Riviera Towns Part 8

"But Mougins is different," insisted the _cocher_, "and the view is different. Besides, the wine is unique. It is sparkling, and can be taken at five o'clock with little cakes. There are roads you have not seen, and pretty girls at work in the rose fields. We shall drive slowly."

There had been much wandering during the past fortnight and we were ready for a quiet afternoon at the Casino. But we allowed ourselves to be persuaded. The Casino was always there, and we had never heard of _vin mousseux_ on the Riviera. Baedeker, as if in duty bound to miss nothing, records the existence of Mougins, three kilometers east of the Cannes-Gra.s.se road after you pa.s.s the ten-kilometer stone on the way to Gra.s.se--then gives the next town. Mougins is not starred, and nothing around Mougins is starred. Was not that a reason for going there?

English royalty used to come to Cannes, and every season more middle cla.s.s Britishers woke up to the fact that it would be pleasant to write home to one's friends from Cannes. Hotels and villas increased rapidly. When English royalty went elsewhere, Russian Grand Dukes and Balkan princelings saved the day for the sn.o.bs. Consequently, the town has spread annoyingly into the country. A row of hotels faces the sea, and on side streets are less pretentious hotels, invariably advertised as a minute's walk from the sea. A mile inland is another quarter of fashionable hotels for those whom the splashing of the waves makes nervous. Then the interminable suburbs of villas and _pensions_ commence.

When city people seek a change of climate, they do not always want a change of environment. They are intent upon living the same life as at home, upon following the same round of amus.e.m.e.nts. They cannot be happy without their comforts and conveniences, and this means the impossibility of getting away from streets and buildings and noises and crowds. The cla.s.s that has monopolized the Riviera has tried to recreate Paris in the Midi. If one wants to find the country right on the sea coast, one must get off the train before reaching Cannes.

Between Cannes and the Italian frontier, one does not have the sea without the city. Only by going inland can one find the country without missing the sight and feel of the sea. For everywhere the land rises. The valleys rise. Roads keep mounting and curving to avoid heavy grades, and foothills do not hide the Alps and the Mediterranean.

After escaping from Cannet, the outermost suburb, the road to Mougins goes through a valley of oranges and roses. There are stone farmhouses with thatched roofs and barns that give forth the smell of hay. There are cows and chickens.

We were congratulating ourselves upon having given up the casino long before we reached Mougins. We forgave the _cocher_ his exaggeration about the workers in the rose fields. When one sees in paintings and in the cinematograph pretty girls engaged in agricultural pursuits, it is more than even money that they are models and actresses in disguise.

I am enthusiastic in my cult of the country, but I have never carried it to the point of becoming ecstatic over country maidens. There must be, of course, as many good-looking girls in the country as in the city. But could a chorus of milkmaids to satisfy New York or Paris be recruited outside New York or Paris?

When we reached the uncompromising stretch of road that led up to Mougins, we took mercy upon the horses. The _cocher_ had not driven them as slowly as he had promised. We walked a mile through olive orchards, and were in the town before we realized it. Unlike other hill cities of the Riviera that we had visited, Mougins has no castle and no walls. Few traces remain of outside fortifications. All around Mougins the land is cultivated. One does not realize the abruptness of the hilltop, for the city rises from fields and vineyards and orchards.

Saint-Paul-du-Var and Villeneuve-Loubet remind one of the days when self-defense was a constant preoccupation. Mougins long ago forgot feudal quarrels, foreign invasions and raids of Saracens and Barbary pirates. The peasants still live together on a hilltop, going forth in the morning and coming back in the evening. But they have taken the stone of their walls for fences, and of their towers for barns. They have brought their tilled land up the hillside to the city.

On the main street, we had the impression that the medieval character of Mougins was lost by rebuilding. Ailanthus trees and whitewashed walls and red-tiled roofs greeted us. The church and the market-place were of the Third Republic. Sleepy cafes displayed enameled tin advertis.e.m.e.nts of Paris drinks. The signs in front of the notions shop declared the merits of rival Paris newspapers. But when we were hunting out a vantage point from which to get the view of Cannes and the Mediterranean, the Artist saw much to tempt his pencil. Back from the main street, old Mougins survived, none the less charming from the constant contrasts of old and new.

The arch of a city gate, perfectly preserved on one side, lost itself in a modern building across the street. A woman, leaning out of a window, wanted to know what the Artist was doing. I explained our interest in the arch. Had there been a gate in her grandmother's time?

Why, when so much of a former age had disappeared, did this half-arch remain? The woman was puzzled. It was incomprehensible that anyone should be interested in the arch, which had always been there. I thought I would try her on other subjects.

"Did many travelers come to Mougins from America?" I asked.

"Oh, yes. And you are an American, aren't you?"

Obviously America was a more interesting subject than archaeology.

