Mentone, Cairo, and Corfu
by Constance Fenimore Woolson · English · Gutenberg #33367 · 444,411 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Mentone, Cairo, and Corfu
Author: Constance Fenimore Woolson
Release date: August 7, 2010 [eBook #33367]
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MENTONE, CAIRO, AND CORFU ***
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[Illustration: STREET IN THE NEW QUARTER OF CAIRO Page 151]
MENTONE, CAIRO, AND CORFU
BY
CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON
AUTHOR OF
"ANNE" "EAST ANGELS" "HORACE CHASE" ETC.
ILLUSTRATED
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1896
BY CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON.
THE FRONT YARD, Etc. Illustrated. $1 25.
ANNE. Illustrated. $1 25.
EAST ANGELS. $1 25.
JUPITER LIGHTS. $1 25.
HORACE CHASE. $1 25.
CASTLE NOWHERE. $1 00.
RODMAN THE KEEPER. $1 00.
FOR THE MAJOR. Illustrated. $1 00.
PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK.
Copyright, 1895, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
_All rights reserved._
PUBLISHERS' NOTE.
The substance of this collection of Miss Woolson's sketches of travel in
the Mediterranean originally appeared in HARPER'S MAGAZINE. "At Mentone"
was published in that periodical in 1884; "Cairo in 1890," and "Corfu
and the Ionian Sea," appeared in 1891 and 1892. As presented in this
volume, the two sketches last mentioned contain much interesting
material not included in their original form as magazine articles.
CONTENTS
PAGE
AT MENTONE 3
CAIRO IN 1890 149
CORFU AND THE IONIAN SEA 283
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
STREET IN THE NEW QUARTER OF CAIRO _Frontispiece_
AT MENTONE 5
THE OLD TOWN 9
A STREET IN THE OLD TOWN 13
RUE LONGUE BLOCKADED BY AN ARTIST 19
THE CORNICE ROAD, MENTONE 23
"TO ITALY"--PONT ST. LOUIS 27
THE PALMS OF BORDIGHERA 31
THE BONE CAVERNS 37
THE PROFESSOR DISCOURSES 43
THE WASHER-WOMEN 49
OIL MILL 55
A MEDITERRANEAN BOAT 60
BRINGING LEMONS FROM THE TERRACE 63
ON THE WAY TO L'ANNUNZIATA 69
THE MONASTERY OF L'ANNUNZIATA 74
CAPUCHIN MONKS 77
MONACO 83
STREET IN ROCCABRUNA 91
THE KING OF THE OLIVES 97
FEUDAL TOWER NEAR VENTIMIGLIA 102
DOLCE ACQUA 107
PIFFERARI 113
MONACO--THE PALACE AND PORT 117
ENTRANCE TO THE PALACE, MONACO 121
THE SALLE GRIMALDI, IN THE PALACE, MONACO 126
THE RIDE TO SANT' AGNESE 129
VIEW FROM SANT' AGNESE 134
FETE, VILLAGE OF SANT' AGNESE 137
VESTIGES OF ROMAN MONUMENTS 140
THE STATUE IN THE CEMETERY 143
CONTEMPORARY PORTRAIT OF CLEOPATRA 149
THE NILE BRIDGE, CAIRO 154
BEFORE THE LITTLE MOSQUE 158
TOMB-MOSQUE OF KAIT BEY 161
A SELLER OF WATER-JUGS, CAIRO 167
STATUE OF PRINCE RAHOTEP'S WIFE 172
THE WOODEN MAN 175
AN EGYPTIAN WOMAN 181
THE NILE--COMING DOWN TO GET WATER 187
THE DOCK AT OLD CAIRO 191
MOUCHRABIYEHS IN THE OLD QUARTER 195
INTERIOR COURT OF A NATIVE HOUSE, CAIRO 199
A DONKEY RIDE 205
AN ARAB CAFE 209
HEAD-PIECE 212
PORCH OF EL AZHAR 215
STUDENTS IN THE OUTER COURT, EL AZHAR 221
BEFORE THE SACRED NICHE 227
OUTER ENTRANCE OF THE CITADEL, CAIRO 233
A MECCA DOOR 237
THE ROAD TO CHOUBRA 239
GARDEN-HOUSE AT CHOUBRA, SHOWING PART OF THE LAKE NEAR CAIRO 243
THE KHEDIVE 247
CHIEF WIFE OF EX-KHEDIVE ISMAIL, WITH HER PRIVATE BAND 251
AN EGYPTIAN DANCING-GIRL 259
THE INUNDATION NEAR CAIRO 267
A MOHAMMEDAN CEMETERY, CAIRO 278
SOUVENIRS OF CAIRO 279
HEAD-PIECE 283
PART OF THE TOWN OF CORFU 287
THE PALACE 293
UNIVERSITY OF THE IONIAN ISLANDS 294
SMALL TEMPLE, MEMORIAL TO SIR THOMAS MAITLAND 296
STATUE OF CAPO D'ISTRIA 299
THE TOMB OF MENEKRATES 305
THE ISLET CALLED "THE SHIP OF ULYSSES" 311
VILLAGE OF PELLEKA 315
KING GEORGE OF GREECE 319
QUEEN OLGA OF GREECE 323
"MON REPOS," SUMMER RESIDENCE OF THE KING OF GREECE 327
IN THE GROUNDS OF THE NEW VILLA OF THE EMPRESS OF AUSTRIA 331
ALBANIAN MALE COSTUME 335
ALBANIAN FEMALE COSTUME 339
GALA COSTUME, CORFU 343
OLIVE GROVE, CORFU 351
AT MENTONE
I
"_Kennst du das Land wo die Citronen bluehen?_"
--GOETHE
It is of no consequence why or how we came to Mentone. The vast subject
of health and health resorts, of balancings between Torquay and Madeira,
Algeria and Sicily, and, in a smaller sphere, between Cannes, Nice,
Mentone, and San Remo, may as well be left at one side while we happily
imitate the Happy-thought Man's trains in Bradshaw, which never "start,"
but "arrive." We therefore arrived. Our party, formed not by selection,
or even by the survival of the fittest (after the ocean and Channel),
but simply by chance aggregation, was now composed of Mrs. Trescott and
her daughter Janet, Professor Mackenzie, Miss Graves, the two youths
Inness and Baker, my niece, and myself, myself being Jane Jefferson,
aged fifty, and my niece Margaret Severin, aged twenty-eight.
As I said above, we were an aggregation. The Trescotts had started
alone, but had "accumulated" (so Mrs. Trescott informed me) the
Professor. The Professor had started alone, and had accumulated the
Trescotts. Inness and Baker had started singly, but had first
accumulated each other, and then ourselves; while Margaret and I, having
accumulated Miss Graves, found ourselves, with her, imbedded in the
aggregation, partly by chance and partly by that powerful force
propinquity. Arriving at Mentone, our aggregation went unbroken to the
Hotel des Anglais, in the East Bay--the East Bay, the Professor said,
being warmer than the West: the Professor had been at Mentone before.
