"Come, come, Janet," called Mrs. Trescott from below. "The castle waits."
"It has waited some time already," said Inness—"a matter of six or seven centuries, I believe."
"And looks as though it would wait six or seven more," I said, as we stood on the arched bridge admiring the massive walls above.
"It has withstood numerous attacks," said the Professor. "Genoese armies came up this valley more than once to take it, and went back unsuccessful."
"To me it is more especially distinguished by not having been a home of the Lascaris," said Baker.
"To whom, then, did it belong?" said Janet, contemptuously.
We all, in a chorus, answered grandly, "To the Dorias!" (We were so glad to have reached a name we knew.)
The castle crowned the summit of a crag, ruined but imposing; in shape a parallelogram, it had in front square towers, five stories in height, pierced with round-arched windows. It was the finest as well as largest ruin we lately landed Americans had seen, and we went hither and thither with much animation, telling each other all we knew, and much that we did not know, about ruined towers, square towers, drawbridges, moats, donjon keeps, and the like; while Miss Elaine, who had placed herself beside Verney on the knoll where he was sketching, looked on in a kindly patronizing way, as much as to say: "Enjoy yourselves, primitive children of the New World. We of England are familiar with ruins."
Margaret and Lloyd found a seat in one of the ruined windows of the south tower; I stood beside them for a few moments looking at the view. On the north the narrow valley curved and went onward, while over its dark near green rose the glittering snowy peaks so far away. In the south, the blue of the Mediterranean stretched across the mouth of the valley, whose sides were bold and high; the little river gleamed out in spots of silver here and there, and the white belfry of Campo Rosso rose picturesquely against the dark olive forest. Directly under us were the roofs of the village, and the old stone bridge of one high arch. "Do you notice that many of these roofs are flat, with benches, and pots of flowers?" said Lloyd. "You do not see that in Mentone. It is thoroughly Italian."
Janet, Mrs. Trescott, Inness, Baker, and the Professor were up on the highest point of the crag, where the Professor was giving a succinct account of the Guelphs and Ghibellines. His words floated down to us, but to which of those celebrated and eternally quarrelling factions these Dorias belong I regret to say I cannot now remember. But it was evident that he was talking eloquently, and Inness, who was quite distanced, by way of diversion threw pebbles at the north tower.
We came down from the castle after a while, and strolled through the village streets—all of us save Margaret and Lloyd, who remained sitting in their window. Mrs. Trescott, seeing a vaulted entrance, stopped to examine it, and the broad doors being partly open, she peeped within. As there was more vaulting and no one to forbid, she stepped into the old hall, and we all followed her. We were looking at the massive, finely proportioned stairway, when a little girl appeared above gazing down curiously. She was a pretty child of seven or eight, and held some little thumbed school-books under her arm.
"Is this a school?" asked Verney, in Italian.
She nodded shyly, and ran away, but soon returned accompanied by a Sister, or nun, who, with a mixture of politeness and timidity, asked if we wished to see their schools. Of course we wished to see everything, and going up the broad stairway, we were ushered into an unexpected and remarkable apartment.
"We came to see an infant school, and we find a row of noblemen," said Baker. "They must be all the Dorias upon their native heath!"
The "heath" was the wall, upon which, in black frames, were ranged forty-two portraits in a long procession going around three sides of the great room, which must have been fifty feet in length. At the head of the apartment was a picture seven feet square, representing a full-blooming lady in a long-bodied white satin dress, with an extraordinary structure of plumes and pearls on her head, accompanied by a stately little heir in a pink satin court suit, and several younger children. One grim, dark old man in red, farther down the hall, was "Roberto: Seigneur Dolce Acqua. Anno 1270." A dame in yellow brocade, with hoop, ruff, and jewels, and a little curly dog under her arm, was "Brigida: Domina Dolce Acqua. 1290."
"So they carried dogs in that way then as well as now," observed Janet.
The Mother Superior now came in. She informed us that this was the château of the Dorias, built after their castle was destroyed, and occupied by descendants of the family until a comparatively recent period. Its plain exterior, extending across one end of the little square, we had not especially distinguished from the other buildings which joined it, forming the usual continuous wall of the Riviera towns. The château was now a convent and school. There were benches across one side of the large apartment where the village children were already assembled under the black-framed portraits, but there was not much studying that day, I think, save a study of strangers.
"Here is the real treasure," said Verney.
It was a chimney-piece of stone, extending across one end of the room, richly carved with various devices in relief, figures, and ornaments, and a row of heads on shields across the front, now the profile of an old bearded man looking out, and now that of a youth in armor. It was fifteen feet high, and a remarkably fine piece of work.
"Quite thrown away here," said Miss Graves.
"Oh, I don't know; the portraits can see it," replied Janet.
The Mother Superior conducted us all over the château, reserving only the corridor where were her own and the Sisters' apartments. The dignified stone stairway with its broad stone steps extended unchanged to the top of the house.
"In the matter of stairways," I said, "I must acknowledge that our New World ideas are deficient. We have spacious rooms, broad windows, high ceilings, but such a stairway as this is beyond us."
