and that AiguesMortes was the most eligible spot for an embarkation.
Behind the straight walls and the quiet gates the little town has not crumbled,like the Cite of Carcassonne.It can hardly be said to be alive;but if it is dead it has been very neatly embalmed.The hand of the restorer rests on it constantly;but this artist has not,as at Carcassonne,had miracles to accomplish.
The interior is very still and empty,with small stony,whitewashed streets,tenanted by a stray dog,a stray cat,a stray old woman.In the middle is a little place,with two or three cafes decorated by wide awnings,a little place of which the principal feature is a very bad bronze statue of Saint Louis by Pradier.It is almost as bad as the breakfast I had at the inn that bears the name of that pious monarch.You may walk round the enceinte of AiguesMortes,both outside and in;but you may not,as at Carcassonne,make a portion of this circuit on the chemin de ronde,the little projecting footway attached to the inner face of the battlements.This footway,wide enough only for a single pedestrian,is in the best order,and near each of the gates a flight of steps leads up to it;but a locked gate,at the top of the steps,makes access impossible,or at least unlawful.AiguesMortes,however,has its citadel,an immense tower,larger than any of the others,a little detached,and standing at the northwest angle of the town.I called upon the casernier,the custodian of the walls,and in his absence I was conducted through this big Tour de Constance by his wife,a very mild,meek woman,yellow with the traces of fever and ague,a scourge which,as might be expected in a town whose name denotes "dead waters,"enters freely at the nine gates.The Tour de Constance is of extraordinary girth and solidity,divided into three superposed circular chambers,with very fine vaults,which are lighted by embrasures of prodigious depth,converging to windows little larger than loopholes.The place served for years as a prison to many of the Protestants of the south whom the revocation of the Edict of Nantes had exposed to atrocious penalties,and the annals of these dreadful chambers during the first half of the last century were written in tears and blood.Some of the recorded cases of long confinement there make one marvel afresh at what man has inflicted and endured.In a country in which a policy of extermination was to be put into practice this horrible tower was an obvious resource.
From the battlements at the top,which is surmounted by an old disused lighthouse,you see the little compact rectangular town,which looks hardly bigger than a gardenpatch,mapped out beneath you,and follow the plain configuration of its defences.You take possession of it,and you feel that you will remember it always.