"The East Bay," he explained, "is warmer because more closely encircled
by the mountains, which rise directly behind the house. The West Bay has
more level space, and there are several little valleys opening into it,
through which currents of air can pass; it is therefore cooler, but only
a matter of two or three degrees." It was evening, and our omnibus
proceeded at a pace adapted to the "Dead March" from _Saul_ through a
street so narrow and walled in that it was like going through catacombs.
Only, as Janet remarked, they did not crack whips in the catacombs, and
here the atmosphere seemed to be principally cracks. But the Professor
brought up the flagellants who might have been there, and they remained
up until we reached our destination. We decided that the cracking of
whips and the wash of the sea were the especial sounds of Mentone; but
the whips ceased at nightfall, and the waves kept on, making a soft
murmurous sound which lulled us all to restful slumber. We learned later
that all vehicles are obliged, by orders from the town authorities, to
proceed at a snail's pace through the narrow street of the "old town,"
the city treasury not being rich enough to pay for the number of wooden
legs and arms which would be required were this rule disregarded.
[Illustration: AT MENTONE]
The next morning when we opened our windows there entered the
Mediterranean Sea. It is the bluest water in the world; not a clear cold
blue like that of the Swiss lakes, but a soft warm tint like that of
June sky, shading off on the horizon, not into darker blue or gray,
but into the white of opal and mother-of-pearl. With the sea came in
also the sunshine. The sunshine of Mentone is its glory, its riches, its
especial endowment. Day follows day, month follows month, without a
cloud; the air is pure and dry, fog is unknown. "The sun never stops
shining;" and to show that this idea, which soon takes possession of one
there, is not without some foundation, it can be stated that the average
number of days upon which the sun does shine, as the phrase is, all day
long is two hundred and fifty-nine; that is, almost nine months out of
the twelve. "All the world is cheered by the sun," writes Shakespeare;
and certainly "cheer" is the word that best expresses the effect of the
constant sunshine of Mentone.
We all came to breakfast with unclouded foreheads; even the three fixed
wrinkles which crossed Mrs. Trescott's brow (she always alluded to them
as "midnight oil") were not so deep as usual, and her little countenance
looked as though it had been, if not ironed, at least smoothed out by
the long sleep in the soft air. She floated into the sunny
breakfast-room in an aureola of white lace, with Janet beside her, and
followed by Inness and Baker. Margaret and I had entered a moment before
with Miss Graves, and presently Professor Mackenzie joined us, radiating
intelligence through his shining spectacles to that extent that I
immediately prepared myself for the "Indeeds?" "Is it possibles?" "You
surprise me," with which I was accustomed to assist him, when, after
going all around the circle in vain for an attentive eye, he came at
last to mine, which are not beautiful, but always, I trust, friendly to
the friendless. Yet so self-deceived is man that I have no doubt but
that if at this moment interrogated as to his best listener during that
journey and sojourn at Mentone, he would immediately reply, "Miss
Trescott."
People were coming in and out of the room while we were there, the
light Continental "first breakfast" of rolls and coffee or tea not
detaining them long. Two, however, were evidently loitering, under a
flimsy pretext of reading the unflimsy London _Times_, in order to have
a longer look at Janet; these two were Englishmen. Was Janet, then,
beautiful? That is a question hard to answer. She was a slender,
graceful girl with a delicate American face, small, well-poised head,
sweet voice, quiet manner, and eyes--well, yes, the expression in
Janet's eyes was certainly a remarkable endowment. It could never be
fixed in colors; it cannot be described in ink; it may perhaps be
faintly indicated as each gazing man's ideal promised land. And this
centre was surrounded by such a blue and childlike unconsciousness that
every new-comer tumbled in immediately, as into a blue lake, and never
emerged.
"You have been roaming, Professor," said Mrs. Trescott, as he took his
seat; "you have a fine breezy look of the sea. I heard the wa-ash,
wa-ash, upon the beach all night. But _you_ have been out early,
communing with Aurora. Do not deny it."
The Professor had no idea of denying it. "I have been as far as the West
Bay," he said, taking a roll. "Mentone has two bays, the East, where we
are, and the West, the two being separated by the port and the 'old
town.' Behind us, on the north, extends the double chain of mountains,
the first rising almost directly from the sea, the second and higher
chain behind, so that the two together form a screen, which completely
protects this coast. Thus sheltered, and opening only towards the south,
the bays of Mentone are like a conservatory, and _we_ like the plants
growing within." (This, for the Professor, was quite poetical.)
[Illustration: THE OLD TOWN]
"I have often thought that to be a flower in a conservatory would be a
happy lot," observed Janet. "One could have of the perfumes, sit
still all the time, and never be out in the rain."
"I trust, Miss Trescott, you have not often been exposed to inclement
weather?" said the Professor, looking up.
_He_ meant rain; but Mrs. Trescott, who took it upon herself to answer
him, always meant metaphor. "Not yet," she answered; "no inclement
weather yet for my child, because I have stood between. But the time may
come when, _that_ barrier removed--" Here she waved her little claw-like
hand, heavy with gems, in a sort of sepulchral suggestiveness, and took
refuge in coffee.
The Professor, who supposed the conversation still concerned the
weather, said a word or two about the excellent English umbrella he had
purchased in London, and then returned to his discourse. "The first
mountains behind us," he remarked, "are between three and four thousand
feet high; the second chain attains a height of eight and nine thousand
feet, and, stretching back, mingles with the Swiss Alps. _Our_ name is
Alpes Maritimes; we run along the coast in this direction" (indicating
it on the table-cloth with his spoon), "and at Genoa we become the
Apennines. The winter climate of Mentone is due, therefore, to its
protected situation; cold winds from the north and northeast, coming
over these mountains behind us, pass far above our heads, and advance
several miles over the sea before they fall into the water. The mistral,
too, that scourge of Southern France, that wind, cold, dry, and sharp,
bringing with it a yellow haze, is unknown here, kept off by a
fortunately placed shoulder of mountain running down into the sea on the
west."
"Indeed?" I said, seeing the search for a listener beginning.
"Yes," he replied, starting on anew, encouraged, but, as usual, not
noticing from whom the encouragement came--"yes; and the sirocco is
even pleasant here, because it comes to us over a wide expanse of water.
The characteristics of a Mentone winter are therefore sunshine,
protection from the winds, and dryness. It is, in truth, remarkably
dry."
"Very," said Inness.
"I have scarcely ever seen it equalled," remarked Baker.
Margaret smiled, but I looked at the two youths reprovingly. Mrs.
Trescott said, "Dry? Do you find it so? But you are young, whereas _I_
have reminiscences. _Tears_ are not dry."
They certainly are not; but why she should have alluded to them at that
moment, no one but herself knew. There was a mystery about some of Mrs.
Trescott's moods which made her society interesting: no one could ever
tell what she would say next.
After breakfast we sat awhile in the garden, where there were palm,
lemon, and orange trees, high woody bushes of heliotrope, grotesque
growth of cactus, and the great gray-blue swords of the century-plant.