The empty sunny rooms above were gayly painted in fresco. At one end of the house a door opened into a little latticed balcony, into which we stepped, finding ourselves in an adjoining church, high up on the wall at one side of the altar. Here the Sisters came to pray, and as we departed, one of them glided in and knelt down in the dusky corner.
"Perhaps she is going to pray for us," said Inness.
"I am sure we need it," replied Janet, seriously.
In the garret was a Sedan-chair, once elaborately gilded.
"I suppose they went down to Ventimiglia in that," said Baker—"those fine old dames below."
From one of the rooms on the second floor opened a little cell or closet, part of whose flooring had been removed, showing a hollow space beneath following the massive exterior wall.
"Here," said the Mother Superior, "the papers of the family were concealed at the approach of the first Napoleon, and not taken out for a number of years. The flooring has never been replaced."
The Mother Superior spoke only Italian, which Verney translated, much to the envy of the younger men. The Professor was not with us, for as soon as he learned that the place was "papist" he departed, although Inness suggested that the street was papist also, and likewise the very air must be redolent of Rome. But the Professor was an example of "cœlum, non animum, mutant, qui trans mare currunt," and quite determined to be as Protestant in Italy as he was in Connecticut. He would not desert his colors because under a foreign sky, as so many Americans desert them.
The Mother now conducted us to a little square parlor, with south windows opening upon a balcony full of pots of flowers; the walls and ceiling of this little room were glowing with color—paintings in fresco more suited to the Dorias, I fancy, than to the "Sisters of the Snow," for this was the poetical name of the little black-robed band. In this worldly little room we found wine waiting for us, and grapes which were almost raisins: we had never seen them in transition before. The wine was excellent, and Mrs. Trescott partook with much graciousness. After partaking, she employed Verney in translating to the Mother a number of her own characteristic sentences. But Verney must have altered them somewhat en route, for I hardly think the Mother would have remained so calmly placid if she had comprehended that "this whole scene—the grapes, the wine, and the frescos"—reminded Mrs. Trescott of "Cleopatra, and of Sardanapalus and his golden flagons." Presently two of the Sisters entered with coffee which they had prepared for us; after serving it, they retired to a corner, where they stood gently regarding us. Then another entered, and then another, unobtrusively taking their places beside the others. It was interesting to notice the simplicity of their mild gaze; although brown and middle-aged, their expression was like that of little children. When they learned that some of us were from America they were much impressed, and looked at each other silently.
"I suppose it does not seem to them but a little while since Columbus discovered us," said Baker.
At last it was time for us to go: we bade the little group farewell, and left some coins "for their poor."
"Though we may not meet on earth, we shall see you all again in heaven," said the Mother, and all the Sisters bowed assent. They accompanied us down to the outer door, and waved their hands in adieu as we crossed the little square. When, at the other side, we turned to look back, we saw their black skirts retiring up the stairway to their little school.
"Farewell, Sisters of the Snow," said Janet. "May we all so live as to keep that rendezvous you have given us!"
The carriages were now ordered, and Margaret and Lloyd summoned from the castle tower. We were standing at the door of the Desired Inn, collecting our baskets and wraps, when the Professor appeared with a long narrow parcel in his hand. This he stowed away carefully in one of the carriages, changing its position several times, as if anxious it should be carried safely. While he was thus engaged in his absorbed, near-sighted way, Inness came down the stone stairs from the upper chamber, and going across to Janet, who was leaning on the parapet looking at the river, he was on the point of presenting something to her, when his little speech was stopped by the appearance of Baker coming around the corner from the front of the house, with a parcel exactly like his own.
"Two!" cried Inness, bursting into a peal of laughter; and then we saw, as he tore off the paper, that he had the old brass lamp which Janet had admired. Meanwhile Baker had another, the Desired Inn having been evidently equal to the occasion, and to driving a good bargain. Our laughter aroused the Professor, who turned and gazed at our group from the step of the carriage. But having no idea of losing the credit of his unusual gallantry simply because some one else had had the same thought, he now extracted his own parcel and silently extended it.
"A third!" cried Inness. And then we all gave way again.
"I am so much obliged to you," said Janet, sweetly, when there was a pause, "but I am sorry you took the trouble. Because—because Mr. Verney has already kindly given me one, which is packed in one of the baskets."
At this we laughed again, more irresistibly than before—all, I mean, save Miss Elaine, who merely said, in the most unamused voice, "How very amusing!" As we had all admired the ancient lamp (although no one thought of offering it to us), the superfluous gifts easily found places among us, and were not the less thankfully received because obtained in that roundabout way.
We now left the "Sweet Waters" behind us, and went down the valley towards the sea.
"There is another town as picturesque as Dolce Acqua some miles farther up the valley," said Verney. "I have a sketch of it. It is called Pigna."
"Oh, let us go there!" said Janet.
"We cannot, my daughter, spend the entire remainder of our earthly existence among the Maritime Alps," said Mrs. Trescott.
Inness had the place beside Janet all the way home.
