The spot is,
in short, one of the sweetest legacies of the ancient world; and there
seems no profanation in the fact that by day it is open to the good people
of Arles, who use it to pass, by no means, in great numbers, from one part
of the town to the other; treading the old marble floor, and brushing, if
need be, the empty benches. This familiarity does not kill the place
again; it makes it, on the contrary, live a little--makes the present and
the past touch each other.
If I called Les Baux a city, it was not that I was stretching a point in
favor of the small spot which to-day contains but a few dozen inhabitants.
The history of the place is as extraodinary as its situation. It was not
only a city, but a state; not only a state; but an empire; and on the
crest of its little mountain called itself sovereign of a territory, or at
least of scattered towns and counties, with which its present aspect is
grotesquely out of relation. The lords of Les Baux, in a word, were great
feudal proprietors; and there was a time during which the island of
Sardinia, to say nothing of places nearer home, such as Arles and
Marseilles, paid them homage.
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