Riviera Towns Part 5

La Turbie is not a town to hurry away from after lunch. Its old gateways and leaning houses brought out the Artist's pencil. I tried to explore the paths up the Tete du Chien. _Defense de penetrer_--and then selections from the Code about how spies are treated. The same fate met me on the Mont de la Bataille. France may love Italy just now--but she is taking no chances! As far as I could judge, every high slope was fortified. I had tea at one of the hotels perched above the town, counted my money, and suggested to the Artist that we slip down to Monte Carlo for the night.

The next morning we took the little railway back to La Turbie and continued our walk. From La Turbie the Grande Corniche makes a gradual descent behind the princ.i.p.ality of Monaco to Cabbe-Roquebrune, and joins the Pet.i.te Corniche at Cap Martin. Three miles farther on the Promenade du Midi leads into Menton. This is the most beautiful stretch of the Grande Corniche; and it is paralleled by no other road, as the new Moyenne Corniche ends at Monte Carlo. The view is before you as you go down. The vegetation becomes more tropical. You are nearer the sea, and the feeling of _dolce far niente_ gets into your bones as you approach Cap Martin.

Mont Agel's limestone side gives you back the heat of the sun. It is a radiator. No wonder lemons flower all the year round, and you discover on the same tree buds, flowers, green and yellow fruit. No wonder the palms are not out of their setting as at Cannes and Nice. Locusts, flouris.h.i.+ng where there is seemingly no ground to take root in, live from the air, and give forth pods that almost hide the leaves in their profusion. The undergrowth of myrtle and dwarf ilex above becomes aloes and sarsaparilla and wild asparagus as we go down to the sea. We have left the cypresses and cork-trees, and eucalyptus struggles in our nostrils with orange and lemon. Even the ferns are scented! The Artist looks with apathetic eye on the rocks and ruined castle of Roquebrune. When we reach Menton we are willing to sink into cane-seated rockers on the Hotel Bristol porch, call for something in a tall gla.s.s with ice in it, and let the morning walk count for a day's journey.

The tourists who know Menton only as a mid-day luncheon break have robbed themselves of an experience that no other Riviera town offers.

The Promenade des Anglais at Nice is interesting in the sense that the Avenue des Champs-Elysees is interesting. The Mediterranean is accidental--an unimportant accessory. The Promenade du Midi at Menton is another world. And this other world, with its other world climate, reveals itself to you with increasingly keen delight, as you ride (you do not walk at Menton) around Cap Martin, up the mountain to old Sainte-Agnes, in the gorge of Saint-Louis, along the Boulevard du Garavan, and out to the Giardino Hanbury. You say _giardino_ instead of _jardin_ because Mortola is just across the Italian frontier. The eccentric Englishman chose this spot, without regard to political sovereignty present or future, as the best place to demonstrate the catholicity of the Riviera climate to tropical flora. I simply mention these drives; for you do not ride at Menton any more than you walk.

The man who wants to keep his energy and work on the Riviera must not go farther east than Nice.

But why another world? And another world even from that of the rest of the French Riviera? It is partly the climate and the consequent flora, but mostly the light. The general aridity of the Riviera, with the prevalence of everbrowns and evergreens, strikes unpleasantly at first the visitor from the North. Suns.h.i.+ne and riotous colors of flowers and blossoming trees do not make up for the absence of water-fed green.

When it rains, the Northerner's depression cannot be fought off. The chill gets to his soul as well as to his bones. He prays for the sun he has come south to seek. But when the sun returns, the dust annoys him. The high wind gets on his nerves.

The casual tourist, whose stay is brief, even if he has come in the most favorable season, is "not so sure about the Riviera, you know."

He is impatient with himself because, after the first vivid impression, panoramas and landscapes leave him unsatisfied. There is no compensation for the absence of water-fed green in the canvas of nature _until one becomes responsive to other colors_. I do not mean particular patches of color in flowers and blossoms. These are of a season. Often they pa.s.s in a week. The sun that gives rich life kills quickly. The glory of south lands, especially along the sea, is the constant changing of colors. These colors you will drink in only when by familiarity you have become sensitive to lights and shadows.