On the Cornice, a few miles from Mentone, we came upon a boy and girl sitting by the road-side; they had a flageolet and a sort of bagpipe, and wore the costume of Italian peasants, their foot-coverings being the complicated bands and strings which are, in American eyes (the strings transmuted into ribbons), indelibly associated with bandits. "They are pifferari," said Verney; and we stopped the carriages and asked them to play for us. The boy played on his flageolet, and the girl sang. As she stood beside us in the dust, her brown hands clasped before her, her great dark eyes never once stopped gazing at Janet, who, clad that day in a soft cream-white walking costume, with gloves, round hat, and plume of the same tint, looked not unlike a lily on its stem. The Italian girl was of nearly the same age in years, and of fully the same age in womanhood, and it seemed as if she could not remove her fascinated gaze from the fair white stranger. Inness and Verney both tried to attract her attention; but the boy gathered up the coins they dropped, and the girl gazed on. As the Professor was tired, and did not care for music, we drove onward; but, as far as we could see, the Italian girl still stood in the centre of the road, gazing after the carriages.
"What do you suppose is in her mind?" I said. "Envy?"
"Hardly," said Verney. "To her, probably, Miss Trescott is like a being from another world—a saint or Madonna."
"Ah, Mr. Verney, what exaggerated comparisons!" said Miss Elaine, in soft reproach. "Besides, it is irreligious, and you promised me you would not be irreligious."
Verney looked somewhat aghast at this revelation, of course overheard by Mrs. Clary and myself. It was rather hard upon him to have his misdeeds brought up in this way—the little sentimental speeches he had made to Miss Elaine in the remote past—i.e., before Janet arrived. But he was obliged to bear it.
"I suppose," said Inness, one morning, "that you are not all going away from Mentone without even seeing Mon—Monaco?"
"It can be seen from Turbia," answered the Professor, grimly. "And that view is near enough."
Inness made a grimace, and the subject was dropped. But it ended in our seeing Turbia from Monaco, and not Monaco from Turbia.
"There is no use in fighting against it," said Mrs. Clary, shrugging her shoulders. "You will have to go once. Every one does. There is a fate that drives you."
"And the joke is," said Baker, in high glee, "that the Professor is going too. It seems that the view from Turbia was not near enough for him, after all."
"I am not surprised," said Mrs. Clary. "I thought he would go: they all do. I have seen English deans, Swiss pastors, and American Presbyterian ministers looking on in the gambling-rooms, under the principle, I suppose, of knowing something of the evil they oppose. They do not go but once; but that once they are very apt to allow themselves."
The views along the Cornice west of Mentone are very beautiful. As we came in sight of Monaco, lying below in the blue sea, we caught its alleged resemblance to a vessel at anchor.
"Monaco, or Portus Herculis Monœci, was well known to the ancients," said the Professor. "Its name appears in Virgil, Tacitus, Pliny, Strabo, and other classical writers. Before the invention of gunpowder its situation made it impregnable. It was one of the places of refuge in the long struggle between the Guelphs and Ghibellines" (we were rather discouraged by the appearance of these names so early in the day), "and it is mentioned by an Italian historian as having become in the fourteenth century a 'home for criminals' and a 'gathering-place for pirates'—terms equally applicable at the present day." The Professor's voice was very sonorous.
Inness, the Professor, Janet, and myself were in a carriage together. As Mrs. Clary and Miss Graves did not accompany us that day, we had two carriages and a phaeton, the latter occupied by Lloyd and Verney.
"As to Monaco history," remarked Inness, carelessly, when the Professor ceased, "I happen to remember a few items. The Grimaldis came next to Hercules, and have had possession here since A.D. 980. Marshal Boucicault, who was extremely devout, and never missed hearing two masses a day, besieged the place and took it before Columbus and the other Boucicault discovered America. In the reign of Louis the Fourteenth a Prince of Monaco was sent as ambassador to Rome, and entered that city with horses shod in silver, the shoes held by one nail only, so that they might drop the sooner. Another Prince of Monaco went against the Turks with his galleys, and brought back to this shore the inestimable gift of the prickly-pear, for which we all bless his memory whenever we brush against its cheerful thorns. Three Princes of Monaco were murdered in their own palace, which of course was much more home-like than being murdered elsewhere. The Duke of York died there also: not murdered, I believe, although there is a ghost in the story. The principality is now three miles long, and the present prince retains authority under the jurisdiction of France. To preserve this authority he maintains a strictly disciplined standing army (they never sit down) of ten able-bodied men."
These sentences were rolled out by Inness with such rapidity that I was quite bewildered; as for the Professor, he was hopelessly stranded half-way down the list, and never came any farther.
Passing Monte Carlo, we drove over to the palace.
"Certainly there is no town on the Riviera so beautifully situated as Monaco," I said, as the road swept around the little port and ascended the opposite slope. "The high rock on which it stands, jutting out boldly into the sea, gives it all the isolation of an island, and yet protects by its peninsula this clear deep little harbor within."
