The bulls are rarely killed, and indeed often are bulls only in the Irish sense of the term, being domestic and motherly cows. Such an entertainment of course does not supply to the arena that element of the exquisite which I spoke of as wanting. The exquisite at Nimes is mainly represented by the famous Maison Carree. The first impression you receive from this delicate little building, as you stand before it, is that you have already seen it many times. Photographs, engravings, models, medals, have placed it definitely in your eye, so that from the sentiment with which you regard it curiosity and surprise are almost completely, and perhaps deplorably, absent.
Admiration remains, however, admiration of a familiar and even slightly patronizing kind.
Its slender columns, its delicate proportions, its charming compactness, seemed to bring one nearer to the century that built it than the great superpositions of arenas and bridges, and give it the interest that vibrates from one age to another when the note of taste is struck. I saw it first in the evening, in the vague moonlight, which made it look as if it were cast in bronze. Stendhal found it amusing to write in the character of a commis-voyageur , and sometimes it occurs to his reader that he really was one.