I hasten to add that every dark hole at Villeneuve is called a dungeon;and I believe it is well established that in this manner,in almost all old castles and towers,the sensibilities of the modern tourist are unscrupulously played upon.There were plenty of black holes in the Middle Ages that were not dungeons,but household receptacles of various kinds;and many a tear dropped in pity for the groaning captive has really been addressed to the spirits of the larder and the faggotnook.For all this,there are some very bad corners in the towers of Villeneuve,so that I was not wide of the mark when I began to think again,as Ihad often thought before,of the stoutness of the human composition in the Middle Ages,and the tranquillity of nerve of people to whom the groaning captive and the blackness of a "living tomb"were familiar ideas,which did not at all interfere with their happiness or their sanity.Our modern nerves,our irritable sympathies,our easy discomforts and fears,make one think (in some relations)less respectfully of human nature.
Unless,indeed,it be true,as I have heard it maintained,that in the Middle Ages every one did go mad,every one was mad.The theory that this was a period of general insanity is not altogether indefensible.
Within the old walls of its immense abbey the town of Villeneuve has built itself a rough faubourg;the fragments with which the soil was covered having been,I suppose,a quarry of material.There are no streets;the small,shabby houses,almost hovels,straggle at random over the uneven ground.The only important feature is a convent of cloistered nuns,who have a large garden (always within the walls)behind their house,and whose doleful establishment you look down into,or down at simply,from the battlements of the citadel.One or two of the nuns were passing in and out of the house;they wore gray robes,with a bright red cape.I thought their situation most provincial.I came away,and wandered a little over the base of the hill,outside the walls.Small white stones cropped through the grass,over which low olivetrees were scattered.The afternoon had a yellow brightness.I sat down under one of the little trees,on the grass,the delicate gray branches were not much above my head,and rested,and looked at Avignon across the Rhone.It was very soft,very still and pleasant,though I am not sure it was all I once should have expected of that combination of elements:an old city wall for a background,a canopy of olives,and,for a couch,the soil of Provence.
When I came back to Avignon the twilight was already thick;but I walked up to the Rocher des Doms.Here I again had the benefit of that amiable moon which had already lighted up for me so many romantic scenes.She was full,and she rose over the Rhone,and made it look in the distance like a silver serpent.I remember saying to myself at this moment,that it would be a beautiful evening to walk round the walls of Avignon,the remarkable walls,which challenge comparison with those of Carcassonne and AiguesMortes,and which it was my duty,as an observer of the picturesque,to examine with some attention.Presenting themselves to that silver sheen,they could not fail to be impressive.So,at least,Isaid to myself;but,unfortunately,I did not believe what I said.It is a melancholy fact that the walls of Avignon had never impressed me at all,and I had never taken the trouble to make the circuit.They are continuous and complete,but for some mysterious reason they fail of their effect.This is partly because they are very low,in some places almost absurdly so;being buried in new accumulations of soil,and by the filling in of the moat up to their middle.Then they have been too well tended;they not only look at present very new,but look as if they had never been old.The fact that their extent is very much greater makes them more of a curiosity than those of Carcassonne;but this is exactly,as the same time,what is fatal to their pictorial unity.With their thirtyseven towers and seven gates they lose themselves too much to make a picture that will compare with the admirable little vignette of Carcassonne.I may mention,now that I am speaking of the general mass of Avignon,that nothing is more curious than the way in which,viewed from a distance,it is all reduced to nought by the vast bulk of the palace of the Popes.From across the Rhone,or from the train,as you leave the place,this great gray block is all Avignon;it seems to occupy the whole city,extensive,with its shrunken population,as the city is.