The old town of Monaco proper is on the top of this rocky presqu'ile, three hundred feet above the sea, and west of Monte Carlo, the suburb of Condamine, and the chapel of St. Devote. Leaving the carriages, we entered the portal of the palace, conducted by a tenth of the standing army.
"My first living and roofed palace," said Janet, as we ascended the broad flight of marble steps leading to the "Court of Honor," which was glowing with recently renewed frescos. A solemn man in black received us, and conducted us with much dignity through thirteen broad, long rooms, with ceilings thirty feet high—a procession of stately apartments which left upon our minds a blurred general impression of gilded vases, crimson curtains, slippery floors, ormolu clocks, wreaths of painted roses, fat Cupids, and uninhabitableness. The only trace of home life in all the shining vista was a little picture of the present Prince, taken when he was a baby, a life-like, chubby little fellow, smiling unconcernedly out on all this cold splendor. It was amusing to see how we women gathered around this little face, with a sort of involuntary comfort.
In the Salle Grimaldi there was a vast chimney-piece of one block of marble covered with carved devices.
In the room where the Duke of York died there was a broad bed on a platform, curtained and canopied with heavy damask, and surrounded by a gilded railing. We stood looking at this structure in silence.
"It is very impressive," murmured Mrs. Trescott at last. Then, with a long reminiscent sigh, as if she had been present and chief mourner on the occasion, she added: "There is nothing more inscrutable than the feet of the flying hours: they are winged!—winged!"
"On the whole," said Janet, as we went down the marble steps towards the army—"on the whole, taking it as a palace, I am disappointed."
"What did you expect?" said Verney.
"Oh, all the age of chivalry," she answered, smiling.
"The so-called age of chivalry—" began the Professor; but he never finished; because, by some unexpected adjustment of places, he found himself in the phaeton with Baker, and that adventurous youth drove him over to Monte Carlo at such a speed that he could only close his eyes and hold on.
The Casino of Monte Carlo is now the most important part of the principality of Monaco; instead of being subordinate to the palace, the latter has become but an appendage to the modern splendor across the bay. Monte Carlo occupies a site as beautiful as any in the world. In front the blue sea laves its lovely garden; on the east the soft coast-line of Italy stretches away in the distance; on the west is the bold curving rock of Monaco, with its castle and port, and the great cliff of the Dog's Head. Behind rises the near mountain high above; and on its top, outlined against the sky, stands the old tower of Turbia in its lonely ruined majesty, looking towards Rome.
"That tower is nineteen hundred feet above the sea," said the Professor. "It was built by the Romans, on the boundary between Liguria and Gaul, to commemorate a victory gained by Augustus Cæsar over the Ligurians. It was called Tropæum Augusti, from which it has degenerated into Turbia. Fragments of the inscription it once bore have been found on stones built into the houses of the present village. The inscription itself is, fortunately, fully preserved in Pliny, as follows: 'To Cæsar, son of the divine Cæsar Augustus, Emperor for the fourteenth time, in the seventeenth year of his reign, the Senate and the Roman people have decreed this monument, in token that under his orders and auspices all the Alpine races have been subdued by Roman arms. Names of the vanquished:' and here follow the names of forty-five Alpine races."
At first we thought that the Professor was going to repeat them all; but although no doubt he knew them, he abstained.
"The village behind the tower—we cannot see it from here—seems to be principally built of fragments of the old Roman stone-work," said Lloyd. "I have been up there several times."
"Then we do not see the Trophy as it was?" I said.
"No; it is but a ruin, although it looks imposing from here. It was used as a fortress during the Middle Ages, and partially destroyed by the French at the beginning of the last century."
"It must have been majestic indeed, since, after all its dismemberment, it still remains so majestic now," said Margaret.
We were standing on the steps of the Casino during this conversation; I think we all rather made ourselves stand there, and talk about Turbia and the Middle Ages, because the evil and temptation we had come to see were so near us, and we knew that they were. We all had a sentence ready which we delivered impartially and carelessly; but none the less we knew that we were going in, and that nothing would induce us to remain without.
From a spacious, richly decorated entrance-hall, the gambling-rooms opened by noiseless swinging doors. Entering, we saw the tables surrounded by a close circle of seated players, with a second circle standing behind, playing over their shoulders, and sometimes even a third behind these. Although so many persons were present, it was very still, the only sounds being the chink, chink, of the gold and silver coins, and the dull, mechanical voices of the officials announcing the winning numbers. There were tables for both roulette and trente et quarante, the playing beginning each day at eleven in the morning and continuing without intermission until eleven at night. Everywhere was lavished the luxury of flowers, paintings, marbles, and the costliest decoration of all kinds; beyond, in a superb hall, the finest orchestra on the Continent was playing the divine music of Beethoven; outside, one of the loveliest gardens in the world offered itself to those who wished to stroll awhile. And all of this was given freely, without restriction and without price, upon a site and under a sky as beautiful as earth can produce. But one sober look at the faces of the steady players around those tables betrayed, under all this luxury and beauty, the real horror of the place; for men and women, young and old alike, had the gambler's strange fever in the expression of the eye, all the more intense because, in almost every case, so governed, so stonily repressed, so deadly cold! After a half-hour of observation, we left the rooms, and I was glad to breathe the outside air once more. The place had so struck to my heart, with its intensity, its richness, its stillness, and its terror, that I had not been able even to smile at the Professor's demeanor; he had signified his disapprobation (while looking at everything quite closely, however) by buttoning his coat up to the chin and keeping his hat on. I almost expected to see him open his umbrella.
