On my way from Nimes to Arles,I spent three hours at Tarascon;chiefly for the love of Alphonse Daudet,who has written nothing more genial than "Les Aventures Prodigieuses de Taitarin,"and the story of the "siege"of the bright,dead little town (a mythic siege by the Prussians)in the "Conies du Lundi."In the introduction which,for the new edition of his works,he has lately supplied to "Tartarin,"the author of this extravagant but kindly satire gives some account of the displeasure with which he has been visited by the ticklish Tarasconnais.Daudet relates that in his attempt to shed a humorous light upon some of the more erratic phases of the Provencal character,he selected Tarascon at a venture;not because the temperament of its natives is more vainglorious than that of their neighbors,or their rebellion against the "despotism of fact"more marked,but simply because he had to name a particular Provencal city.Tartarin is a hunter of lions and charmer of women,a true "produit du midi,"as Daudet says,who has the most fantastic and fabulous adventures.He is a minimized Don Quixote,with much less dignity,but with equal good faith;and the story of his exploits is a little masterpiece of the light comical.The Tarasconnais,however,declined to take the joke,and opened the vials of their wrath upon the mocking child of Nimes,who would have been better employed,they doubtless thought,in showing up the infirmities of his own family.I am bound to add that when I passed through Tarascon they did not appear to be in the least out of humor.Nothing could have been brighter,softer,more suggestive of amiable indifference,than the picture it presented to my mind.It lies quietly beside the Rhone,looking across at Beaucaire,which seems very distant and independent,and tacitly consenting to let the castle of the good King Rene of Anjou,which projects very boldly into the river,pass for its most interesting feature.
The other features are,primarily,a sort of vivid sleepiness in the aspect of the place,as if the September noon (it had lingered on into October)lasted longer there than elsewhere;certain low arcades,which make the streets look gray and exhibit empty vistas;and a very curious and beautiful walk beside the Rhone,denominated the Chaussee,a long and narrow causeway,densely shaded by two rows of magnificent old trees,planted in its embankment,and rendered doubly effective,at the moment I passed over it,by a little train of collegians,who had been taken out for mild exercise by a pair of young priests.Lastly,one may say that a striking element of Tarascon,as of any town that lies on the Rhone,is simply the Rhone itself:the big brown flood,of uncertain temper,which has never taken time to forget that it is a child of the mountain and the glacier,and that such an origin carries with it great privileges.Later,at Avignon,I observed it in the exercise of these privileges,chief among which was that of frightening the good people of the old papal city half out of their wits.
The chateau of King Rene serves today as the prison of a district,and the traveller who wishes to look into it must obtain his permission at the Mairie of Tarascon.If he have had a certain experience of French manners,his application will be accompanied with the forms of a considerable obsequiosity,and in this case his request will be granted as civilly as it has been made.The castle has more of the air of a severely feudal fortress than I should suppose the period of its construction (the first half of the fifteenth century)would have warranted;being tremendously bare and perpendicular,and constructed for comfort only in the sense that it was arranged for defence.It is a square and ****** mass,composed of small yellow stones,and perched on a pedestal of rock which easily commands the river.The building has the usual circular towers at the corners,and a heavy cornice at the top,and immense stretches of sunscorched wall,relieved at wide intervals by small windows,heavily crossbarred.It has,above all,an extreme steepness of aspect;I cannot express it otherwise.The walls are as sheer and inhospitable as precipices.The castle has kept its large moat,which is now a hollow filled with wild plants.To this tall fortress the good Rene retired in the middle of the fifteenth century,finding it apparently the most substantial thing left him in a dominion which had included Naples and Sicily,Lorraine and Anjou.He had been a muchtried monarch and the sport of a various fortune,fighting half his life for thrones he didn't care for,and exalted only to be quickly cast down.Provence was the country of his affection,and the memory of his troubles did not prevent him from holding a joyous court at Tarascon and at Aix.He finished the castle at Tarascon,which had been begun earlier in the century,finished it,I suppose,for consistency's sake,in the manner in which it had originally been designed rather than in accordance with the artistic tastes that formed the consolation of his old age.He was a painter,a writer,a dramatist,a modern dilettante,addicted to private theatricals.There is something very attractive in the image that he has imprinted on the page of history.He was both clever and kind,and many reverses and much suffering had not imbittered him nor quenched his faculty of enjoyment.He was fond of his sweet Provence,and his sweet Provence has been grateful;it has woven a light tissue of legend around the memory of the good King Rene.