I learn from Murray that this little
temple, of the period of Augustus, "was reduced to its present state of
ruin in 1577;" the moment at which the towns-people, threatened with a
siege by the troops of the crown, partly demolished it, lest it should
serve as a cover to the enemy. The remains are very fragmentary, but they
serve to show that the place was lovely. I spent half an hour in it on a
perfect Sunday morning (it is enclosed by a high grille, carefully tended,
and has a warden of its own), and with the help of my imagination tried to
reconstruct a little the aspect of things in the Gallo-Roman days.
I do wrong, perhaps, to say that I tried; from a flight so deliberate I
should have shrunk. But there was a certain contagion of antiquity in the
air; and among the ruins of baths and temples, in the very spot where the
aqueduct that crosses the Garden in the wondrous manner I had seen
discharged itself, the picture of a splendid paganism seemed vaguely to
glow. Roman baths--Roman baths; those words alone were a scene.
Everything was changed; I was strolling in a jardin francais; the bosky
slope of the Mont Cavalier (a very modest mountain), hanging over the
place, is crowded with a shapeless tower, which is as likely to be of
medieval as of antique origin; and yet, as I leaned on the parapet of one
of the fountains, where a flight of curved steps (a hemicycle, as the
French say) descended into a basin full of dark, cool recesses, where the
slabs of the Roman foundations gleam through the clear green water--as in
this attitude I surrendered myself to contemplation and reverie, it seemed
to me that I touched for a moment the ancient world.
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