"To me, they seemed all mad," I said, with a shudder, looking up at the calm mountains with a sense of relief.
"It is a species of madness," said Verney. Miss Elaine was with him; she had taken his arm while in the gambling-room; she said she felt "so timid." Margaret and Lloyd meanwhile had only looked on for a moment or two, and had then disappeared; we learned afterwards that they had gone to the concert-room, where music beautiful enough for paradise was filling the perfumed air.
"For those who care nothing for gambling, that music is one of the baits," said Lloyd. "When you really love music, it is very hard to keep away from it; and here, where there is no other music to compete with it, it is offered to you in its divinest perfection, at an agreeable distance from Nice and Mentone, along one of the most beautiful driveways in the world, with a Parisian hotel at its best to give you, besides, what other refreshment you need. Hundreds of persons come here sincerely 'only to hear the music.' But few go away without 'one look' at the gambling tables; and it is upon that 'one look' that the proprietors of the Casino, knowing human nature, quietly and securely rely."
The Professor, having seen it all, had no words to express his feeling, but walked across to call the carriages with the air of a man who shook off perdition from every finger. And yet I felt sure, from what I knew of him, that he had appreciated the attractions of the place less than any one of us—had not, in fact, been reached by them at all. Those who do not feel the allurements of a temptation are not tempted. Not a grain in the Professor's composition responded to the invitation of the siren Chance; they were not allurements to him; they were but the fantastic phantasmagoria of a dream. The lovely garden he appreciated only botanically; the view he could not see; abstemious by nature, he cared nothing for the choice rarities of the hotel; while the music, the heavenly music, was to him no more than the housewife's clatter of tin pans. Yet I might have explained this to him all the way home, he would never have comprehended it, but would have gone on thinking that it was simply, on his part, superior virtue and self-control.
But I had no opportunity to explain, since I was not in the carriage with him, but with Janet, Inness, and Baker. Margaret and Lloyd drove homewards together in the phaeton; and as they did not reach the hotel until dusk—long after our own arrival—I asked Margaret where they had been.
"We stopped at the cemetery to watch the sunset beside my statue, aunt."
"Why do you care so much for that marble figure?"
"I do not think she is quite marble," answered Margaret, smiling. "When I look at her, after a while she becomes, in a certain sense, responsive. To me she is like a dear friend."
Another week passed, and another. And now the blossoms of the fruit-trees—a cloud of pink and snowy white—were gone, and the winter loiterers on the sunny shore began to talk of home; or, if they were travellers who had but stopped awhile on the way to Italy, they knew now that the winds of the Apennines no longer chilled the beautiful streets of Florence, and that all the lilies were out.
"Why could it not go on and on forever? Why must there always come that last good-bye?" quoted Mrs. Clary.
"Because life is so sad," said Margaret.
"But I like to look forward," said Janet.
"We shall meet again," said Lloyd.
"The world," I remarked, sagely, "is composed of three classes of persons—those who live in the present, those who live in the past, and those who live in the future. The first class is the wisest."
Our last excursion was to Sant' Agnese. This little mountain village was the highest point we attained on our donkeys, being two thousand two hundred feet above the sea. Its one rugged little street, cut in the side of the cliff, had an ancient weather-beaten little church at one end and a lonely chapel at the other, with the village green in the centre—a "green" which was but a smooth rock amphitheatre, with a parapet protecting it from the precipice below. From this "green" there was a grand view of the mountains, with the sharp point of the Aiguille towering above them all. It was a village fête day, and we met the little procession at the church door. First came the priests and choir-boys, chanting; then the village girls, dressed in white, and bearing upon a little platform an image of Saint Agnes; then youths with streamers of colored ribbons on their arms; and, last, all the villagers, two and two, dressed in their best, and carrying bunches of flowers. Through the winding rocky street they marched, singing as they went. When they arrived at the lonely chapel, Saint Agnes was borne in, and prayers were offered, in which the village people joined, kneeling on the ground outside, since there was not place for them within. Then forth came Saint Agnes again, a hymn was started, in which all took part, the little church bell pealed, and an old man touched off small heaps of gunpowder placed at equal distances along the parapet, their nearest approach, I suppose, to cannon. When the saint had reached her shrine again in safety, her journeyings over until the next year, the procession dissolved, and feasting began, the simple feasting of Italy, in which we joined so far as to partake of a lunch in the little inn, which had a green bush as a sign over the narrow door—the "wine of the country" proving very good, however, in spite of the old proverb. Then, refreshed, we climbed up the steep path leading to the peak where was perched the ruin of the old castle which is so conspicuous from Mentone, high in the air. This castle, the so-called "Saracen stronghold" of Sant' Agnese, pronounced, as Baker said, "either Frenchy to rhyme with lace, or Italianly to rhyme with lazy," seemed to me higher up in the sky than I had ever expected to be in the flesh.