If you stay long enough at a place like Menton you will be ready for Southern Italy and Greece. You will be able to drink in the beauty of landscapes without foliage. And when you have acquired this sense, your own country will be a new world to you. Never again, as long as you live, will you tire of any landscape.

The sun veils and unveils itself more often and more quickly and more unexpectedly at Menton than at any place on the Riviera. And the setting for watching the changes is perfect. Menton can say, in the words of the old sundial,

"Son figlia del sole, Eppure son ombre."

CHAPTER VII

MONTE CARLO

San Marino and Andorra have maintained their independence from the Middle Ages, but as republics. The only reigning families who kept their domains from being engulfed in the evolution of modern Europe are those of Liechtenstein and Monaco. What will happen to Liechtenstein with the disappearance of the Hapsburg Empire is uncertain. Wedged in between the Vorarlberg portion of the Austrian Tyrol and Switzerland, Liechtenstein is almost as out of the way, as forgotten, as unimportant, as San Marino and Andorra. Monaco is in a different situation. The smallest country in the world covers only eight square miles, and never was very much larger than it is today. Until half a century ago Monaco was an Italian princ.i.p.ality and not at all an anomaly. For Italy had been broken up into small political units from the Roman days. At the time of the unification of Italy, the Italians had to part with a portion of the Riviera to France. Monaco lost a bit of her coast line--the Menton district--and became an enclave in France.

Because of the traditional friends.h.i.+p of the Grimaldi family for France, the princ.i.p.ality was saved from extinction when the protectorate of Savoy (established by the Congress of Vienna) was withdrawn in 1861. In fact, the male line of the Grimaldi died out just after the War of Spanish Succession, and the present house is of French descent. But whether Grimaldi or Matignon, the princes of Monaco have fought for a thousand years on the side of France against the British especially, but also against the Italians, Spanish and Germans. As unhesitatingly as his predecessors had always done, Prince Albert espoused the cause of France in 1914; his son fought through the war in the French army.

And there is another reason for the continued independence of Monaco.

Republics have no sense of grat.i.tude. After the fall of Napoleon III Monaco would hardly have survived save for the gambling concession. Four years before the Franco-Prussian War, a casino and hotels built on the Roche des Spelugues had been named Monte Carlo in honor of the reigning prince. The concession, granted to a Frenchman, Francois Blanc, was too valuable to spoil by having Monaco come under French law! The Republic tolerated Monaco--on condition that no French officer in uniform and no inhabitant of the Departement des Alpes-Maritimes (which surrounds Monaco) be allowed in the gaming rooms of the Casino. It was also agreed that except in petty cases handled in a magistrate's court all crimes should be judged by French law and the criminals delivered for punishment to France.

The arrangement is admirable from the French point of view. The Riviera has its gambling place of world-wide fame with no opprobrium or responsibility attaching to the French Government. The extra-territoriality does not extend to criminals. The inhabitants of the neighboring French towns are not demoralized by the opportunity to gamble. French army officers are protected from corruption. It is presumed that the rest of the world, which can afford a trip to the princ.i.p.ality, will be able to take care of its own morals!

The Monegasques are similarly protected by their sovereign. They, too, are forbidden to gamble. They profit from the concession in that there are no taxes to pay in the rich little princ.i.p.ality and in that several hundred thousand foreigners come every year to give big prices for every little service. But they run no risk of being caught by the snare they set for others. Prince and people, the Monegasques are like the wise old bartender, who said in a tone of virtuous self-satisfaction, "I never drink."

When Tennyson, traveling along the Grande Corniche, saw Monaco, it was of the old medieval princ.i.p.ality that he could write:

"How like a gem, beneath, the city Of little Monaco, basking, glow'd."

The old walled town, on its promontory, must indeed have seemed a gem in an unsurpa.s.sed setting in the time of Tennyson. For the little Port of Hercules and the other promontory, Spelugues, were tree- and shrub- and flower-lined. There was nothing to break the spell of old Monaco. Now, alas, the Casino and hotels of Monte Carlo cover Spelugues, and between the promontories La Condamine has sprung up, a town of red-roofed villas, larger than either Monaco or Monte Carlo and forming with them an unbroken ma.s.s of buildings. Monaco is simply an end of the city, distinct from the rest of the agglomeration only because it is high up and on a cape jutting out into the sea.

