Such, literally speaking, is this delightful little city, which needs to
be seen to tell its full story. It is extraordinarily pictorial, and if it
is a very small sister of Carcassonne, it has at least the essential
features of the family. Indeed, it is even more like an image and less
like a reality than Carcassonne; for by position and prospect it seems
even more detached from the life of the present day. It is true that
Aigues-Mortes does a little business; it sees certain bags of salt piled
into barges which stand in a canal beside it, and which carry their cargo
into actual places. But nothing could well be more drowsy and desultory
than this industry as I saw it practised, with the aid of two or three
brown peasants and under the eye of a solitary douanier who strolled on
the little quay beneath the western wall. "C'est bien plaisant, c'est bien
paisible," said this worthy man, with whom I had some conversation; and
pleasant and peaceful is the place indeed, tho the former of these
epithets may suggest an element of gayety in which Aigues-Mortes is
deficient.
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