"As our interesting friend" (she meant the Professor) "is not here," said Mrs. Trescott, sinking in a breathless condition upon a Saracen block, "there is no one to tell us its history."
"There is no history," said Verney, "or, rather, no one knows it; and to me that is its chief attraction. There are, of course, legends in stacks, but nothing authentic. The Saracens undoubtedly occupied it for a time, and kept the whole coast below cowering under their cruel sway. But it is hardly probable that they built it; they did not build so far inland; they preferred the shore."
Our specified object, of course, in climbing that breathless path was "the view."
Now there are various ways of seeing views. I have known "views" which required long gazing at points where there was nothing earthly to be seen: in such cases there was probably something heavenly. Other "views" reveal themselves only to two persons at a time; if a third appears, immediately there is nothing to be seen. As to our own manner of looking at the Sant' Agnese view, I will mention that Mrs. Trescott looked at it from a snug corner, on a soft shawl, with her eyes closed. Mrs. Clary looked at it retrospectively, as it were; she began phrases like these: "When I was here three years ago—" pause, sigh, full stop. "Once I was here at sunset—" ditto. Janet, on a remote rock, looked at it, I think, amid a little tragedy from Inness, interrupted and made more tragic by the incursions of Baker, who would not be frowned away. Verney looked at it from a high niche in which he had incautiously seated himself for a moment, and now remained imprisoned, because Miss Elaine had placed herself across the entrance so that he could not emerge without asking her to rise; from this niche, like the tenor of Trovatore in his tower, he occasionally sent across a Miserere to Janet in the distance, like this: "Do you ob—serve, Miss Trescott, the col—ors of the lem—ons below?" And Janet would gesture an assent. Lloyd and Margaret had found a place on a little projecting plateau, where, with the warm sunshine flooding over them, they sat contentedly talking. Meanwhile having neither sleep, retrospect, tragedy, Miserere, nor conversation with which to entertain myself, I really looked at the view, and probably was the only person who did. I had time enough for it. We remained there nearly two hours.
At last our donkey-driver came up to tell us that dancing was going on below, and that there was not much time if we wished to see it, since the long homeward journey still lay before us. So we elders began to call: "Janet!" "Janet!" "Margaret!" "Mr. Verney!" And presently from the rock, the niche, and the plateau they came slowly in, Janet flushed, and Inness very pale, Baker like a thunder-cloud, Miss Elaine smiling and conscious, Verney annoyed, Lloyd just as usual, and Margaret with a younger look in her face than I had seen there for months. In the little rock amphitheatre below we found the villagers merrily dancing; and some strangers like ourselves, who had come out from Mentone later, were amusing themselves by dancing also. Janet joined the circle with Baker, and Inness, after leaning on the parapet awhile, with his back to the dancers, gazing into space, disappeared. I think he went homeward by another path across the mountains. Miss Elaine admired "so much" Miss Trescott's courage in dancing before "so many strangers." She (Miss Elaine) was far "too shy to attempt it." But I did not notice that she was violently urged to the attempt. In the meantime Lloyd was looking at an English girl belonging to the other party, who was dancing near us. She was tall and shapely, with the beautiful English rose-pink complexion, and abundant light hair which had the glint of bronze where the sun shone across it. After a while, as the others came near, he recognized in one of them an acquaintance, who turned out to be the brother of the young lady who had been dancing.
When, as we returned, we reached the main street of Mentone, Margaret and I, who were behind, stopped a moment and looked back. The far peak of Sant' Agnese was flushed with rose-light, although where we were it was already night.
"It does not seem as if we could have been there," I said. "It looks so far away."
"Yes, we have been there," said Margaret; "we have been there. But already it is far, far away."
Mrs. Trescott found a letter awaiting her which made her decide to go forward to Florence on the following day. A great deal can happen in a short time when there is the pressure of a near departure. That evening Janet, who was dressed in white, had a great bunch of the sweet wild narcissus at her belt. I do not know anything certainly, of course, but I did meet Inness in the hall, about eleven o'clock, with a radiant, happy face, and some of that same narcissus in his button-hole. He went with the Trescott's to Florence the next day. And Baker, with disgust, went to Nice. Soon afterwards Verney said that he felt that he required "a closer acquaintance with early art," and departed without saying exactly whither. "Etruscan art, I believe, is considered extremely 'early,'" remarked Mrs. Clary.
The Professor was to join the Trescotts later; at present he was much engaged with some cinerary urns. Miss Elaine, who was to remain a month longer with her mother, remarked to me, on one of the last mornings, that "really, for his age," he was a "very well preserved man."
Margaret and I remained for two weeks after Mrs. Trescott's departure. We saw Mr. Lloyd now and then; but he was more frequently off with the English party.
