Riviera Towns

So you understand why there is so much of Mademoiselle Simone in my story of Cagnes, and why the Artist had a grouch. His afternoon's work should have pleased him, should have satisfied him. He would not have finished it had he met Mademoiselle Simone. He knows more of Cagnes than I do, but he would rather have known more of Mademoiselle Simone.

CHAPTER III

SAINT-PAUL-DU-VAR

At the restaurant opposite the Cagnes railway station the waitress welcomed us as old friends. She told us how lucky we were to come on a Friday. Fish just caught that morning—the best we would ever eat in our lives—were waiting for us in the kitchen. We flattered ourselves that the disappointment was mutual when we had to tell her that there was time only for an apéritif. Precisely because it was Friday and not Sunday, there was no reasonable hope of running into Monsieur le Curé or Mademoiselle Simone or a game of boules, if we climbed the steep hill to Cagnes. On our last visit, we had seen from the top of Cagnes a walled city crowning another hill several miles inland. Saint-Paul-du-Var was our goal today.

Electric trams run to Grasse and to Vence from Cagnes. The lines separate at Villeneuve-Loubet, a mile back from the Nice-Cannes road. The Vence tram would have taken us to Saint-Paul-du-Var along the road that began to avoid the valley after passing Villeneuve-Loubet. It was one of those routes nationales of which the France of motorists is so proud, hard and smooth and rounded to drain quickly, never allowing itself a rut or a steep grade or a sharp turn. This national highway was like all the easy paths in life. It meant the shortest distance comfortably possible for obtaining your objective. It eliminated surprises. It showed you all the time all there was to see, and kept you kilometrically informed of your progress. It was paralleled by the electric tram line. It enabled you to explore the country in true city fashion.

We were walking, and the low road, signpostless, attracted us. It started off in the same general direction, but through the valley. It was all that a country road ought to be. It had honest ruts and unattached stones of various sizes. Cows had passed along that way. Trees met overhead irregularly, and bushes grew up in confusion on the sides. The ruthlessness of macadam, the pressure of fat tires, the scorching of engines, had not banished the thick grass which the country wants to give its roads, and would give to all its roads if the country were not being constantly "improved." There were places where one could rest without fear of sun and ditch-water and clouds of dust. Why should one go from the city to the country to breathe tar and gasoline? Why should one have to keep one's eyes wandering from far ahead to back over one's shoulder for fifty-two weeks in the year? We wanted to get away from clang-clang and honk-honk and puff-puff. Since the real vacation is change, we welcomed the task of looking out for hostile dogs instead of swiftly moving vehicles. Our noses wanted whiffs of hay and pig, and our boots wanted unadulterated mud.

We were not allowed to have our way without a warning. There always is someone to keep you in the straight and narrow path. As we were turning into the low road a passer-by remonstrated.

"If you're going to Saint-Paul-du-Var," he explained, "you want to keep to the high road. It's very muddy down there, and will take you longer."

When our adviser saw that we did not stop, he raised his voice and called, "There are no signposts and you may get lost."

"You take the high road and we'll take the low," sang back the Artist.

He who had meant well disappeared, shaking his head. No doubt, as he shuffled along, he was muttering to himself over the inexplicable actions of ces drôles d'Anglais.

The miles passed coolly and pleasantly. Trees and bushes did not allow many glimpses of the outside world. The dogs that barked were behind farmhouse gates, and we had use for our stones only at an occasional jackrabbit. "At" is a convenient preposition. It gives one latitude. Jackrabbits on the Riviera are not like human products of the south. They jump quickly. They jump, too, in directions that cannot be foretold. After one particularly bad throw, the Artist explained that he did not enjoy inflicting pain. His boyish instincts had long ago been controlled by reading S. P. C. A. literature. I told him that I thought he had given up baseball too early in life. So had I. The jackrabbits escaped.

I am rarely oblivious to the duty of the noon hour. Although I knew the Artist's habit of stopping suddenly, and the hopelessness of budging him by plea or argument as long as the reason for stopping remained, it had not occurred to me that there would be a risk in taking the low road. We had started in plenty of time, and as we were out for a medieval town, I thought he would not be tempted until we reached the vicinity of a restaurant. But about a mile below Saint-Paul-du-Var the low road brought us to a view of the city that would have held me at any other time than twelve noon. I tried the old expedient of walking faster, and calling attention to something in the distance. When the Artist halted, moved uncertainly a few yards, and stopped again, we were lost. He did not need to pronounce the inevitable words, "I'll just get this little bit." The Artist's "just" means anything from twenty to ninety minutes.