Before us stretched the sea. Even if we had not known it, we should have
felt sure that its waters laved tropical shores somewhere, and that it
was the reflection of those far skies which we caught here.
Miss Graves now joined us, with an acquaintance she had discovered, a
Mrs. Clary, who had "spent several winters at Mentone," and who adored
"every stone of it." This phrase, which no doubt sounded well coming
from Mrs. Clary, who was an impulsive person, with fine dark eyes and
expressive mobile face, assumed a comical aspect when repeated by the
sober voice of Miss Graves. Mrs. Clary, laughing, hastened to explain;
and Miss Graves, noticing Mrs. Trescott on a bench in the shade, where
she and her laces had floated down, said, warningly, "I should advise
you to rise; I have just learned that the shade of Mentone is of the
most deadly nature, and to be avoided like a scorpion."
[Illustration: A STREET IN THE OLD TOWN]
Mrs. Trescott and her laces floated up. "Is it damp?" she asked,
alarmed.
"No," replied Miss Graves, "it is not damp. It does not know how to be
damp at Mentone. But the shade is deadly, all the same. Now in Florida
it was otherwise." And she went into the house to get a white umbrella.
"Matilda's temperament is really Alpine," said Mrs. Clary, smiling. "I
have always felt that she would be cold even in heaven."
"In that case," said Baker, "she might try--" But he had the grace to
stop.
"What is it about the shade?" I asked.
"Only this," said Mrs. Clary: "as the warmth is due to the heat of the
sun, and not to the air, which is cool, there is more difference between
the sunshine and shade here than we are accustomed to elsewhere. But
surely it is a small thing to remember. The treasure of Mentone is its
sunshine: in it, safety; out of it, danger."
"Like Mr. Micawber's income," said Margaret, smiling. "Amount, twenty
shillings; you spend nineteen shillings and sixpence--riches; twenty
shillings and sixpence--bankruptcy."
A little later we went down to the "old town," as the closely built
village of the Middle Ages, clinging to the side hill, and hardly
changed in the long lapse of centuries, is called. The "old town" lies
between the East Bay and the West Bay, as the body of a bird lies
between the two long, slender wings.
"The West Bay has its Promenade du Midi, and the East Bay has its
sea-wall," said Mrs. Clary. "I like a sea-wall."
"This one does not _approach_ that at St. Augustine," said Miss Graves.
"Here is one of the fountains or wells," said Mrs. Clary. "You will soon
see that going for water and gossiping at the well are two occupations
of the women everywhere in this region. It comes, I suppose, from the
scarcity of water, which is brought in pipes from long distances to
these wells, to which the women must go for all the water needed by
their households. Notice the classic shapes of the jugs and jars they
bear on their heads. Those green ones might be majolica."
We now turned up a paved ascent, and passing under a broad stone
archway, entered the "old town," through whose narrow, lane-like streets
no vehicle could be driven, through some of them hardly a donkey. The
principal avenue, the Rue Longue, but a few feet in width, was smoothly
paved and clean; but walking there was like being at the bottom of a
well, so far above and so narrow was the little ribbon of blue sky at
the top. Unbroken stone walls rose on each side, directly upon the
street, five and six stories in height, shutting out the sunshine; and
these tall gray walls were often joined above our heads also by arches,
"like uncelebrated bridges of sighs," Janet said. These closely built
continuous blocks were the homes of the native population, "old
Mentone," unspoiled by progress and strangers. The low doorways showed
stone steps ascending somewhere in the darkness, showed low-ceilinged
rooms, whose only light was from the door, where were mothers and
babies, men mending shoes, women sewing and occupied with household
tasks, as calmly as though daylight was not the natural atmosphere of
mankind, but rather their own dusky gloom. Outside the doors little
black-eyed children sat on the pavement, eating the dark sour bread of
the country, and here and there old women in circular white hats like
large dinner plates were spinning thread with distaff and spindle. Above
were some bits of color: pots of flowers on high window-sills,
bright-hued rags hung out to dry, or a dark-eyed girl, with red kerchief
tied over her black braids, looking down.
"It is all like a scene from an opera," said Janet.
"Oh no," said Mrs. Clary; "say rather that it is like a scene from the
Middle Ages."
"That is what I mean," said Janet. "The scenes in the operas are
generally from the Middle Ages."
"The chorus _always_," said Baker.
"It is a pity you cannot see the old mansion of the Princes," said Mrs.
Clary. "But I see the street is blockaded just now by the artist."
"By the artist?" said Janet.
"Yes; this one, a Frenchman, is rather broad-shouldered, and when he is
at work he blockades the street. However, the mansion is not especially
interesting; it was built by one of the later Princes with the stones of
the ruined castle above, and has, I believe, only a vaulted hallway and
one or two marble pillars. It is now a lodging-house. I saw dancing-dogs
going up the stairway yesterday."
From the Rue Longue we had turned into a labyrinth of crooked,
staircase-like lanes, winding here and there from side to side, but
constantly ascending, the whole net-work, owing to the number of arches
thrown across above, seeming to be half underground, but in reality a
honey-combed erection clinging to the steep hill-side.
"Dancing-dogs!" said Janet, pausing in the darkest of these turnings.
"Let us go back and see them."
But we all exclaimed against this; Mrs. Trescott's little old feet were
wearied with curling over the round stones, and Margaret was tired.
Inness and Baker offered to make dancing-dogs of themselves for the
remainder of the morning, and dogs, too, of a very superior quality, if
she would only go on.
The Professor, who, in his "winnowing progress," as Mrs. Trescott
called it, had fallen behind, now joined us, followed by Miss Graves.
"I have just witnessed a remarkably interesting little ceremony," he
began, "quite mediaeval--a herald, with his trumpet, making an
announcement through the streets. I could not comprehend all he said,
but no doubt it was something of importance to the community."
"It was," said Miss Graves's monotonous voice. "He was telling them that
excellent sausage-meat was now to be obtained at a certain shop for a
price much lower than before."
"Ah," said the Professor. Then, rallying, he added, "But the ceremony
was the same."
"Certainly," I said, with my usual unappreciated benevolence.
"I wonder what induced these people to build their houses upon such a
crag as this, when they had the whole sunny coast to choose from?" said
Janet.
The Professor, charmed with this idle little speech (which he took for a
thirst for knowledge), hastened by several of us as we walked in single
file, in order to be nearer to the questioner.
"You may not be aware, Miss Trescott," he began (she was still in
advance, but he hoped to make up the distance), "that this whole shore,
called the Riviera--"
"Let us begin fairly," I said. "What _is_ the Riviera?"
"It is heaven," said Mrs. Clary.
