What there is of life centres in the Forum, noisy with the stamping of the fly-tormented cab horses, who stand round the little square waiting to be hired. Two hotels, four or five cafés and bars, two hairdresser’s shops, two newspaper and book shops, and one devoted to the sale of antique curios, make up the Place du Forum. Although the traffic in the town is small, it creates a deafening noise as it passes over the cobble-stoned streets. So familiar are the inhabitants with classic beauty, daily before their eyes in dying monuments and living womenfolk, that they see no incongruity in the statuettes of the “Venus of Arles” or other classic figures being used by shopkeepers to illustrate the application of belts and surgical appliances and even modern clothing. Extremes meet in Arles; beauty and decay exist side by side; art and dirt ever did go hand in hand; and the loveliest women in the whole of France, perhaps in the world to-day, reek of the most obnoxious odour the nostril ever encountered, the pungent smell of garlic. NÎMES VII NÎMES Nîmes, unlike its contemporary and neighbour Arles, has contrived to flourish even in a prosaic and commercial age. Its industries, light and refined in character, the weaving of silk and the pressing of the grapes, are not too violently opposed to its ancient traditions of beauty and luxurious living. Like Arles, it has an early origin, but of a religious rather than a mundane order. The Celtic inhabitants of Gaul fixed upon the site, and gave it a name which in the language of its founders signifies a spring. The Romans early in the first century appreciated and coveted the spot, which was soon occupied and named Nemausus. The mysterious spring that wells up at the foot of the little mountain Cavalier, sacred to the ancient Celts, assumed great importance in the estimation of the newcomers. Its fame spread far and wide, and much of the wealth and ingenuity of Rome was spent in building and beautifying the city that rapidly grew up from the ruins of the Celtic town which nestled round the spot where the “God of the fountain” resided and was worshipped. [Illustration: STREET IN NIMES] The Celtic tribes, who were dispossessed or conquered by the invading Romans, were far from being untutored savages. They knew and bartered with the Greek colonists at Arles and Marseilles, and Celtic coins and bronzes discovered in the neighbourhood of Nîmes give abundant evidence of strong Hellenic influences. The wondrous spring which gave rise to the ancient city still gushes out in an inexhaustible volume of water, which finds its outlet through canals into the Vistre. The Baths, built by Agrippa in the first century at the foot of the hill, were supplied by the sacred well, and their [Illustration: ROASTING COFFEE. NIMES.]