Riviera Towns Part 4

"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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The river was swirling around willows and poplars.]

"Bully placer ground!" I exclaimed.

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

We sought the Hotel 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 Gra.s.se to Vence. Yielding to a sudden impulse, we took it one afternoon. The train pa.s.sed from Gra.s.se 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 cafe in the Allees de la Liberte 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 etoile, a scramble to the Theoule 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. Leonie 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 cuc.u.mbers, and a special soup for the kiddies. The _cocher_ was so amenable to Leonie'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 pa.s.sed the carriage jogging up the hill. As luck had it, we turned out just then on a switch to let the down car pa.s.s. 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 pa.s.senger 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 pa.s.sed 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 rea.s.sured us. "_Moi, je suis grand'pere._"

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

Ventium Ca.s.saris 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 Theoule unless we returned without seeing Vence. So we decided to give an hour to the town and walk back to Saint-Paul.

As at Gra.s.se 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 _Ringstra.s.se_, 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 _chateau 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Down the broad road of red shale past meadows thick with violets."]

We might have taken our time. Christine and Lloyd and Mimi came running to greet us, bringing with them little friends who had probably never before played with children from Paris. We did not need to ask what kind of a time they had been having. Children are the true cosmopolitans. Hope lay under a tree on her blanket playing with her pink shoes. Nearby, at a table in front of the Cafe de la Porte, Leonie was treating the _cocher_ and the postman to a gla.s.s of beer.

"I got bread and honey and milk for the children's _gouter_," explained Leonie, "and _Monsieur le cocher_ and I are having ours with _Monsieur le facteur_."

As the children did not seem to be tired and the _cocher_ was in no hurry, Helen and I made a tour of the walls, and took a photograph of our handicaps and their faithful attendants in front of the great gate built by Francis I, who prized Saint-Paul-du-Var as the best spot to guard the fords of the river against Charles V.

A reader of this ma.n.u.script declares that the chapter on Vence ought to be struck out.

"They [I suppose she means the home folks] will never understand," she insists.

I am adamant.

"When they come to the Riviera, they will understand," I answer.

Between Saint-Raphael and Menton the most sacred responsibilities do not weigh one down all the time.

CHAPTER VI

MENTON

In architectural parlance the cornice is the horizontal molded projection crowning a building, especially the uppermost member of the entablature of an order, surmounting the frieze. The word is also used in mountaineering to describe an overhanging ma.s.s of hardened snow at the edge of a precipice. In the Maritime Alps it has a striking figurative meaning. There are four _corniches_--the main roads along the two sections of the Riviera, Menton to Nice and Theoule to Saint-Raphael, where the mountains come right down to the sea and nature affords no natural routes. The Grande Corniche and the Pet.i.te Corniche run from Nice to Menton, and the Moyenne Corniche from Nice to Monte Carlo. The Corniche d'Or or Corniche de l'Esterel is the new road from Theoule to Saint-Raphael. The word is incorrectly used, for the most part, concerning the two coast roads, the Pet.i.te Corniche and the Corniche l'Esterel. For although these beautiful roads do at many points stand high above the sea, they descend as often as possible to connect with the coast towns. But the a.n.a.logy with the architectural term is perfect in so far as the Grande Corniche and the Moyenne Corniche are concerned. At every point these wonderful roads, undisturbed by tramways and unbroken by towns (except La Turbie on the Grande Corniche and eze on the Moyenne Corniche), you feel that you are traveling along a horizontal molded projection above temples built with hands and the activities of humankind.

From Nice to the Italian frontier the railway, darting in and out of tunnels, keeps near sea level. A small branch climbs from Monte Carlo to La Turbie. The tramway from Nice to Menton follows the Pet.i.te Corniche, with a branch to Saint-Jean on Cap Ferrat.

For tourists, Nice is the center of the Riviera, the place to come back to every night after day excursions. Everything is so near that this is possible. Nice is the terminus of railways and tramways east and west. It is the home of the ubiquitous Cook. You can buy all sorts of excursion tickets, and by watching the bulletin posted in front of the Cook office on the Promenade des Anglais, it is possible to "cover" the Riviera in a fortnight. But this means a constant rush, perched on a high seat, crowded in with twenty others, on a _char a banes_, and only a kaleidoscopic vision of Mediterranean blue, hillside and valley green and brown, roof-top red, wall gray and mountain white. At the end of your orgy, instead of distinct pictures, you carry away an impression of the Riviera in which the Place Ma.s.sena is a concrete image and the rest no more than dancing bits of colored gla.s.s. Saint-Raphael and Menton are the luncheon breaks of two days, and the Grande Corniche is a beautiful vague mountain road over which you whizzed.

And yet there are those who go to the Riviera every year for a daily ride over the Grande Corniche, and who dream during ten months of two months at Menton!

Sitting with our legs daggling over the stone coping at the entrance of the port in Nice, the Artist and I figured out--on the basis of just time for a glimpse and a few sketches--how long it would take us to wander through the Riviera. Reserving March and April each year, we discovered that the allotted three score and ten, seeing that we had already come to half the span, would be inadequate. And there were other parts of the world! So we decided to see what we could, eschew the "day excursions," draw on the memories of former years, and let it go at that. Grande Corniche and Moyenne Corniche would be explored afoot on sunny days and gray; shelter would be sought at Menton; and on the return to Nice, Monte Carlo and Villefranche would be the only tramway stops for us.

To Ventimiglia, as if he foresaw what part of the Riviera would eventually fall to France, Napoleon I was the builder of La Grande Corniche. His engineers, planning for horse-drawn vehicles in an age when time was not money, made the ascent easy by striking inland for several kilometers up from the valley of the Paillon and circling Mont Gros and Mont Vinaigrier. For the first two miles you have Nice and Cimiez below you. Then the road turns, pa.s.ses the observatory of Bischoffsheim (who won posthumous fame by his having built the house where Wilson lost the battle of Paris in 1919), and goes over the Col des Quatre Chemins. Here begins the matchless succession of views of the loveliest portion of the Riviera coast. Below you is the harbor of Villefranche, between Montboron, which hides Nice, and Cap Ferrat jutting far into the sea with Cap de l'Hospice breaking out to the left. The sea is always on your right as you continue to climb.

Ancient eze is on a lower hill midway between you and the Mediterranean. If you have made an early start from Nice, La Turbie will come most conveniently in sight a little before noon.

The only town of the Grande Corniche high up from the sea is on the line given in ancient maps as the frontier between Gaul and Italy, and it is evident that the Roman road followed here the route chosen by Napoleon. For here the Senate raised the _trophaeum Augusti_ to commemorate the subjugation of the Gauls and the new era of tranquillity from invasion for the Empire. On its site one of the most interesting medieval towers in southern France was the ruin par excellence of the Riviera until a few years ago. It is now "restored"

so well that it leaves nothing to the imagination--a crime quite in keeping with the spirit of the new age of the "movies." Its architect wanted you to see at a glance just what it used to be. You feel that he would have put arms on the Venus de Milo! As we stood there, a guide came up and began to tell us the history of the tower. We moved over to the terrace. From Montboron to Bordighera the Riviera lay below us, a panorama which commanded silence. Up came the guide fellow, and started to name each place.

"I am about to commit murder," I cried.

"I'll save you the bother by telling him to chase himself with this franc," said the Artist, pulling out the coin. "If only the restorer of the Tower of Augustus were around, he'd come in for a franc too."