[Illustration: RUE LONGUE BLOCKADED BY AN ARTIST]
"It is the coast of the Gulf of Genoa," said the Professor, "extending
both eastward and westward from the city of that name. On the west it
extends geographically to Nice; but Cannes and Antibes are generally
included. This shore-line, then, has been subject from a very early date
to attacks from the pirates of the Mediterranean, who swept down upon
the coast and carried off as slaves all who came in their way. To
escape the horrors of this slavery the inhabitants chose situations like
this steep hill-side, and crowded their stone dwellings closely together
so that they formed continuous walls, which were often joined also by
arched bridges, like these above us now, and connected by dark and
winding passageways below, so that escape was easy and pursuit
impossible. It was a veritable--"
"Rabbit-warren," suggested Baker.
Inness made no suggestions; he was next to the Professor, and fully
occupied in blocking, with apparent entire unconsciousness, all his
efforts to pass and join Janet.
The Professor, not accepting, however, the rabbit-warren, continued: "As
recently as 1830, Miss Trescott, when the French took possession of
Algiers, they found there thousands of miserable Christian slaves,
natives of this northern shore, who had been seized on the coast or
taken from their fishing-boats at sea. There are men now living in
Mentone who in their youth spent years as slaves in Tunis and Algiers.
These pirates, these scourges of the Mediterranean, were Saracens,
and--"
"Saracens!" said Janet, with an accent of admiration; "what a lovely
word it is! What visions of romance and adventure it brings up,
especially when spelled with two r's, so as to be Sarrasins! It is even
better than Paynim."
I could not see how the Professor took this, because we were now all
entirely in the dark, groping our way along a passage which apparently
led through cellars.
"We are in an _impasse_, or blind passage," called Mrs. Clary from
behind; "we had better go back."
Hearing this, we all retraced our steps--at least, we supposed we did.
But when we reached comparative daylight again we found that Janet,
Inness, and Baker were not with us; they had found a way through that
_impasse_, although we could not, and were sitting high above us on a
white wall in the sunshine, when, breathless, we at last emerged from
the labyrinth and discovered them.
"That looks like a cemetery," said Mrs. Trescott, disapprovingly,
disentangling her lace shawl from a bush. "You _said_ it was a castle."
She addressed the Professor, and with some asperity; she did not like
cemeteries.
"It was the castle," explained our learned guide; "the castle erected in
1502, by one of the Princes, upon the site of a still earlier one, built
in 1250."
"That Prince used the ruins of his ancestors as his descendants
afterwards used his," observed Margaret, referring to the mansion in the
street below.
"Possibly," said the Professor. He never gave Margaret more than a
possibility; although a man of hyphens and semicolons, he generally
dismissed her with an early period. "These old arches and buttresses,"
he continued, turning to Mrs. Trescott, "were once part of the castle.
Turreted walls extended from here down to the sea."
"What they did once, of course I do not know," said Mrs. Trescott,
implacably, "but now they plainly enclose a cemetery. Janet! Janet! come
down! we are going back." And she turned to descend.
"The cemetery is a lovely spot," said Mrs. Clary, as we lingered a
moment looking at the white marble crosses gleaming above us, outlined
against the blue sky.
[Illustration: THE CORNICE ROAD, MENTONE]
"Some other time," I answered, following Mrs. Trescott. For the quiet,
lovely gardens where we lay our dead had too strong an attraction for
Margaret already. She was fond of lingering amid their perfume and their
silence, and she sought this one the next day, and afterwards often
went there. It was a peculiar little cemetery, alone on the height, and
walled like a fortress; but it was beautiful in its way, lifted up
against the sky and overlooking the sea. On the eastern edge was a
monument, the seated figure of a woman with her hands gently clasped,
her eyes gazing over the water; the face was lovely, and not
idealized--the face of a woman, not an angel. Margaret took a fancy to
this white watcher on the height, and often stole away to look at the
sunset, seated near it. I think she identified its loneliness somewhat
with herself.
We went through the labyrinth again, but by another route, not quite so
dark and piratical, although equally narrow. Miss Graves liked nothing
she saw, but walked on unmoved, save that at intervals she observed that
it was "deathly cold" in these "stony lanes," and "_must_ be unhealthy."
Mrs. Clary's assertion that the people looked remarkably vigorous only
called out a shake of the head; Miss Graves was set upon "fever." It was
amusing to see how carefully all the houses were numbered, up and down
these break-neck little streets, through the narrowest burrows, and
under the darkest arches. Here and there some citizen wealthier than his
neighbors had painted his section of front in bright pink or yellow, and
perhaps adorned his Madonna in her little shrine over the door with new
robes, those broadly contrasted blues and reds of Italy, which American
eyes must learn by gradual education to admire; or, if not by education,
then by residence; for he will find himself liking them naturally after
a while, as a relief from the unchanging white light of the Italian day.
We came down by way of the square or piazza on the hill-side, to and
from which broad flights of steps ascend and descend. Here are the two
churches of St. Michael and the White Penitents, whose campaniles, with
that of the Black Penitents beyond, make the "three spires of Mentone,"
which stand out so picturesquely one above the other, visible in profile
far to the east and the west on the sharp angle of the hill.
"The different use of the same word in different languages is droll,"
said Margaret. "French writers almost always speak of these little
country church-spires as 'coquettes.'"
"There is a Turkish lance here somewhere," said Inness, emerging
unexpectedly from what I had thought was a cellar. "It is in one of
these churches. It was taken at the battle of Lepanto, and is a
'glorious relic.' We must see it."
"No," said Janet, appearing with Baker at the top of a flight of steps
which I had supposed was the back entrance of a private house, "we will
not see it, but imagine it. I want to go homeward by the Rue Longue."
"Now, Janet, if you mean those dancing-dogs--" began Mrs. Trescott.
"I had forgotten their very existence, mamma. I was thinking of
something quite different." Here she turned towards the Professor. "I
was hoping that Professor Mackenzie would feel like telling me something
of Mentone in the past, as we walk through that quaint old street."
"He feels like it--feels like it day and night," said Baker to Inness,
behind me. "He's a perfect statistics Niagara."
"Look at him now, gorged with joy!" said Inness, indignantly. "But I'll
floor him yet, and on his own ground, too. I'll study up, and _then_
we'll see!"
But the Professor, not hearing this threat, had already begun, and begun
(for him) quite gayly. "The origin of Mentone, Miss Trescott, has been
attributed to the pirates, and also to Hercules."
"I have always been _so_ interested in Hercules," replied that young
person.
[Illustration: "TO ITALY"--PONT ST. LOUIS]
"Mythical--mythical," said the Professor. "I merely mentioned it as one
of the legends. To come down to facts--always much more impressive to a
rightly disposed mind--the first mention of Mentone, _per se_, on the
authentic page of history, occurs in the eighth century. In A.D. 975 it
belonged to the Lascaris, Counts of Ventimiglia, a family of royal
origin and Greek descent."
"Are there any of them left?" inquired Janet.
"I really do not know," replied the Professor, who was not interested in
that branch of the subject. "In the fourteenth century the village
passed into the possession of the Grimaldi family, Princes of Monaco,
and they held it, legally at least, until 1860, when it was attached to
France."
"He is really quite Cyclopean in his information," murmured Mrs.
Trescott.