Food without companionship is not enjoyable, least of all on a holiday. There was no use suggesting that we could come back this way, and advancing that the light would be so much better later. The Artist had started in. I cast around for some way of escape from an impossible situation. The only farmhouse in sight was at the end of a long lane, and did not look as if it could produce the makings of a meal. The poorest providers and preparers of foodstuffs are their producers. Who has not eaten salt pork on a cattle ranch and longed for cream on a dairy farm? What city boarder has not discovered the woeful lack of connection between the cackling of hens and the certitude of fresh eggs on the table at the next meal? What muncher of Maine doughnuts in a Boston restaurant has not thought of the "sinkers" offered to him when he was on his last summer's vacation?

A bridge crossed a stream just ahead of us. On the other side was a thick clump of trees. I walked forward with the thought that a drink of water at least might not be bad. When I got to the bridge I heard plaintive barking and a man's voice. The man was explaining to the dog why he ought not to be impatient. He would have his good bone, with plenty of meat on it, in a little quarter of an hour. A house-wagon was standing back from the side of the road. The owner was shaking a casserole over a fire, and the dog was sniffing as near as he dared. The dog gave me his attention, and the man turned. It was a favorite waiter of a favorite Montparnasse café.

"Pierre," I cried, "where did you drop from? What luck!"

Pierre put the casserole on the window ledge, out of the dog's reach, and greeted me. You never could surprise Pierre. He was always master of the situation. One has to be in a Montparnasse café. I noted with approval the precaution that Pierre had taken. Either the dog was very hungry or there was something particularly tempting in the casserole.

Pierre had gone to join his regiment on the second day of the war. I had not seen him or heard of him since then. He told me that he had been unable to shake off a bronchite, caught in the trenches. It was the old story. When he left the hospital, the medical board declared him unfit for further service and warned him against returning soon to city life. The hope of recovery lay in open air and sunshine.

"I determined to get well, Monsieur," he said. "I had money saved up. I bought this wagon and a cinematograph outfit. I go to the little towns in the Midi. One can take only four sous—two from the children—but I get along. Now, when I am well, I shall not go back to Paris. Have you ever lived in a wagon, Monsieur? No? Well, never do it, if you do not want to realize that it is the only life worth living."

Pierre was interested in the gossip of the Quarter. A frequent "c'est vrai" and "dîtes donc" punctuated my news of American artists who had gone home at last. When I told him of the few who had sold pictures in America, his comment was "épatant," which he meant in no uncomplimentary sense. The Artist was an old favorite of Pierre's. I restrained his impulse to go right out to greet the Artist. Pierre entered into my idea with alacrity. The dog was given a bone and chained. The coal box was brought out from the wagon, and turned upside down for a table beside a fallen tree. When all was ready, I watched Pierre surprise the Artist. He put a napkin over his arm, and froze his face. Then he tip-toed up to the Artist's elbow, and announced, "Monsieur est servi." For once I was able to get the Artist away from his work.

What a meal we did have there beside that little stream! There were bottles in Pierre's wagon, and he insisted upon opening more than one. When we finally left Pierre to his dishes, we were well fortified for the climb to Saint-Paul-du-Var, and in the mood to appreciate enthusiastically all that was before us.

Above on the left we could see the high road that we had deserted at Villeneuve-Loubet. It did not come out of its way for Saint-Paul-du-Var, but went straight on inland Vence-wards. A side road, on the level, came over towards the gate of Saint-Paul-du-Var. To this road ours mounted, and joined it just outside the town. In climbing we had the opportunity, denied to the conventional, of seeing that Saint-Paul-du-Var was really on the top of a hill. The walls rose sheer, and only the outer houses, directly behind the ramparts, were in our line of vision. Nearly up to the entrance to the city we passed between a tiny stone chapel and a mill, whose wheel was a curious combination of metal and wood. The Artist exclaimed that it would make a bully sketch. He saw its picturesque possibilities. I wondered, on the other hand, whether it would work and how it worked. Moss and grass on a millwheel in the Midi are no surer signs of abandonment and disuse than a dry millrace. Where things die fast they grow fast. A little water brings forth vegetable life in a single day. Southern streams are not perennial. On the Riviera, they are fed from nearby mountains, and are intermittent even in their season. When the water ceases, the sun quickly bakes a crust of silt and dries the stones of the river-beds gray-brown.

A dwarf could hardly have said mass in the chapel. Its rear wall was the rising ground, and there seemed to be a garden on the roof. Burial space extending no farther than the roots of a sentinel cypress told the tale of one man's vanity or devotion. The situation of the chapel prompted us to look over the ground for traces of a lunette bastion on the counterscarp. We found that the chapel was built upon an earlier foundation of stone taken from a fortification wall, and that later builders had made over the chapel into a belvedere. Steps on the side of the slope led to the roof, upon which two benches had been placed. What past generations have left us we use for purposes of our own. We talk sentimentally of our traditions, but we test them by their utility.

