The children of that marriage left behind them a graveyard to tell their history. Desecrated and despoiled though it is, still the great Arlesian cemetery bears unique witness as well to the civilised prosperity of the Provencal Greeks as to their decline under the influences which formed the modern Provence. Irreverence towards the dead--a comparatively new human characteristic--can nowhere be more fully observed than in the _Elysii Campi_ of Arles. The love of destruction has been doing its worst there for some centuries. To any king coming to the town the townsfolk would make a gift of a priceless treasure stolen from their dead ancestors, while the peasant who wanted a cattle trough, or the mason in need of a door lintel, went unrebuked and carried off what thing suited him. Not even the halo of Christian romance could save the Alyscamps. The legend is well known. St Trefume, man or myth, summoned the bishops of Gaul and Provence to the consecration of this burial-ground. When they were assembled and the rite was to be performed, each one shrank from taking on himself so high an office; then Christ appeared in their midst and made the sign of the cross over the sleeping-place of the pagan dead. Out of the countless stories of the meeting of the new faith and the old--stories too often of a nascent or an expiring fanaticism, there is not one which breathes a gentler spirit. It was long believed, that the devil had little power with the dead that lay in Arles. Hence the multitude of sepulchres which Dante saw _ove 'l Rodano stagna_. Princes and archbishops and an innumerable host of minor folks left instructions that they might be buried in the Alyscamps. A simple mode of transport was adopted by the population of the higher Rhone valley. The body, bound to a raft or bier, was committed to the current of the river, with a sum of money called the "drue de mourtalage" attached to it. These silent travellers always reached their destination in safety, persons appointed to the task being in readiness to receive them. The sea water washed the limits of the cemetery in the days of the Greeks, who looked across the dark, calm surface of the immense lagune and thought of dying as of embarkation upon a voyage--not the last voyage of the body down the river of life, but the first voyage of the soul over the sea of death--and they wished their dead [Greek: euploi].