While the Artist was finishing his sketch she chatted pleasantly with me. Yes, she had often talked with American visitors. She revealed, however, the French provincial's customary ignorance of our life and asked the usual questions about our wealth and our skysc.r.a.pers. I am not altogether sure that I set her right about her fabulous misconception when the Artist's drawing was completed.

Mougins lives in medieval fashion, if not wholly in medieval houses.

Dependent upon occasional water from the heavens for carrying sewage down the hillside, Mougins has no use for gutters and drains. Rubbish is thrown from windows, and tramped down into last year's layer of pavement. Goats enjoy the rich pasturage of old boots and cans and papers and rags and vegetables that had lived beyond their day.

Although, as we walked through the alleys, we saw no one, heard no one, the houses were inhabited: for much of the garbage was painfully recent, and clothes flapped on lines from window to window over our heads. The Artist suggested that the townspeople might be taking a siesta. But it was late in the afternoon for that. Then we remembered that Mougins was an agricultural community, and that the work of the town was in the fields. This explained also why we saw no shops and no evidences of trade. Olives, flowers, wine, fruit and vegetables are taken to the markets of Cannes and Gra.s.se, and the people of Mougins buy what they need where they sell. Mougins has only bakeries and cafes. Bread and alcohol alone are indispensable where people dwell together.

We circled the city, and came out on the promenade across which we had entered Mougins. Every French town has an ill.u.s.trious son, for whom a street is named, on whose birthplace a tablet is put, and to whom a monument is raised. Our tour had taken us through the Rue du Commandant Lamy. We had read the inscription on his home, and were now before his monument, a bust on a slender pedestal, with the glorious sweep of La Napoule for a background. The peasants of Mougins, as they go out to and return from the labor of vineyard, orchard and field, pa.s.s by the Lamy memorial. Even when they are of one's own blood, is there inspiration in the daily reminder of heroes? How many from Mougins have followed Lamy's example? I have often wondered whether monuments mean anything except to tourists.

As I had recently been writing upon French colonial history, Lamy's daring and fruitful journeys in Central Africa were fresh in my mind, and I remembered his tragic death in the Wadai fifteen years ago. An old man had just come up the hill, and was dragging weary legs encased in clay-stained trousers across the promenade. A conical basket of lettuce heads was on his back, and he used the handle of his hoe as a cane.

"Did you know Lamy?" I inquired.

"Lamy was a boy in this town when I was a grown man going to my work.

I used to pa.s.s him playing on this very spot," he answered.

As we walked along toward the main street, we asked whether there were others from Mougins who, like Lamy, had played a part in the history of France abroad. No, the people of Mougins liked to stay at home.

Fortunately for the prosperity of the country, the young men returned after their military service, and the attractions and opportunities of city life rarely took them and held them farther away than Cannes and Gra.s.se. The Artist had his eye on the lettuce basket and the hoe, and I wanted to hear more of life in Mougins. We asked the old man to share a bottle with us.

The _cocher_ was waiting in front of a cafe, and corroborated the statement on a huge painted sign, that here was to be found the true _vin mousseux_ of Mougins. It was evident that we were not the first tourists to come from Cannes. The _cocher_ was a friend of the proprietress, who made us welcome in the way tourists are greeted.

Little cakes and a dusty bottle were produced promptly, and in the stream of words that greeted us we could gather that this was a red-letter occasion for us, and that it was possible to have the _vin mousseux_ of Mougins shipped to Paris by the dozen or the hundred.

This annoyed us and dampened our ardor for the treat. The Artist and I share a foolish feeling of wanting to be pioneers. We like to believe that our travels take us out of the beaten path, and that we are constantly discovering delectable places. After us the tourists--but not before!

The corkscrew of the proprietress, however, consoled us. A corkscrew through whose handle the beaded pressure of gas escapes before the cork is drawn may be common enough. But the fact remains that neither of us had seen one. We expressed our delight and wonder, and the Artist navely told the proprietress, before he tasted the wine, that he felt rewarded for the trip to Mougins just for the discovery of the corkscrew. After the first sip, I added that now we knew why we had walked up the long hill. The proprietress and the _cocher_ beamed.

Our enthusiasm meant money to them. The old man twisted his mouth contemptuously.

"Tell me, then," he said, "what was your thought of me when you saw me coming up the hill to the promenade with my burden of lettuce heads?

And when I told you that I had seen Lamy playing as a boy on the spot where his statue stands? Sorry for me, were you not? Lamy had the good sense, you think, to quit Mougins, and go out to glory. I and the rest of Mougins, you think, have stayed here because we do not know any better. It is all in the point of view. One of you is enthusiastic over a patent corkscrew, and the other over the wine. You tourists from the city cannot understand us. It is because you carry your limitations with you. You think you lead a large, broad, varied life.

You do not. Finding the greatest interest of Mougins in a patent corkscrew and sparkling wine betrays you."