Saint-Paul-du-Var fails to satisfy twentieth-century standards. It is not a thriving, bustling city. It is not a tourist center. The walls are as they were five centuries ago. The space inside is sufficient for the population, and one gate serves all needs. The medieval aspect is not destroyed by buildings outside the walls, and the medieval atmosphere is undisturbed by hotel touts and postcard vendors. When we presented ourselves before the gate, not a soul was in sight. A bronze cannon of Charles-Quint's time stuck its nose out of the ground by the portcullis. We had to pull off grass and dirt to find the inscription. While we were examining the towers that flanked the gate, a wagon rattled slowly by. The driver did not look at us. A woman with a basket of vegetables on her head met us under the arch. She did not look at us. We found the same indifference in the town. Even the small boys refrained from staring or grinning or yelling or asking for pennies. None volunteered to show us around.

"The interest in our arrival at Saint-Paul-du-Var," commented the Artist, "is all on our side."

Human nature is full of contradictions. We should have been annoyed if people had bothered us. We were as much annoyed when they paid no attention to us.

We went up in one of the towers to reach the ramparts. Keeping on the walls all the way around the town involved an occasional bit of climbing. We had to forget our clothes. That was easy, however, for every step of the way was of compelling interest extra et intra muros. Outside, the panorama of the Riviera, sea and mountains, towns and valleys, lay before us to the four points of the compass. Inside, houses of different centuries but none post-Bourbon, each crowding its neighbor but none without individuality of its own, faced us and curved with us. For once, the Artist failed to single out a subject.

Seaward, beyond the valley through which we had come, were Villeneuve-Loubet and Cagnes. On the right we could see to the Antibes lighthouse, and on the left, across the Var, to the point between Nice and Villefranche. Landward were Vence and the wall of the Alpes Maritimes. The afternoon sun fell full on the snow and darkened the upper valleys of the numerous confluents of the Var and Loup rivers.

Sketching was tomorrow's task. There was time only for exploration of the city before sunset. We came down at the tower opposite the one from which we had started on our round. On the road to the electric tram, we saw the restaurant-hôtel, a cube of whitewash, but we were far from the temptation of banalities. Tea or something, and a place to spend the night, could be found within the walls.

Saint-Paul-du-Var caught us in its fascinating maze. We forgot that we were thirsty. There was just one street. It zigzagged its way across the town from the gate. You lost the points of the compass and hardly realized that you were going over the top of a hill. The street curved every hundred yards, and frequently turned around three sides of a single building. Fountains were at the bends. One of them, opposite the market, fed a square pool that was the city laundry. Women, kneeling on the edge, were at the eternal task. We passed the centers of municipal life, post-office, mairie, gendarmerie, school and church.

Churches of Riviera towns, like the character and speech and features of the people, are a reminder of the recency of the French occupation. There is a replica of the church of Saint-Paul-du-Var in a thousand Italian cities. When you enter the colorless building from the plain curved porch, the chill strikes right into your bones. Windows do not compete with candles. You have to grope your way toward the altar. Unless you strain your eyes, or lamps are burning, side chapels pass unnoticed. If you are looking for inscriptions or want to admire the old master's picture, with which every church claims to be endowed, you must get the verger with his taper. Altars are gaudily decorated and statues bejeweled and be (artificial) flowered in Hispano-Italian fashion. The mairie, reconstructed from an ancient palace or castle, was more interesting. Beside the mairie a medieval square tower, which may have been a donjon, was occupied on the ground floor by the gendarmerie. Bars on the upper windows indicated that it was still the prison.

We tried the alleys that led off from the street, thinking each might be a thoroughfare to take us back to the ramparts. They ended abruptly in a cul-de-sac or court. The culs-de-sac, uninviting to eye and nose, were as Italian as the church. The houses in the courts were stables downstairs. Man and beast lived together. Flowers and wee bushes grew up around the wells in the center of the courts. Everything was built of stone and red-tiled. But there was none of the dull gray-and-red monotony of northern towns near the sea or of the sharp gray-and-red monotony of towns of the Mediterranean peninsulas. Grass sprouted out between the stones of the walls and the tiles of the roofs. From window-ledges and eaves hung ferns. A blush of moss on the stones added to the green of plant life, and softened the austerity of the gray. Nature was successful in asserting herself against man and sun and sea.

