Riviera Towns Part 2

After Mademoiselle Simone left me under the b.u.t.tonwood tree, I thought of the Artist. He had finished and was smoking over a gla.s.s of vermouth at one of the tables by the parapet of the _place_.

"Great town," he said. "Bully stuff here. In buildings and villagers have you found anything as fascinating as that purple and red on the mountain snow over there? It just gets the last sun, the very last."

"Yes," I answered, "but neither in a building or a villager of Cagnes.

There is a Parisienne--" And I told him about Mademoiselle Simone. He was silent, and his fingers drummed upon the table, tipity-tap, tipity-tap. "Show me your sketches," I asked.

"No," he said scathingly. "No! You are not interested in sketches. Nor should I have been, had you been more generous. You had the luck in Cagnes."

The prospect of a trout dinner at Villeneuve-Loubet took us rapidly down the hill. We soon pa.s.sed out of the fifteenth century into the twentieth. Modern Cagnes, with its clang of tramway gong, toot of locomotive whistle, honk-honk of motor horn, cafe terraces crowded with Sunday afternooners, broad sidewalks and electric lights was another world. But it was our world--and Mademoiselle Simone's. That is why coming back into it from the hill of Cagnes was really like a cold shower. For a sense of refreshment followed immediately the shock--and stayed with us.

The hill of Cagnes we could rave about enthusiastically because we did not have to go back there and live there. It will be "a precious memory," as tourists say, precisely because it is a _memory_. The bird in a cage is less of a prisoner than we city folk of the modern world.

For when you open the cage door, the bird will fly away and not come back. We may fly away--but we do come back, and the sooner the better.

We love our prisons. We are happy (or think we are, which is the same thing) in our chains. And in the brief time that we are a-wing, do we really love unusual sights and novel things? In exploring, is not our greatest joy and delight in finding something familiar, something we have already known, something we are used to? An appreciative lover and frequenter of grand opera once said to me, "'The Barber of Seville' is my favorite, because I know I am going to have the treat of 'The Suwanee River' or 'Annie Laurie' when I go to it." There is an honest confession, such as we must all make if we are to do our souls good.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "The hill of Cagnes we could rave about."]

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 _aperitif_. Precisely because it was Friday and not Sunday, there was no reasonable hope of running into Monsieur le Cure 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 Gra.s.se 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed 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 gra.s.s 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 pa.s.ser-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 droles d'Anglais_.

The miles pa.s.sed 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 lat.i.tude.

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 p.r.o.nounce 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 cert.i.tude 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 ca.s.serole 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 Montparna.s.se cafe.

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

Pierre put the ca.s.serole 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 Montparna.s.se cafe. I noted with approval the precaution that Pierre had taken. Either the dog was very hungry or there was something particularly tempting in the ca.s.serole.

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 "_dites 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 "_epatant_," 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 pa.s.sed 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 gra.s.s 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 ma.s.s in the chapel. Its rear wall was the rising ground, and there seemed to be a garden on the roof. Burial s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ce 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 gra.s.s 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 compa.s.s. 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-hotel_, a cube of whitewash, but we were far from the temptation of ba.n.a.lities. 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 compa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed the centers of munic.i.p.al 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 pa.s.s 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. Gra.s.s 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 a.s.serting herself against man and sun and sea.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "The houses in the courts were stables downstairs."]