Unless one went up to explore the old town, one would not realize that it was more than the palace with its garden and the post-Tennyson cathedral, too prominent for the good of the medieval spell. La Condamine and Monte Carlo have reached the limit of expansion. In front is the sea, behind the steep wall of the mountain. The princ.i.p.ality is all city. But the mountains and sea prevent the exclusion of nature from the picture.

Despite the modern growth of Monaco, from the Grande Corniche the words of the poet still hold good. Monaco is no longer a predominantly medieval picture perhaps--but it is still a gem.

The old town is as attractive in walls and buildings as other rock villages of the Riviera. Three main streets, Rue Ba.s.se, Rue du Milieu and Rue des Briques, run parallel from the Place du Palais out on the promontory. They are crossed by the narrowest of city alleys, _a l'Italienne_, and to the right of the Rue des Briques, around the Cathedral, is the rest of the town. Nowhere does the old town extend to the sea.

On the sites of the ancient fortifications the present ruler, Prince Albert, has made gardens and built museums for his collections of prehistoric man and of ocean life. One ought never to dip into museums.

If you have lots and lots of time (I mean weeks, not hours), or if you have special interest in a definite field of study, museums may be profitable. But "doing" museums is the last word in tourist folly. Yes, I know that skeletons and the cutest little fish are in those museums. I am not ashamed to confess that I never darkened their doors. Life is short, and while the Artist revels in his subjects, I find more interest in studying the living Monegasques than their--and our--negroid ancestors.

For there is a separate race, with its own patois, in Monaco. You would never spot it in the somewhat Teutonic cosmopolitanism of the Condamine and Monte Carlo tradesmen and hotel servants. It is not apparent in the impa.s.sive _croupiers_ of the Casino. But within a few hundred yards, in half a dozen streets and lanes, the physiognomy, the mentality, the language of the people make you realize that regarding Monaco as a separate country is not wholly a polite fiction to relieve the French Government of the responsibility for the Casino. These people are different, children as well as grown-ups. They are neither French nor Italian, Provencal nor Catalan, but as distinct as mountain Basques are from French and Spanish. It is not a racial group distinction, as with the Basques. In blood, the Monegasques are affiliated to their Provencal and Italian neighbors.

What one sees in the old town of Monaco is a confirmation of the a.s.sertion of many historians that nationality, in our modern political sense of the word, and patriotism, as a ma.s.s instinct shared by millions, are phenomena of the nineteenth century. Steam transportation, obligatory primary education, universal military service, are the factors that have developed national consciousness, and the exigencies and opportunities and advantages of the industrial era have furnished the motive for binding people together in great political organisms. Today if there were no outside interests working against the solidarity of human beings leading a commonwealth existence in the same country, the political organism would soon make the race rather than the race the political organism.

San Remo and Menton and Monaco are Riviera towns all within a few miles of each other. People of the same origin have three political allegiances. In half an hour your automobile will traverse the territories of three nations. Italians and French fight under different flags and were within an ace of being lined against each other in the war. Monegasques do not fight at all. Taxes and tariff boundaries, schools and military obligations, make the differences between the three peoples. Put them all under the same dispensation and where would be your races?

In the old days the _raison d'etre_ of the princ.i.p.ality was the power to prey upon commerce. From their fortress on the promontory the Grimaldi organized the Monegasques to levy tolls on pa.s.sing s.h.i.+ps. Italy was not a united country. France had not yet extended her frontiers to the Riviera. This little corner of the Mediterranean escaped the Juggernaut of developing political unity that crushed the life out of a dozen other feudal robber states. And when the logical moment for disappearance arrived, Monte Carlo saved Monaco. Another means of preying upon others was happily discovered. The Monegasques abandoned pistols and cutla.s.ses for little rakes. The descendants of those who stood on the p.o.o.ps of s.h.i.+ps now sit at the ends of green tables. The gold still pours in, however, and no law reaches those who take it.

There is this difference: you no longer empty your pockets to the Monegasques under compulsion, and the battlements of old Monaco play no part in your losses. The proverb dearest to American hearts says that a sucker is born every minute. It is incomplete, that proverb. It should be rounded out with the axiom that at some minute every person born is a sucker.