One afternoon I went with Margaret to watch the sunset from her favorite post beside the statue. She sought the place almost every evening now, and occasionally I went with her. We had never found any one there at that hour; but this evening we heard voices, and came upon Lloyd and the English girl of Sant' Agnese, strolling to and fro.
"I have brought Miss Read to see the view here, Miss Severin," he said; and then introductions followed, and we stood there together watching the beautiful tints of sky and sea. The English girl talked in her English voice with its little rising and falling inflections, so different from our monotonous American key. Margaret answered pleasantly, and, indeed, talked more than usual; I was glad to see her interested.
After a while Lloyd happened to stroll forward where he could see the face of the statue. Then, suddenly, "Wonderful!" he exclaimed. "Strange that I never thought of it before! Do come here, please, and see for yourselves. There is the most extraordinary resemblance between this statue and Miss Read."
Then, as we all went forward, "Wonderful!" he repeated.
Margaret said not a word. The English girl only laughed. "Surely you see it?" he said.
"There may be a little something about the mouth—" I began.
But he interrupted me. "Why, it is perfect! The statue is her portrait in marble. Miss Read, will you not let me place you in the same position, just for an instant?" And, leading her to a little mound, he placed her in the required pose; she had thrown off her hat to oblige him, and now clasped her hands and turned her eyes over the sea towards the eastern horizon. What was the result?
The only resemblance, as I had said, was about the mouth; for the beautifully cut lips of the statue turned downward at the corners, and the curve of Miss Read's sweet baby-like mouth was the same. But that was all. Above was the woman's face in marble, beautiful, sad, full of the knowledge and the grief of life; below was the face of a young girl, lovely, fresh, and bright, and knowing no more of sorrow than a blush-rose upon its stem.
"Exact!" said Lloyd.
Miss Read laughed, rose, and resumed her straw hat; presently they went away.
"There was not the slightest resemblance," I said, almost with indignation.
"People see resemblances differently," answered Margaret. Then, after a pause, she added, "She is, at least, much more like the statue than I am."
"Not in the spirit, dear," I said, much touched; for I saw that as she spoke the rare tears had filled her eyes. But they did not fall; Margaret had a great deal of self-control; perhaps too much.
Then there was a silence. "Shall we go now, aunt?" she said, after a time. And we never spoke of the subject again.
"Look, look, Margaret! the palms of Bordighera!" I said, as our train rushed past. It was our last of Mentone.
CAIRO IN 1890
I
CONTEMPORARY PORTRAIT OF CLEOPATRA
On
the wall of the Temple at Denderah.—From a photograph by Sebah,
Cairo.
HE
way to Egypt is long and vexatious"—so Homer sings; and so also
have sung other persons more modern. A chopping sea prevails off Crete,
and whether one leaves Europe at Naples, Brindisi, or Athens, one's
steamer soon reaches that beautiful island, and consumes in passing it
an amount of time which is an ever-fresh surprise. Crete, with its long
coast-line and soaring mountain-tops, appears to fill all that part of
the sea. However, as the island is the half-way point between Europe and
Africa, one can at least feel, after finally leaving it behind, that the
Egyptian coast is not far distant. This coast is as indolent as that of
Crete is aggressive; it does not raise its head. You are there before
you see it or know it; and then, if you like, in something over three
hours more you can be in Cairo.
The Cairo street of the last Paris Exhibition, familiar to many Americans, was a clever imitation. But imitations of the Orient are melancholy; you cannot transplant the sky and the light.
The real Cairo has been sacrificed to the Nile. Comparatively few among travellers in the East see the place under the best conditions; for upon their arrival they are preoccupied with the magical river voyage which beckons them southward, with the dahabeeyah or the steamer which is to carry them; and upon their return from that wonderful journey they are planning for the more difficult expedition to the Holy Land. It is safe to say that to many Americans Cairo is only a confused memory of donkeys and dragomans, mosquitoes and dervishes, and mosques, mosques, mosques! This hard season probably must be gone through by all. The wise are those who stay on after it is over, or who return; for the true impression of a place does not come when the mind is overcrowded and confused; it does not come when the body is wearied; for the descent of the vision, serenity of soul is necessary—one might even call it idleness. It is during those days when one does nothing that the reality steals noiselessly into one's comprehension, to remain there forever.
But is Cairo worth this? is asked. That depends upon the temperament. If one must have in his nature somewhere a trace of the poet to love Venice, so one must be at heart something of a painter to love Cairo. Her colors are so softly rich, the Saracenic part of her architecture is so fantastically beautiful, the figures in her streets are so picturesque, that one who has an eye for such effects seems to himself to be living in a gallery of paintings without frames, which stretch off in vistas, melting into each other as they go. If, therefore, one loves color, if pictures are precious to him, are important, let him go to Cairo; he will find pleasure awaiting him. Flaubert said that one could imagine the pyramids, and perhaps the Sphinx, without an actual sight of them, but that what one could not in the least imagine was the expression on the face of an Oriental barber as he sits cross-legged before his door. That is Cairo exactly. You must see her with the actual eyes, and you must see her without haste. She does not reveal herself to the Cook tourist nor even to Gaze's, nor to the man who is hurrying off to Athens on a fixed day which nothing can alter.