But the Professor had now discovered Inness, who, with an expression of
deepest interest on his face, was walking close at his heels, and
writing as he walked in a note-book.
"What are you doing, sir?" said the Professor, in his college tone.
"Taking notes," replied Inness, respectfully. "Miss Trescott may feel
willing to trust her memory, but _I_ wish to preserve your remarks for
future reference," and he went on with his writing.
The Professor looked at him sharply, but the youth's face remained
immovable, and he went on.
"These three little towns, then, Mentone, Roccabruna, and Monaco, have
belonged to the Princes of Monaco since the early Middle Ages."
"Those dear Middle Ages!" said Mrs. Clary.
The Professor gravely looked at her, and then repeated his phrase, as if
linking together his remarks over her unimportant head. "As I
observed--the early Middle Ages. But in 1848 Mentone and Roccabruna,
unable longer to endure the tyranny of their rulers, revolted and
declared their independence. The Prince at that time lived in Paris,
knew little of his subjects, and apparently cared less, save to get from
them through agents as much income as possible for his Parisian
luxuries." (Impossible to describe the accent which our Puritan
Professor gave to those two words.) "His little territory produced only
olives, oranges, and lemons. By his order the oranges and lemons were
taxed so heavily that the poor peasant owner made nothing from his toil;
his olives, also, must be ground at the 'Prince's mill,' where a higher
price was demanded than elsewhere. Finally an even more odious monopoly
was established: all subjects were compelled to purchase the 'Prince's
bread,' which, made from cheap grain bought on the docks of Marseilles
and Genoa, was often unfit to eat. So severe were the laws that any
traveller entering the principality must throw away at the boundary line
all bread he might have with him, and the captain of a vessel having on
board a single slice upon arrival in port was heavily fined. This state
of things lasted twenty-five years, during which period the Prince in
Paris spent annually his eighty thousand dollars, gained from this poor
little domain of eight or nine thousand souls." The Professor in his
heat stood still, and we all stood still with him. The Mentonnais,
looking down from their high windows and up from their dark little
doors, no doubt wondered what we were talking about; they little knew it
was their own story.
"A revolution made by bread. And ours was made by tea," observed Janet,
thoughtfully.
"We need now only one made by butter, to be complete," said Inness.
Again the Professor scrutinized him, but discovered nothing.
[Illustration: THE PALMS OF BORDIGHERA]
_I_, however, discovered something, although not from Inness; I
discovered why Janet had wished to pass a second time through that Rue
Longue. For here was the French artist sketching the old mansion, and
with him (she could not have known this, of course; but chance always
favored Janet) were the two Englishmen, the respectful gazers of the
breakfast-table, sketching also. There were therefore six artistic eyes
instead of two to dwell upon her as she approached, passed, and went
onward, her slender figure outlined against the light coming through the
archway beyond, old St. Julian's Gate, a remnant of feudal
fortification. Artists are not slack in the use of their eyes; an
"artistic gaze" is not considered a stare. I was obliged to repeat this
axiom to Baker, who did not appreciate it, but looked as though he would
like to go back and artistically demolish those gazers. He contented
himself, however, with the remark that water-color sketches were "weak,
puling daubs," and then he went on through the old archway as
majestically as he could.
"One of the features of Mentone seems to be the number of false windows
carefully painted on the outside of the houses, windows adorned with
blinds, muslin curtains, pots of flowers, and even gay rugs hanging over
the sill," said Margaret.
"And then the frescos," I added--"landscapes, trees, gods and goddesses,
in the most brilliant colors, on the side of the house."
"_I_ like it," said Mrs. Clary; "it is so tropical."
"You commend falsity, then," said Miss Graves. "_What_ can be more false
than a false rug?"
We went homeward by the sea-wall, and saw some boys coming up from the
beach with a basket of sea-urchins. "They eat them, you know," said Mrs.
Clary.
"Is that tropical too?" said Janet, shuddering.
"It is, after all, but a difference in custom," observed the Professor.
"I myself have eaten puppies in China, and found them not unpalatable."
Janet surveyed him; then fell behind and joined Inness and Baker.
Some fishermen on the beach were talking to two women with red
handkerchiefs on their heads, who were leaning over the sea-wall. "Their
language is a strange patois," said the Professor; "it is composed of a
mixture of Italian, French, Spanish, and even Arabic."
"But the people themselves are thoroughly Italian, I think, in spite of
the French boundary line," said Margaret. "They are a handsome race,
with their dark eyes, thick hair, and rich coloring."
"I have never bestowed much thought upon beauty _per se_," responded the
Professor. "The imperishable mind has far more interest."
"How much of the imperishable M. do you possess, Miss Trescott?" I heard
Inness murmur.
"Breakfast" was served at one o'clock in the large dining-room, and we
found ourselves opposite the two English artists, and a young lady whom
they called "Miss Elaine."
"Elaine is bad enough; but 'Miss Elaine'!" said Margaret aside to me.
However, Miss Elaine seemed very well satisfied with herself and her
Tennysonian title. She was a short, plump blonde, with a high color, and
I could see that she regarded Janet with pity as she noted her slender
proportions and delicate complexion in the one exhaustive glance with
which girls survey each other when they first meet. We were some time at
the table, but during the first five minutes both of the artists
succeeded in offering some slight service to Mrs. Trescott which gave an
opportunity for opening a conversation. The taller of the two, called
"Verney" by his friend, advised for the afternoon an expedition up the
Cornice Road to the "Pont St. Louis," and on "to Italy."
"But that will be too far, will it not?" said Mrs. Trescott.
"Oh no; to Italy! to Italy!" said Janet, with enthusiasm. Verney now
explained that Italy was but ten minutes' walk from the hotel, and Janet
was, of course, duly astonished. But not more astonished than the
Professor, who, having told her the same fact not a half-hour before,
could not comprehend how she should so soon have forgotten it.
"And if we _are_ but 'ten minutes' walk from Italy'--a phrase so often
repeated--what of it?" said Miss Graves to Margaret. "We are simply ten
minutes' walk from a most uncleanly land." Miss Graves always wore a
gray worsted shawl, and took no wine; in spite of the sunshine,
therefore, she preserved a frosty appearance.
After breakfast Miss Elaine introduced herself to Mrs. Trescott. She had
met some Americans the year before; they were charming; they were from
Brazil; perhaps we knew them? She had always felt ever since that all
Americans were her dear, dear friends. She had an invalid mother
up-stairs (sharing her good opinion of Americans) who would be "very
pleased" to make our acquaintance; and hearing Pont St. Louis mentioned,
she assured Janet that it was a "very jolly place--very jolly indeed."
It ended in our going to the "jolly place," accompanied by the two
artists and Miss Elaine herself, who smiled upon us all, upon the rocks,
the sky, and the sea, in the most amiable and continuous manner. This
time we were not all on foot; one of the loose-jointed little Mentone
phaetons, with a great deal of driver and whip and very little horse,
had been engaged for Mrs. Trescott and Margaret. This left Mrs. Clary
and myself together (Miss Graves having remained at home), and Inness,
Baker, the Professor, Verney, and the other artist, whose name was
Lloyd, all trying to walk with Janet, while Miss Elaine devoted herself
in turn to the unsuccessful ones, and never from first to last perceived
the real situation.
