In a solemn, shady street, I found a decentish hotel, not much above the rank of an auberge, and where I was about as lonely as in the vast caravansary at Bagnerre. The landlord himself--a staid, decent man--waited at my solitary dinner.
"Monsieur," he said, "is an artist, or a poet?"
"Because nobody else ever came to Aigues-Mortes--no traveller ever turned aside across the marshes, to visit their poor old decayed town. There was no trade, no _commis voyageurs_. The people of Nismes and Montpellier were afraid of the fever; and even if they were not, why should they come there? It was no place for pleasure on a holiday--a man would as soon think of amusing himself in a hospital or a morgue, as in Aigues-Mortes."
I inquired more particularly about the fever, for I felt it difficult to conceive how people could continue to remain in a place cursed by nature with a perpetual chronic plague. My host informed me that those who lived well and copiously, were well clothed, well lodged, and under no necessity to be out early and late among the marshes, fared tolerably. They might have an ague-fit now and then, but when once well-seasoned they did pretty well. It was the poorer class who suffered, particularly in spring and autumn, when vegetation was forming and withering, and the steaming mists came out thickest over the fens. People seldom died with the first attack; but the subtle disease hung about them, and returned again and again, and wore, and tugged, and exhausted their energies--kept nibbling, in fact, at body and soul, till, in too many cases, the disease-besieged man surrendered, and his soul marched out. I asked again, then, how the poor people remained in such a hot-bed of pestilence? "_Que voulez vous_," was the reply--"the greater part can't help it; they were born here, and they have a place here;--at Nismes, or Marseilles, or Montpellier, they would have no place. Besides, they are accustomed to it; they look upon fevers as one of the conditions of their lives, like eating and drinking; and, besides, they have no energy for a change. The stuff has been taken out of them; you will see what a sallow, worn-out people we have at Aigues-Mortes. They can get a living here, but they would be overwhelmed anywhere else."