We were expressing our enthusiasm in a court where the living green combined with age to glorify the buildings. We did not see the dilapidation, we did not smell the dirt, we did not feel the squalor. A woman was lighting a fire in a brazier on her doorstep. She looked hostilely at us. We beamed in counteraction. She looked more hostilely. As the Artist wanted to sketch her house, some words seemed necessary. I detailed our emotions. Was not her lot, cast in this picturesque spot, most enviable?

"We want to take away with us," I said, "a tangible memory of this beautiful, this picturesque, this verdant court in which you live."

"If you had to live here," she announced simply, "you'd want to go away and forget it."

The fumes had burned from the charcoal. The woman picked up the brazier, carried it inside without another word or look, and slammed the door behind her with her foot.

The Artist was already in his sketch, but he paused to growl and philosophize. "If she had waited a minute longer," he complained, "I should have had her and the brazier. Funny how unappreciative people are. You and I, mon vieux, would like nothing better than to stay here. From the other side of her house that woman must have a great view of the sea and the mountains. Is she going to watch the sunset? No, she is going to make soup for her man on that brazier in a dark hole of a room, and feel sorry for herself because she doesn't live in Paris where she could go to the movies every night."

Our ardor for Saint-Paul-du-Var lasted splendidly through the sunset on the ramparts. We had found the ideal spot. Hoi polloi could have their Nice and their Cannes! But when night fell, there were few lights on the street, and shopkeepers looked at us in stupid amazement when we inquired about lodgings. We did not dare to ask in the drinking places, for fear they might volunteer to put us up. In the épiceries, we were offered bread and sardines. There was no butter. So we went rather less reluctantly than we had thought possible an hour earlier out of the gate towards the hôtel-restaurant. An old man was camped against the wall in a wagon like Pierre's. He had been sharpening Saint-Paul-du-Var's scissors and knives. We confided in him, and asked if he thought the hôtel-restaurant would give us a good dinner and a good bed. The scissors-grinder wrinkled his nose and twinkled his eyes. "The last tram from Vence to Cagnes stops over there at eight-ten," he said decisively. "You have five minutes to catch it. Get off at Villeneuve-Loubet, and go to the Hôtel Beau-Site. The proprietor is a cordon bleu of a chef. He has his own trout, and he knows just what tourists like to eat and drink. Motorists stop there over night, so you need have no fear."

"But—" I started to remonstrate.

The Artist was already hurrying in the direction of the tram. I followed him.

The next morning the Artist went back to Saint-Paul-du-Var for his sketches. I did not accompany him. Saint-Paul-du-Var was a delightful memory, and I wanted to keep it.

CHAPTER IV

VILLENEUVE-LOUBET

On a hill a mile or so back from the Cannes-Nice road, just before one reaches Cagnes, a castle of unusual size and severity of outline rises above the trees of a park. The roads from Cagnes to Grasse and Vence bifurcate at the foot of the hill on which the castle is built. What one thinks of the castle depends upon which road one takes. The traveler on the Vence road sees a pretentious entrance, constructed for automobiles, with a twentieth-century iron gate and a twentieth-century porter's lodge. The park looks well groomed. The wall along the Vence side is as new as the gate and the lodge. The stone of the castle is white and fresh. One dismisses the castle as an imitation or a wholesale restoration by an architect lacking in imagination and cleverness. But if the left hand road toward Grasse is taken, one sees twelfth-century fortifications coming down from the top of the hill to the roadside. There are ruins of bastions and towers overgrown with bushes and ivy. Farther along an old town is revealed climbing the hill to the castle. There is nothing nouveau riche about Villeneuve-Loubet. The only touches of the modern are the motor road with kilometer stones, the iron bridge over the Loup, and the huge sign informing you that the hotel is near by.

Had we limited our inland exploration to the Vence side of the hill, the Artist and I would not have discovered Villeneuve-Loubet. Had we been hurrying through toward Grasse in automobile or tram, we would probably have exclaimed "how picturesque" or "interesting, isn't it?" and continued our way. Luck saved us.

A scissors-grinder at the gate of Saint-Paul-du-Var recommended the trout and beds of the Villeneuve-Loubet hotel. Just as the moon was coming up one April evening, we got off the Vence-Cagnes tram at the junction of the Grasse tramway, and walked to the revelation of what the castle really was. We decided to eat something in a hurry, and go around the town that very evening.