We went eastward. Presently we passed a small house bearing the
following naive inscription in French on the side towards the road: "The
first villa built at Mentone, in 1855, to attract hither the strangers.
The sun, the sea, and the soft air combined are benefactions bestowed
upon us by the good God. Thanks be to Him, therefore, for His mercies in
thus favoring us."
"Mentone is said to have been 'discovered by the English' in 1857," said
Mrs. Clary. "Dr. Bennet, the London physician, may be called its real
discoverer, as Lord Brougham was the discoverer of Cannes. From a
sleepy, unknown little Riviera village it has grown into the winter
resort we now see, with fifty hotels and two hundred villas full of
strangers from all parts of the world."
The Professor was discoursing upon the climate. "It is very beneficial
to all whose lungs are delicate," he said. "Also" (checking off the
different classes on his fingers) "to the aged, to those who need
general renovating, to the rheumatic, and to those afflicted with gout."
"Where, then, do I come in?" said Janet, sweetly, as he finished the
left hand.
"Nowhere," answered the Professor, meaning to be gallant, but not quite
succeeding. Perceiving this, he added, slowly, and with solemnity, "But
the fair and healthy flower should be willing to shine upon the less
endowed for the pure beneficence of the act."
[Illustration: THE BONE CAVERNS]
Baker and Inness sat down on the sea-wall behind him to recover from
this. The two Englishmen were equally amused, although Miss Elaine,
who was walking with them, did not discover it. However, Miss Elaine
seldom discovered anything save herself. We now began to ascend, passing
between the high walls of villa gardens along a smooth, broad, white
road.
"This is the Cornice," said Mrs. Clary; "it winds along this coast from
Marseilles to Genoa."
"From Nice to Genoa," said the Professor, turning to correct her. But by
turning he lost his place. Inness slipped into it, and not only that,
but into his information also. In the leisure hour or two before and
after "breakfast," Inness had carried out his threat of "studying up,"
and we soon became aware of it.
"The genius of Napoleon, Miss Trescott," he began, "caused this
wonderful road to spring from the bosom of the mighty rock."
"Before it there was no road, only a mule track," said the Professor
from behind.
"I beg your pardon," said Inness, suavely, "but there was a road, the
old Roman way, called Via Julia Augusta, traces of which are still to be
seen at more than one point in this neighborhood."
"Ah!" said the Professor, surprised by this unexpected antiquity, "you
are going back to the Roman period. I have omitted that."
"But I have not," replied Inness. "The Romans were a remarkable people,
and all their relics are penetrated with the profoundest interest for
me. I am aware, however, that other minds are more modern," he added,
carelessly, with an air of patronage, which so delighted Baker that he
fell behind to conceal it.
"The Cornichy, Miss Trescott, as we pronounce the Italian word (Corniche
in French), is almost our own word cornice," pursued Inness, "meaning a
shelf or ledge along the side of the mountain. It was begun by Napoleon,
and has been finished by the energy of successive governments since the
death of that wonderful man, who was all governments in one."
"You surprise me," said Janet, breaking into laughter.
"Not more than you do me," I said, joining her.
The Professor (who had rather neglected the Cornice in his Cyclopean
information) gazed at us inquiringly, surprised at our merriment.
"The best description of the Cornice, I think, is the one in Ruffini's
novel called _Doctor Antonio_" said Mrs. Clary. "The scene is laid at
Bordighera, you know, that little white town on the eastern point so
conspicuous from Mentone. Of course you all remember _Doctor Antonio_?"
Presently our road wound around a curve, and we came upon a wild gorge,
spanned by a bridge with a sentinel's box at each end; one side was
France and the other Italy. The bridge, the official boundary line
between the two countries, is a single arch thrown across the gorge,
which is singularly stern, great masses of bare gray rock rising
perpendicularly hundreds of feet into the air, with a little rill of
water trickling down on one side, trying to create a tiny line of
verdure. Below was an old aqueduct on arches, which the Professor
hastened to say was "Roman."
"The Romans must have been enormous drinkers of water," observed Baker,
as we looked down. "The first thing they made in every conquered country
was an aqueduct. What could have given the name to Roman punch?"
"Do you see that narrow track cut in the face of the rock?" said Mrs.
Clary, pointing out a line crossing one side of the gorge at a dizzy
height. "It is a little path beside a watercourse, and so narrow that in
some places there is not room for one's two feet. The wall of rock
rises, as you see, perpendicularly hundreds of feet on one side, and
falls away hundreds of feet perpendicularly on the other; there is
nothing to hold on by, and in addition the glancing motion of the little
stream, running rapidly downhill along the edge, makes the path still
more dizzy. Yet the peasants coming down from Ciotti--a village above
us--use it, as it shortens the distance to town. And there are those
among the strangers too who try it, generally, I must confess, of our
race. The French and Italians say, with a shrug, 'It is only the English
and Americans who enjoy such risks.'"
"It does not look so narrow," said Janet. Then, as we exclaimed, she
added, "I mean, not wide enough for one's two feet."
"Feet," remarked Inness, in a general way, as if addressing the gorge,
"are not all of the same size."
We happened to be standing in a row, with our backs against the southern
parapet of the bridge, looking up at the little path; the result was
that eighteen feet were plainly visible on the white dust of the bridge,
and, naturally enough, at Inness's speech eighteen eyes looked downward
and noted them. There were the Professor's boots, the laced shoes of the
younger men, the comfortable foot-gear of Mrs. Clary and myself, the
broad substantial soles of Miss Elaine, and a certain dainty little pair
of high-arched, high-heeled boots, which, small as they were, were yet
quite large enough for the pretty feet they contained. I thought Miss
Elaine would be vexed; but no, not at all. It never occurred to Miss
Elaine to doubt the perfection of any of her attributes. But now Mrs.
Trescott's phaeton, which had started later, reached the bridge, and the
gorge, path, and aqueduct had to be explained to her. Lloyd undertook
this.
"I wonder how many girls have thrown themselves off that rock?" said
Janet, gazing at an isolated peak, shaped like a sugar-loaf, which
stood alone within the ravine.
"What a holocaust you imagine, Miss Trescott!" said Verney. "How could
they climb up there, to begin with?"
"I do not know. But they always do. I have never known a rock of that
kind which has succeeded in evading them," answered Janet. "They
generally call them 'Lovers' Leaps.'"
After a while we went on "to Italy," passing the square Italian
custom-house perched on its cliff, and following the road by the little
Garibaldi inn, and on towards the point of Mortola.
"This is the Italian frontier," said Verney. "In old times, during the
Prince's reign, no one could leave the domain without buying a passport;
any one, therefore, who wished to take an afternoon walk was obliged to
have one. But things are altered now in Menton."
"Are we to call the place Menton or Mentone?" asked Janet. "We might as
well come to some decision."