THE NEW QUARTER
(One must begin with this, and have it over.) Cairo has a population of four hundred thousand souls. The new part of the town, called Ismaïlia, has been persistently abused by almost all writers, who describe it as dusty, as shadeless, as dreary, as glaring, as hideous, as blankly and broadly empty, as adorned with half-built houses which are falling into ruin—one has read all this before arriving. But what does one find in the year of grace 1890? Streets shaded by innumerable trees; streets broad indeed, but which, instead of being dusty, are wet (and over-wet) with the constant watering; well-kept, bright-faced houses, many of them having beautiful gardens, which in January are glowing with giant poinsettas, crimson hibiscus, and purple bougainvillea—flowers which give place to richer blooms, to an almost over-luxuriance of color and perfumes, as the early spring comes on. If the streets were paved, it would be like the outlying quarters of Paris, for most of the houses are French as regards their architecture. Shadeless? It is nothing but shade. And the principal drives, too, beyond the town—the Ghezireh road, the Choubra and Gizeh roads, and the long avenue which leads to the pyramids—are deeply embowered, the great arms of the trees which border them meeting and interlacing overhead. Consider the stony streets of Italian cities (which no one abuses), and then talk of "shadeless Cairo"!
THE CLIMATE
If one wishes to spend a part of each day in the house, engaged in reading, writing, or resting; if the comfortable feeling produced by a brightly burning little fire in the cool of the evening is necessary to him for his health or his pleasure—then he should not attempt to spend the entire winter in the city of the Khedive. The mean temperature there during the cold season—that is, six weeks in January and February—is said to be 58° Fahrenheit. But this is in the open air; in the houses the temperature is not more than 54° or 52°, and often in the evening lower. The absence of fires makes all the difficulty; for out-of-doors the air may be and often is charming; but upon coming in from the bright sunshine the atmosphere of one's sitting-room and bedroom seems chilly and prison-like. There are, generally speaking, no chimneys in Cairo, even in the modern quarter. Each of the hotels has one or two open grates, but only one or two. Southern countries, however, are banded together—so it seems to the shivering Northerner—to keep up the delusion that they have no cold weather; as they have it not, why provide for it? In Italy in the winter the Italians spread rugs over their floors, hang tapestries upon their walls, pile cushions everywhere, and carpet their sofas with long-haired skins; this they call warmth. But a fireless room, with the thermometer on its walls standing at 35°, is not warm, no matter how many cushions you may put into it; and one hates to believe, too, that necessary accompaniments of health are roughened faces and frost-bitten noses, and the extreme ugliness of hands swollen and red. "Perhaps if one could have in Cairo an open hearth and three sticks, it would, with all the other pleasures which one finds here, be too much—would reach wickedness!" was a remark we heard last winter. A still more forcible exclamation issued from the lips of a pilgrim from New York one evening in January. Looking round her sitting-room upon the roses gathered that day in the open air, upon the fly-brushes and fans and Oriental decorations, this misguided person moaned, in an almost tearful voice: "Oh, for a blizzard and a fire!" The reasonable traveller, of course, ought to remember that with a climate which has seven months of debilitating heat, and three and a half additional months of summer weather, the attention of the natives is not strongly turned towards devices for warmth. This consideration, however, does not make the fireless rooms agreeable during the few weeks that remain.
Another surprise is the rain. "In our time it rained in Egypt," writes Strabo, as though chronicling a miracle. Either the climate has changed, or Strabo was not a disciple of the realistic school, for in the January of this truthful record the rain descended in such a deluge in Cairo that the water came above the knees of the horses, and a ferry-boat was established for two days in one of the principal streets. Later the rain descended a second time with almost equal violence, and showers were by no means infrequent. (It may be mentioned in parenthesis that there was heavy rain at Luxor, four hundred and fifty miles south of Cairo, on the 19th of February.) One does not object to these rains; they are in themselves agreeable; one wishes simply to note the impudence of the widely diffused statement that Egypt is a rainless land. So far nothing has been said against the winter climate of Cairo; objection has been made merely to the fireless condition of the houses—a fault which can be remedied. But now a real enemy must be mentioned—namely, the kamsin. This is a hot wind from the south, which parches the skin and takes the life out of one; it fills the air with a thick grayness, which you cannot call mist, because it is perfectly dry, and through which the sun goes on steadily shining, with a light so weird that one can think of nothing but the feelings of the last man, or the opening of the sixth seal. The regular kamsin season does not begin before May; the occasional days of it that bring suffering to travellers occur in February, March, and April. But what are five or six days of kamsin amid four winter months whose average temperature is 58° Fahrenheit? It is human nature to detect faults in climates which have been greatly praised, just as one counts every freckle on a fair face that is celebrated for its beauty. Give Cairo a few hearth fires, and its winter climate will seem delightful; although not so perfect as that of Florida, in our country, because in Florida there are no January mosquitoes.