"_Ces messieurs_ have a pa.s.sion for the country and for towns away from the railroad," remonstrated the _cocher_. "This afternoon I tempted them from the Casino at Cannes. They are a thousand times enthusiastic about Mougins, your homes, your streets, your views, and all they have seen in the valley coming here. If they had limitations, would they have wanted to come? It is senseless to think that they make the effort, that they spend the money, just to be pleased with what they see from their own world or what reminds them of their own world. I spend my life with tourists, and they always appreciate, I have never known them to fail to thank me for having brought them to Mougins."

Our critic--and, indeed, our judge--turned on the _cocher_.

"Tell me," he said sharply, raising his voice witheringly, "would you risk bringing tourists to Mougins if there were not this cafe and the _vin mousseux_?"

The _cocher_ puffed his cigar vigorously. The Artist, highly delighted, broke an almost invariable rule to prove that the greatest interest of Mougins was not the corkscrew. He opened his sketch-book.

While the old man was fingering the sketches, I ordered another bottle.

Our guest had been the vanguard of the homeward procession. All Mougins was now pa.s.sing before us.

"Now you see," continued our mentor, "what it is to live. A score of men who knew Lamy have pa.s.sed before you. They did not go to Africa to hunt negroes and to put our flag on the map at the same time as the names of unknown towns. They are here, and will eat a good dinner tonight. Lamy is dead. Now I do not say that we are heroes, and that our point of view is heroic. But I do say that we are not to be pitied. And I say, moreover, that we do as much for France as Lamy did. If we had all gone to Africa, there might be more names on the map, but there would be less food in the markets of Gra.s.se and Cannes."

"Oh, for the ghost of Gray," commented the Artist "He would be face to face with the 'unseen flower'--but not blushing!"

"A case of _auream quisquis mediocritatem diligit_," I answered.

We were getting cla.s.sical as well as philosophical, and it was time to go. To whom was the mediocrity?

CHAPTER XIII

FReJUS

The ride from Theoule to St. Raphael, by the Corniche de l'Esterel, gives a feeling of satiety. The road along the sea is a succession of curves, each one leading around a rocky promontory into a bay that causes you to exclaim, "This is the best!" For thirty-five kilometers there is constantly a new adjustment of values, until you find yourself at the point where comparatives and superlatives are exhausted. The vehicle of language has broken down. Recurrent adjectives become trite. When the search for new ones is an effort, you realize that nature has imposed, through the prodigal display of herself, a limit of capacity to enjoy.

Of copper rocks and azure sea; of mountain streams hurrying through profusely wooded valleys; of cliffs with changing profiles; of conifers; of enclosed parks, whose charm of undergrowth run wild and of sunlit green tree-trunks successfully hides the controlling hand of man to the uninitiated in forestry; of hedges and pergolas and ramblers and villas and lighthouses and islets and yachts, we had our fill.

But at La Napoule a Roman milestone announced that we were on the road to Forum Julii: and the very first thing that attracted us when we reached St. Raphael was a bit of aqueduct on the promenade. It looked singularly out of place right by the sea, and surrounded by an iron fence quite in keeping with those of the hotels across the street. The inscription (Third Republic, not Roman) told us that this portion of the aqueduct from the River Siagne to Frejus was removed from its original emplacement and set up here under the prefectship of Monsieur X, the subprefectship of Monsieur Y, and the mayorship of Monsieur Z. The fishing village that has rapidly grown into one of the most important "resorts" of the Riviera claims distinction on historical grounds. Napoleon landed at St. Raphael on his return from Elba. Gounod composed Romeo and Juliet here. General Gallieni was cultivating his vineyard here when the war of 1914 broke out, and the call to arms sent him from his seclusion to become the savior of Paris. But when ruins became fashionable in the last decade of Queen Victoria, it was necessary for St. Raphael to have an ancient monument. An arch of the aqueduct was imported to the beach with as little regard for congruous setting as Mr. Croesus-in-Ten-Years shows in importing an English lawn to his front yard at Long Branch and a gallery of ancestral portraits to his dining-room on Fifth Avenue.

The Artist looked at the ruins in silence. He tried to gnaw the ends of his mustache. His eyes changed from amus.e.m.e.nt to contempt, and then to interest. I was ready for his question.

"Say, where is this town Frejus?"

The _cocher_ protested. He had bargained to take us to St. Raphael, the horses were tired, and anyway there was no good hotel, no food, nothing to do at Frejus.

"Where is Frejus?" repeated the Artist. The _cocher_ pointed his whip unwillingly westward along the sh.o.r.e. The Artist turned to me with his famous nose-and-eyes-and-chin-up expression.

"What do you say, _mon vieux_?"

"Decidedly Frejus," I answered.

Accustomed to American queerness, the _cocher_ resigned himself to the reins for another five kilometers.