When, helped by the sign, we reached the Hôtel Beau-Site, the proprietor came forward with his best shuffle and bow. Trout? Of course there were trout, plenty of them. Alas, in these days when business was very, very bad, when people had no money to travel, and visitors accordingly were scarce, there were too many trout. But that was to the advantage of messieurs. He, Jean Alphonse, could give a large choice, and the dinner would have all his attention. It was his pride and rule to give personal attention always to every dish that left his kitchen, but with the monde of a regular season, he could not take every fish out of the pan himself, and see that the slices of lemon were cut, and the parsley put, just as he had always done when he was the chef of Monsieur Blanc. We knew Monsieur Blanc. Monsieur Blanc died eight years ago, but that was the way of the world. Now messieurs could go right along with him and pick out their own fish. The net was down by the pool, and he would get a lamp in just one little minute. For that would be best. The moon was coming up, true. But one could not trust the moonlight in choosing fish.

The garden of the Hôtel Beau-Site contains a curious succession of bowers made by training bamboo trees for partitions and ceilings. As we went through them, Jean Alphonse explained that these natural salons particuliers, where parties could have luncheon out-of-doors and yet remain sheltered from the sun and in privacy, combined with the trout to give his hotel a wonderful vogue in tourist season. We, of course, insisted that the reputation of the chef must be the third and controlling attraction. The pool was full, and the trout had no chance. It was not a sporting proposition; but just before dinner one does not think of that. Even our choice out of the net was gently guided by Jean Alphonse. Since human nature is the same the world over, is it surprising that the tricks calculated to captivate and deceive are the same? I recalled a famous restaurant in Moscow, where one went to the fountain with a white-robed Tartar waiter and thought he picked his fish. I have no doubt that Jean Alphonse believed that his idea was original, and that we were experiencing a new sensation.

Jean Alphonse did not boast idly of his cuisine. He possessed, too, the genius of the successful boniface for knowing what would please his guests. He sensed our lack of interest in the wines of the Midi, and, helped by the Artist's checked knickers and slender cane, set forth a bottle of old Scotch. We refused to allow him to open the dining-room for us, and had our dinner in a corner of the café. Villeneuve-Loubet's élite gathered to see us eat. The garde-champêtre, the veteran of 1870, the chatelain's bailiff, the local representative in the Legion of Honor (rosette, not ribbon, if you please), and two chasseurs alpins, home from the maneuvers on sick leave, ordered their coffee or liqueur at other tables, but were glad to join us when we said the word. Soon we had a dozen around us. The history of the war—and past and future wars—and of Villeneuve-Loubet was set forth in detail.

Had it not been for the moon, we should certainly have gone from the table to our rooms. But the full moon on the Riviera makes a more fascinating fairyland than one can find in dreams. We did not hesitate, when the last of our friends left, to follow them out-of-doors. Villeneuve-Loubet might prove to be a modest town tomorrow, old, of course, and interesting: but we were going to see it tonight under the spell of the moon. We were going to wander where we willed, with all the town to ourselves. We were going to live for an hour in the Middle Ages. For if there was anything modern in Villeneuve-Loubet, the moonlight would hide it or gloss it over; if there was anything ancient, the moonlight would enable us to see it as we wanted to see it. I pity the limited souls who do not believe in moonshine, and use the word contemptuously. One is illogical who contends that moonshine gives a false idea of things; for he is testing the moonshine impression by sunshine. It would be as illogical to say that sunshine gives a false idea of things on the ground that moonshine is the standard. If sunshine is reality, so is moonshine. The difference is that we are more accustomed to see things by sunlight than by moonlight. Our test of reality is familiarity, and of truth repetition.

Villeneuve-Loubet is built against a cliff. The houses rise on tiers of stone terraces. They are made of stone quarried on the spot. Red tiles, the conspicuous feature of Mediterranean cities, are lacking in Villeneuve-Loubet. The roofs are slabs of stone. The streets are the surface of the cliff. We climbed toward the castle through a ghost-city. The moon enhanced the gray-whiteness that was the common color of ground, walls and roofs. The shadows, sharp and black, were needed to set forth the lines of the buildings.

The picture called for a witch. The silence was broken by the tapping of a cane. Around the corner the witch hobbled into the scene, testing each step before her. She was dressed in black, of course, and bent over with just the curve of the back the Artist loves to give to his old women. She was a friendly soul, and did not seem amazed to find strangers strolling late at night in her town. We were "Anglais," and that was explanation enough to one who had seen three generations of tourists. She stopped to talk with us. When had we arrived at Villeneuve-Loubet? Had we come up from Nice that afternoon and did we plan to stay for a day or two with Jean Alphonse at the Hôtel Beau-Site? Did we not agree that Villeneuve-Loubet was superb? Perhaps we were artists? So many artists came here to paint and sketch the old houses. What was our impression of her country? We knew that she meant by "country" not France but Villeneuve-Loubet, and mustered our best vocabulary to admire the town, the solid foundations, the houses, the protecting castle, and above all, the unique streets of stone.

