" Stendhal found
it amusing to write in the character of a commis-voyageur, and sometimes
it occurs to his reader that he really was one.
Arles and Les Baux
By Henry James
[Footnote: From "A Little Tour in France." By special arrangement with,
and by permission of, the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin Co. Copyright,
1884.]
There are two shabby old inns at Arles, which compete closely for your
custom. I mean by this that if you elect to go to the Hotel du Forum, the
Hotel du Nord, which is placed exactly beside it (at a right angle),
watches your arrival with ill-concealed disapproval; and if you take the
chances of its neighbor, the Hotel du Forum seems to glare at you
invidiously from all its windows and doors. I forget which of these
establishments I selected; whichever it was, I wished very much that it
had been the other.
The two stand together on the Place des Hommes, a little public square of
Arles, which somehow quite misses its effect. As a city, indeed, Arles
quite misses its effect in every way; and if it is a charming place, as I
think it is, I can hardly tell the reason why.
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