"Menton is correct," said the Professor; "it is now a French town."
"Oh no! let us keep to the dear old names, and say Men-to-ne," said Mrs.
Clary.
"_I_ have even heard it pronounced to rhyme with bone," said Verney,
smiling. Inness and Baker now looked at each other, and fell behind, but
after a few minutes they came forward again, and, advancing to the
front, faced us, and delivered the following epic:
Inness:
"What shall we call thee? Shall we give our own
Plain English vowels to thee, fair Mentone?"
[Illustration: THE PROFESSOR DISCOURSES]
Baker:
"Or shall we yield thee back thy patrimony,
The lost Italian sweetness of Mentone?"
Inness:
"Or, with French accent, and the n's half gone,
Try the Parisian syllables--Men-ton?"
We all applauded their impromptu. The Professor, seeing that poetry held
the field, walked apart musingly. I think he was trying to recall, but
without success, an appropriate Latin quotation.
The view from the point above Mortola is very beautiful. On the west,
Mentone with its three spires, the green of Cap Martin; and beyond, the
bold dark forehead of the Dog's Head rising above Monaco.
"Do you see that blue line of coast?" said Verney. "That is the island
where lived the Man with the Iron Mask."
"Bazaine was confined there also," said the Professor.
But none of us cared for Bazaine. We began to talk about the Mask, and
then diverged to Kaspar Hauser, finally ending with Eleazer Williams, of
"Have we a Bourbon among us?" who had to be explained to the Englishmen.
It was some time before we came back to the view; but all the while
there it was before us, and we were unconsciously enjoying it. On the
east was, first, the little village of Mortola at our feet; then
fortified Ventimiglia; and beyond, Bordighera, gleaming whitely on its
low point out in the blue sea.
"Blanche Bordighera," said Mrs. Clary; "it is to me like
paradise--always silvery and fair. No matter where you go, there it is;
whether you look from Cap Martin or St. Agnese, from Ciotti or
Roccabruna, you can always see Bordighera shining in the sunlight. Even
when there is a mist, so that Mentone itself is veiled and Ventimiglia
lost, Bordighera can be seen gleaming whitely through. And finally you
end by not wanting to go there; you dread spoiling the vision by a less
fair reality, and you go away, leaving it unvisited, but carrying with
you the remembrance of its shining and its feathery palms."
"Is it palmy?" asked Janet.
"There are probably now more palms at Bordighera than in the Holy Land
itself," said Verney, who had wound himself into a place beside her. I
say "wound," because Verney was so long and lithe that he could slip
gracefully into places which other men could not obtain. Lloyd was not
with us. He had not left his post of duty beside the phaeton, which was
coming slowly up the hill behind us; but I noticed that he had selected
Margaret's side of it.
"Palms would grow at Mentone, or at any other sheltered spot on this
coast," said the Professor, at last abandoning the obstinate quotation,
and coming back to the present. "But the cultivation is not remunerative
save at Bordighera, where they own the monopoly of supplying the palm
branches used on Palm-Sunday at Rome."
"Excuse me," said Inness; "but I think you did not mention the origin of
that monopoly?"
"A monkish legend," said the Professor, contemptuously.
"In those days everything was monkish," replied Inness; "architecture,
knowledge, and religion. If we had lived then, no doubt we should all
have been monks."
"Ah, yes!" said Miss Elaine, fervently. "Do tell us the legend, Mr.
Inness. I adore legends, especially if ecclesiastical."
"Well," said Inness, "a good while ago--in 1586--the Pope decided to
raise and place upon a pedestal an Egyptian obelisk, which, transported
to Rome by Caligula, had been left lying neglected upon the ground. An
apparatus was constructed to lift the huge block, and with the aid of
one hundred and fifty horses and nine hundred men it was raised, poised,
and then let down slowly towards its position, amid the breathless
silence of a multitude, when suddenly it was seen that the ropes on one
side failed to bring it into place. All, including the engineer in
charge, stood stupefied with alarm, when a voice from the crowd called
out, 'Wet the ropes!' It was done; the ropes shortened; the obelisk
reached its place in safety. The Pope sent for the man whose timely
advice had saved the lives of many, and asked him what reward would
please him most. He was a simple countryman, and with much timidity he
answered that he lived at Bordighera, and that if the palms of
Bordighera could be used in Rome on Holy Palm-Sunday he should die
happy. His wish was granted," concluded Inness, "and--he died."
"I hope not immediately," I said, laughing.
On our way back, Verney showed us a path leading up the cliff. "Let me
give you a glimpse of a lovely garden," he said. We looked up, and there
it was on the cliff above us, like the hanging gardens of Babylon, green
terraces clothing the bare gray rock with beautiful verdure. Margaret
left the phaeton and went up the winding path with us, Mrs. Trescott and
Mrs. Clary remaining below. The gate of the garden, which bore the
inscription "Salvete Amici," opened upon a long columned walk; from
pillar to pillar over our heads ran climbing vines, and on each side
were ranks of rare and curious plants, the lovely wild flowers of the
country having their place also among the costlier blossoms. "Before you
go farther turn and look at the tower," said Verney. "It has been made
habitable within, but otherwise it is unchanged. It was built either as
a lookout in which to keep watch for the Saracens, or else by the
Saracens themselves when they held the coast."
"By the Sarrasins themselves, of course--always with two r's," said
Janet. "Think of it--a Sarrasin tower! I would rather own it than
anything else in the whole world."
Whereupon Verney, Inness, the Professor, Lloyd, and Baker all wished to
know what she would do with it.
"Do with it?" repeated Janet. "Live in it, of course. I have always had
the greatest desire to live in a tower; even light-houses tempt me."
"I shall tell Dr. Bennet," said Verney, laughing. "This is his garden,
you know."
At the end of the columned walk we went around a curve by a smaller
tower, and descended to a lower path bordered with miniature groves of
hyacinth, whose dense sweetness, mingled with that of heliotrope, filled
the air. Here Margaret seated herself to enjoy the fragrance and
sunshine, while we went onward, coming to a magnificent array of
primulas, rank upon rank, in every shade of delicate and gorgeous
coloring, a pomp of tints against a background of ferns. Below was a
little vine-covered terrace with thick, soft, English grass for its
velvet flooring; here was another paradisiacal little seat, like the one
where we had left Margaret, overlooking the blue sea. On terraces above
were camellias, roses, and numberless other blossoms, mingled with
tropical plants and curious growths of cacti; behind was a lemon grove
rising a little higher; then the background of gray rocks from which all
this beauty had been won inch by inch; then the great peaks of the
mountain amphitheatre against the sky--in all, beauty enough for a
thousand gardens here concentrated in one enchanting spot.
[Illustration: THE WASHER-WOMEN]
"That picturesque village on the height is Grimaldi," said Verney.
"The original home of the clowns, I suppose," said Baker.
"English and Americans always say that; they can never think of anything
but the great circus Hamlet," replied Verney. "In reality, however,
Grimaldi is one of the oldest of the noble names on this coast--the
family name of the Princes of Monaco."