"But it must be very difficult to go up and down in winter. How do you manage when the rock is frozen over with snow and ice?" I asked.

"It does not freeze here," she answered.

The moon-whiteness had made me think of winter, and it had not occurred to me that there would be no snow and ice. Ideas are pervasive. We place them immediately and unquestioningly upon the hypothesis that happens to fit.

The church, of eighteenth-century architecture, is the last building at the upper end of the town. It stands on a terrace outside the lower wall of the castle, an eloquent witness of the survival of feudal ideas. In order that the lord of the manor need not go far to mass, when there happened to be no private chaplain in the castle, the town-folk must climb to their devotions. I tried the church door from habit. It was not locked. The Artist refused to go in.

"Why should one poke around a church, especially at night and this night?" he remonstrated, and walked over to the wall of the terrace.

"There may be something inside," I urged.

"There is something outside," he answered, with his back turned upon the castle as well as church.

I could see my way around, for the windows of nave and transept were large, and had plain glass. Moonlight was sufficient to read inscriptions that set forth in detail the pedigree of the chatelains. The baptismal names overflowed a line, and were followed by a family name almost as long, MARCH-TRIPOLY DE PANISSE-PASSIS. Longest of all was the list of titles. The chatelains were marquesses and counts and knights of Malta and seigneurs of a dozen domains of the northlands as well as of Provence. March-Tripoly and some of the seigneural names told the story that I have often read in church inscriptions near the sea in Italy, in Hungary, in Dalmatia and in Greece, as well as in Provence and Catalonia. The feudal families of the Mediterranean are of Teutonic and Scandinavian origin. They were founded by the stock that destroyed the Roman Empire, barbarians, stronger, more energetic, more resourceful, more resolute than the southerners whom they made their serfs. When feudalism, through the formation of larger political units by the extension of kingly rights, began to decline, the chatelains preserved their prestige by supporting the propaganda to redeem the Holy Sepulcher. They took the Cross and went to fight the Saracens in Africa and Asia. When climate rather than culture latinized them, later northmen came and dispossessed them. The men of the north have always been fighting their way to the Mediterranean. Are Germans and Russians disturbing the peace of Europe any more or any differently than Northern Europeans have always done? Since the dawn of history, the Mediterranean races have had to contend with the men of the north seeking the sun.

Behind the church, ruins of centuries, overgrown with shrubbery and ivy, cling to the side of the cliff from the castle to the valley road. The great square mass of the castle rises on top of a slope far above the church terrace. A moat, filled with bushes, is on a level with the terrace, and beyond the moat is a wall. An unkept path leads through the moat to a modest door. From the towers and arch above one can see that the former entrance to the castle, by means of a portcullis, was on this side. But the outer wall has been rebuilt, leaving only a servants' door. Evidently the chatelain used to enter by climbing up through Villeneuve-Loubet as we had done. Since the motor road was made on the other side of the hill, he and his guests can ignore Villeneuve-Loubet.

The Artist was sitting on the wall of the terrace, engrossed in midnight labor. He was willing to stop for a pipe. Above us the castle, dominated by a pentagonal tower, rose toward the moon. Below us, the blanched roofs of Villeneuve-Loubet slanted into the valley. As long as the pipe lasted, I was able to talk to the Artist about the men of the north seeking the sun. But when the bowl ceased to respond to matches, he said; "All very well, but I know one man of the north who is going to seek his bed."

Before reaching the Hôtel Beau-Site, however, a street on the left attracted us. It seemed to end in a flight of steps that dipped under arches, and we could hear the swift rush of water. We were not so sleepy as we thought, for both of us were still willing to explore. The steps led to the flour mill. We followed the mill-race until we reached the Grasse tram road near the river. By the tram station, a light was shining from the open door of a café in a wooden shanty. We went in, and found Villeneuve-Loubet's officer of the Legion of Honor smoking his pipe over a cup of tilleul.

"There has been an accident in the gorge of the Loup," he said. "The last tram from Grasse was derailed, and two automobiles from Cagnes went up an hour ago. As I am the maire, I must wait for news. There may be something for me to do."

Monsieur le Maire told us that he had spent his life in the West African coast trade, with headquarters in Marseilles. If he had stayed there to end his days, he would have been one of a hundred thousand in a great city, cast aside and ignored by the new generation. But in his native pays he was in the thick of things. To return to their old home is not wholly a question of sentiment with Frenchmen who retire from business in the city or the colonies. Money goes farther, and one can be an official, with public duties and honors, and enjoy the privilege of writing on notepaper bearing the magic heading, République Française. Monsieur le Maire told us that the chatelain came often, and never forgot to invite him to meet the guests at the castle. Some years ago I used to think that it was a peculiar characteristic of the French to enjoy being made much of and exercising authority. But since I have traveled in my own and many other countries I have come to realize that this characteristic is not peculiarly French.