So I look over to the great white building which is the salvation of the Monegasques--their symbol of freedom from taxes and military service--and know that the strength of Monaco is the weakness of the world. I return to the Place du Palais. The Artist is reluctantly strapping up his tools. We glance for a brief moment at the best sunset view on the Riviera. s.h.i.+ps sail by unmolested. No more have they fear of the Tete du Chien and of the huge stone _boulet_ that Fort Antoine used to lance if a merchantman dared to be deaf to the call of the galley darting forth from the Port of Hercules. But we?

The Artist's fingers are nimble with the buckle after a day with the pencil. Pipe is filled from pouch with an inimitably deft movement of one hand. Reluctant is generally the right word to use when I speak of the Artist leaving his work. I am not so sure now. As I hope, he does not suggest a west-bound tram at the foot of the Palais or the 6:40 train; he says,

"If we alternate eighteen and thirty-six this evening, putting by half each time we win--"

"Like that English old maid we saw last week," I interrupted, "who doubled just once instead of splitting. I can see the drop of the jaw now. Even without the false teeth, it would have been hideous."

"On the red then as long as we last," conceded the Artist, who knew my horror of complicated figure systems, "and there's the sign."

He pointed to the red fringe that lit up fading Cap Martin.

"If we do not get over soon," I answered, "black will be the latest tip of nature." The Riviera towns under the lee of mountains do not have a lingering twilight.

But when we had finished dinner an _affiche_ announcing _Ada_ turned us from the Salles de Jeu to the Salle du Theatre. To most people gambling is a pastime not taken seriously. Only when it is a pa.s.sion does one find in it the exclusive attraction of Monte Carlo. This is proved by the excellence of Monte Carlo opera. No metropolis boasts of a better orchestra and chorus; and the most famous singers are always eager to appear at Monte Carlo.

CHAPTER VIII

VILLEFRANCHE

During the heat of the war, shortly after the intervention of the United States, I wrote a magazine article setting forth for American readers the claims of France to Alsace-Lorraine and trying to explain why the French felt as they did about Alsace-Lorraine. Of course I spoke of Strasbourg and Mulhouse; but a copy-reader, faithfully making all spellings conform to the Century Dictionary, changed my MS. reading to Stra.s.sburg and Mulhausen. Can you imagine my horror when I saw those awful German names staring out at me under my own signature--and in an article espousing the side of France in the Alsace-Lorraine controversy? Perhaps not--unless you understand the feeling of the actual possessor and the aspirant to possession of border and other moot territories. "By their spelling ye shall know them!" is their cry. Later, I happened to be in America when that dear good faithful copy-reader changed my Bizerte to the dictionary's Bizerta in an article on Tunis, and was able to go to the mat with him. I explained that the spelling was an essential part of the political tenor of the article.

All this I repeated to the wife and critic combined in one delightful but Ulster-minded person who insisted that in English Menton must be spelled Mentone.

"You write Ma.r.s.eilles instead of Ma.r.s.eille and put the 's' on Lyon too: I've seen you do it!" she cried. "And the French call London Londres!"

"But those cities happen not to be in _terre irredente_," I explained.

"Menton lies too near the Italian frontier for a friend of France to call it Mentone, whatever the English usage may be. If we retain Mentone, why have we abandoned Nizza for Nice, Eza for eze, Roccabruna for Roquebrune, Monte Calvo for Mont Chauve, Testa del Can for Tete du Chien, Villa Franca for Villefranche?"

"Since you have at last arrived at Villefranche, you had better start your chapter," was her woman's answer.

You may have a confused picture, you may even forget many places you have visited in your travels, but Villefranche? Never! Whether you have first seen Villefranche as you came around the corner of Montboron from Nice or across the neck of Cap Ferrat from Beaulieu on the Pet.i.te Corniche, as you came through the Col des Quatre Chemins on the Grande Corniche, or as you climbed up behind Fort Montalban on the Moyenne Corniche, the memory is equally indelible. But each _corniche_ gives a different impression of the only natural harbor on the Riviera. The Pet.i.te Corniche, which mounts rather high around Montboron, is the near view. You see only the _rade_ with Cap Ferrat as a background.