* * * * *
The weather the next day was equally fair, so that it seemed an imprudence
not to make sure of Aigues-Mortes. Nimes itself could wait; at a pinch, I
could attend to Nimes in the rain. It was my belief that Aigues-Mortes was
a little gem, and it is natural to desire that gems should have an
opportunity to sparkle. This is an excursion of but a few hours, and there
is a little friendly, familiar, dawdling train that will convey you, in
time for a noonday breakfast, to the small dead town where the blest Saint
Louis twice embarked for the crusades. You may get back to Nimes for
dinner; the run is of about an hour.
I found the little journey charming, and looked out of the carriage
window, on my right, at the distant Cevennes, covered with tones of amber
and blue, and, all around, at vineyards red with the touch of October. The
grapes were gone, but the plants had a color of their own. Within a
certain distance of Aigues-Mortes they give place to wide salt-marshes,
traversed by two canals; and over this expanse the train rumbles slowly
upon a narrow causeway, failing for some time, tho you know you are near
the object of your curiosity, to bring you to sight of anything but the
horizon.
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