When Monsieur le Maire spoke of the chatelain, I had my opening. Full of the idea of the men of the north seeking the sun, I was ready to spread to others the impression I had made upon myself of my own erudition and cleverness. At the risk of boring the Artist, I repeated and enlarged upon my deductions from the inscription of the March-Tripoly de Panisse-Passis. Monsieur le Maire looked at me with malicious amazement.

"La-la-la!" he cried. "Not so fast. You haven't got it right at all, at all, at all! The castle of Villeneuve-Loubet is the only one in this corner of Provence that belongs to its pre-Revolutionary owners, but there are many centuries between feudal days and our time. Castles remain, but history changes. The March-Tripoly de Panisse-Passis are not a feudal family, and they do not come from the north. The African part of the name is due to an unproven claim of descent from a French consular official in Tripoli of the sixteenth century. The château, after a succession of proprietors, came to the Panisse family through marriage with the daughter of a Marseilles notary, who got the château by foreclosing a mortgage. During the Revolutionary period, the property was saved from confiscation by a clever straddle. The owner stayed in France, and supported the Revolution, while the son emigrated with the Bourbons. The peerage was created just a hundred years ago by Louis XVIII, in reward for the refusal of the Panisses to follow Napoleon a second time after the return from Elba."

Another pervasive idea!

"The Moon got you," was the laughing comment of the Artist.

Historical reminiscences died hard, however. We discussed the possible Saracen origin of the pentagonal tower, and the vicissitudes of the castle during the struggles between Mohammedans and Christians, feudal lords and kings, Catholics and Protestants, Spaniards and French. Monsieur le Maire was a Bonapartist, and he insisted that the chief glory of Villeneuve-Loubet was the association with Napoleon.

"When Napoleon was living at Nice," he said, "he used to come out here often. Napoleon thought that the view of sea and mountains from Villeneuve-Loubet was the finest on the Riviera. He could stand up there and look out towards his native island, and contemplate the mountains the crossing of which was his first great step to fame. Napoleon (and here Monsieur le Maire winked at the Artist) was a man of the sun seeking the north—just like Caesar, ho! ho!"

The arrival of the tram, which had recovered its equilibrium, helped me to recover mine. We said good night to Monsieur le Maire, and before turning in went out on the iron bridge that spanned the Loup.

The river, swollen by the spring thaw and rains, had overflowed its banks, and was swirling around willows and poplars. It was not deep, and the water flashed in the moonlight as it rippled over the stones. There was a smell of fresh-cut logs. We looked beyond a sawmill into a gorge of pines that ended in a transversal white mountain wall.

"Bully placer ground!" I exclaimed.

The Artist leaned over the bridge, looked down, and sighed just one word, "Salmon!"

We sought the Hôtel Beau-Site in silence.

Monuments of men's making create a diversity of atmospheres and call forth a diversity of reminiscences. They cause imagination to run riot in history. But nature is the same the world over, and there would be reactions and yearnings if one knew nothing of the past from books. There is no conflict. Nature transcends. We dreamed that night not of crusaders, but of Idaho and the Bitter Root Range.

CHAPTER V

VENCE

The most picturesque bit of mountain railway on the Riviera is the fourteen miles from Grasse to Vence. Yielding to a sudden impulse, we took it one afternoon. The train passed from Grasse through olive groves and fig orchards and over two viaducts. A third viaduct of eleven arches took us across the Loup. We were just at the season when the melting snows made a roaring torrent of what was most of the year a little stream lost in a wide gravel bed. The view up the gorge gave us the feeling of being in the heart of the mountains. And yet from the opposite windows of the train we could see the Mediterranean. Then we circled the little town of Tourettes at the foot of the Puy de Tourettes, with high cliffs in the background, and a wild luxurious growth of aloes below. We almost circled the village, crossing the ravines on either side on viaducts. A sixth long viaduct brought us to Vence. We had a rendezvous that evening at Cannes. There was no time to stop. We kept on to Nice to make the only connection that would get us back to Cannes.

Afterwards the Artist and I spoke often of Vence. Twice we planned to go to Vence, but found the fascination of Villeneuve-Loubet and Saint-Paul-du-Var justifiable deterrents.

On the terrace of our favorite café in the Allées de la Liberté at Cannes on Easter evening we announced the intention of making a special trip to Vence the next day.

