St. Remy itself--birthplace of Nostradamus, maker of powders and
prophecies--was charming in the sunlight, with its straight avenue of
trees like the pillars of a long gray and green corridor in a vast
palace; but we swept on toward the "Plateau des Antiquities," up a
steep slope with St. Remy the modern at our backs; then suddenly I
found myself crying out with delight at sight of the splendid Triumphal
Archway and the gracious Monument we had come out to see.
Both looked more Greek than Roman, but that was because Greek workmen
helped to build them for Julius Caesar, when he determined that posterity
should not forget his defeat of great Vercingetorix, and should do
justice to the memory of Marius.
When I was small I used to dislike poor Vercingetorix, and be glad that
he had to surrender, so that I might be rid of him, owing to the
dreadful difficulty of pronouncing his name; but when we had got out of
the car, and I saw him on the archway, a tall, carved captive, who had
kept his head through all the centuries, while Caesar (with a hand on the
prisoner's shoulder) had lost his, my heart softened to him for the
first time.
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