"Tomorrow is Easter Monday, and the children have no school," said the Artist's hostess. "We shall make a family party of it, train to Cagnes where I may have a chance to see your Mademoiselle Simone, a trout luncheon at Villeneuve-Loubet with the rest of that bottle of which you boys spoke, and Vence in the afternoon."

The orders had been given. There was an early morning stir at the Villa Étoile, a scramble to the Théoule railway station, and before nine o'clock we were all aboard for the hour's ride to Cagnes. When we got off the train, there was just one cocher available. He looked at papa and mamma and Uncle Lester and the four babies and their nurse, and raised his hands to heaven. But Villeneuve-Loubet was not far off and we were careful to say nothing of the afternoon's program. Léonie and the children were packed into the carriage. The rest of us followed afoot.

Our cheerful host at Villeneuve-Loubet greeted us effusively. He had many holiday guests, but he remembered the Artist and me, and the splendid profit accruing from every drink out of the bottle only les Anglais called for. There were plenty of trout, fresh sliced cucumbers, and a special soup for the kiddies. The cocher was so amenable to Léonie's charms and to drinks that cost less than ours that he consented to further exertion for his horse. But the climb to Vence was out of the question—a physical impossibility, he declared. And we, having seen the horse at rest and in action, could only sorrowfully agree. It was too much of a job to maneuver all the children (the baby could not walk) to the tramway halt, nearly a mile away, and on and off the cars. The mother said that she could not be a good sport to the point of abandoning all her handicaps for several hours in a place where the river flowed fast and deep. So it was agreed that she would have at least the excursion to Saint-Paul-du-Var, and the Artist and I, determined this time on Vence, would see her the next evening for dinner at Cannes.

So we made our adieux, and hurried off to get the tram at the bifurcation below the castle. Half an hour later our tram passed the carriage jogging up the hill. As luck had it, we turned out just then on a switch to let the down car pass. The temptation of Vence was too much for Helen. The cocher seemed a fatherly sort of a man. There was a quick consultation from tram to carriage. A reunion with the handicaps was set for two hours later in front of the triple gate of Saint-Paul-du-Var, and another passenger got on the tram.

Around a curve we waved farewell to our children. After all, Vence was only three miles beyond Saint-Paul. As we passed the Saint-Paul halt, our old friend, the postman, was on the platform to receive the mailbag. We told him that the kiddies were coming, and slipped him ten francs to look after them until our return.

"Soyes tranquilles, M'sieu-dame," he reassured us. "Moi, je suis grand'père."

Beyond Saint-Paul the tramway left the road and climbed over a viaduct to Vence.

Ventium Cassaris was a military base of great importance in the days of imperial Rome. It was the central commissariat depot for the armies in Gaul, and had a forum and temples. During the Middle Ages it was a stronghold of the Holy Roman Empire. It stands on the side of a fertile hill more than a thousand feet above the sea. The site was probably chosen because of the wall of rocks on the north which shelter it from the mistral, a wind that the Romans found as little to their liking as later interlopers. In peace as in war the outside world has never been able to keep away from the Riviera.

The Artist announced his intention of spending a couple of days sketching, and left us to seek a hotel. Helen and I found that there was no tram to Saint-Paul-du-Var that would enable us to pick up the children in time for the train to Théoule unless we returned without seeing Vence. So we decided to give an hour to the town and walk back to Saint-Paul.

As at Grasse a boulevard runs along the line of the old fortifications. Some of the houses facing it have used the town wall for foundations or are themselves remnants of the wall. But at Vence the boulevard de l'enceinte is circular—a modest Ringstrasse, marking without interruption the old town from the new. We dipped in and out of alleys under arches, and made a turn of the streets of the old town. Much of the medieval still survives in Vence, as in other hill towns of the Riviera. But only behind the cathedral did we find a remnant of imperial Rome. A granite column supporting an arch, and reliefs and inscriptions built in the north wall of the cathedral, are all that we saw of Vence's latinity.

The cathedral, however, is the most interesting we found on the Riviera. It is a Romanesque building, built on the site of the second-century temple, and its tall battlemented tower harks back to a tenth-century château fort. The interior is striking: double aisles, simple nave with tiers of arches of the tenth century, a choir with richly carved oak stalls, a fourth-century sarcophagus for altar, and a font and lectern of the Italian Renaissance.

It was just a glimpse. But sometimes glimpses make more vivid memories than longer acquaintance. At the end of our hour we left Vence and hurried down the broad road of red shale past meadows thick with violets. We went through the deep pine-filled ravine over which we had crossed on the viaduct. Then the climb to Saint-Paul-du-Var.