"Who are worse than clowns," said the Professor, sternly. "The Grimaldi
who was a clown at least honestly earned his bread, but the Grimaldis of
the present day live by the worst dishonesty. Monaco, formerly called
the Port of Hercules, may now well be called the Port of Hell."
"Well," said Inness, "if Monaco, on one side of us, represents
l'Inferno, Bordighera, on the other, represents Paradiso, and so we are
saved."
"It depends upon which way you go, young man," said the Professor, still
sternly.
After a while we came back to the bench among the hyacinths where we had
left Margaret, and found Lloyd with her, looking at the sea; the lovely
garden overhangs the sea, whose beautiful near blue closes every
blossoming vista. It had been decided that we were to go homeward by way
of the Bone Caverns, and as Mrs. Trescott was fond of bones, and wished
to see their abode, I offered to remain and drive home with Margaret.
"Let me accompany Miss Severin," said Lloyd. "I have seen the caverns,
and do not care to see them again."
I looked at Margaret, thinking she would object; she seldom cared for
the society of strangers. But in some way Mr. Lloyd no longer seemed a
stranger; he had crossed the numerous little barriers which she kept
erected between herself and the outside world, crossed them probably
without even seeing them. But none the less were they crossed.
So we left them in the sunny garden to return homeward at their leisure,
and, descending to the road, went eastward a short distance, and turned
down a narrow path leading to the beach. It brought us under the
enormous mass of the Red Rocks, rising perpendicularly three hundred
feet from the water. Inness, who was in advance, had paused on a little
bridge of one arch over a hollow, and was holding it, as it were, when
we came up. "Behold a fragment of the ancient Roman way, Via Julia
Augusta," he began, introducing the bridge with a wave of his cane.
"When we think of this road in the past, what visions rise in the
mind--visions like--like mists on the mountain-tops floating away,
which--which merge in each other at dawning of day! In comparison with
the ancient Romans, the builders of this bridge, Hercules, the Lascaris,
even the Sarrasins (always with two r's), are _nowhere_. Roman feet
touched this very archway upon which my own unworthy shoes now stand."
We looked at his shoes with respect, the Professor (who had gone onward
to the Bone Caverns) not being there to contradict.
"The Romans," continued Inness, "never stayed long. They dropped here a
tomb, there an aqueduct, and then moved on. They were the first great
pedestrians. We cannot _see_ them, but we can imagine them. As Pope well
says,
"'While fancy brings the vanished piles to view,
And builds imaginary Rome anew.'"
"Ah, yes," said Mrs. Trescott, "the Romans, the Romans, how dreamy they
were! They always remind me of those lines:
"'Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound,
The primal sympathy,
Which, having been, must ever be!'"
This finished the bridge. As we had no idea what she meant, even Inness
deserted it, and we all went onward to the Bone Caverns. The caverns
were dark hollows in the cliff some distance above the road. From the
entrance of one of them issued a cloud of dust; the Professor was in
there digging.
"Let us ascend at once," said Mrs. Trescott, enthusiastically. "I wish
to stand in the very abode of the primitive man."
But it was something of a task to get her up; there was always a great
deal of loose drapery about Mrs. Trescott, which had a way of catching
on everything far and near. With her veil, her plumes, her lace shawl,
her long watch-chain, her dangling fan, her belt bag and scent bottle,
her parasol and basket, it was difficult to get her safely through any
narrow or bushy place. But to-day Verney gallantly undertook the feat:
he knew the advantages of propitiating the higher powers.
Men were quarrying the face of the Red Rocks at a dizzy height, hanging
suspended in mid-air by ropes in order to direct the blasting; below,
the patient horses were waiting to convey the great blocks of stone to
the town, and destroy, by their daily procession, the last traces of the
Julia Augusta.
"I hope these rocks are porphyry," said Janet, gazing upward; "it is
such a lovely name."
"Yes, they are," said the unblushing Inness. "The Troglodytes, whose
homes are beneath, were fond of porphyry. They were very aesthetic, you
know."
We now reached the entrance of one of the caverns and looked in.
"The Troglodytes," continued Inness, "were the original, _really_
original, proprietors of Mentone. They lived here, clad in bear-skins,
and their voices are said to have been not sweet. See Pliny and Strabo.
The bones of their dinners left here, and a few of their own (untimely
deaths from fighting with each other for more), have now become the most
precious treasures of the scientific world, equalling in richness the
never-to-be-sufficiently-prized-and-investigated kitchen refuse of the
Swiss lakes."
But the Professor, overhearing something of this frivolity at the sacred
door, emerged from the hole in which he had been digging, and, covered
with dust, but rich in the possession of a ball and socket joint of some
primeval animal, came to the entrance, and forcibly, if not by force,
addressed us:
"At a recent period it has been discovered that these five caverns in
this limestone rock--"
"Alas, my porphyry!" murmured Janet.
"--contain bones of animals mixed with flint instruments imbedded in
sand. The animals were the food and the flint instruments the weapons of
a race of men who must have existed far back in prehistoric times. This
was a rich discovery; but a richer was to come. In 1872 a human
skeleton, all but perfect, a skeleton of a tall man, was discovered in
the fourth cavern, surrounded by bones which prove its great
antiquity--which prove, in fact, almost beyond a doubt, that it belonged
to--the--_Paleolithic epoch_!" And the Professor paused, really overcome
by the tremendous power of his own words.
[Illustration: OIL MILL]
But I am afraid we all gazed stupidly enough, first at him, then into
the cave, then at him again, with only the vaguest idea of
"Paleolithic's" importance. I must except Verney; he knew more. But
he had gone inside, and was now digging in the hole in his turn to find
flints for Janet.
Mrs. Trescott, who was our bone-master (she had studied anatomy, and
highly admired "form"), asked if the skeleton had been "painted in
oils."
Miss Elaine hoped that they buried it again "reverently," and "in
consecrated ground."
The Professor gazed at them in turn; he literally could not find a word
for reply.
Then I, coming to the rescue, said: "I am very dull, I know, but pity my
dulness, and tell me why the skeleton was so important, and how they
knew it was so old."
The poor man, overcome by such crass ignorance, gazed at his ball and
socket joint and at our group in silence. Then, in a spiritless voice,
he said, "The bones surrounding the skeleton were those of animals now
extinct--animals that existed at a period heretofore supposed to have
been before that of man; but by their presence here they prove a
contemporary, and we therefore know that he existed at a much earlier
age of the world's history than we had imagined."
Verney now gave Janet the treasures he had found--some pieces of flint
about an inch long, rudely pointed at one end. "These," he said, "are
the knives of the primitive man."
"They are very disappointing," said Janet, surveying them as they lay in
the palm of her slender gray glove, buttoned half-way to the elbow.
"Did you expect carved handles and steel blades?" I said, smiling.
"And here are some nummulites," pursued Verney, taking a quantity of the
round coin-like shells from his pocket. "You might have a necklace made,
with the nummulites above and the flints below as pendants."
"And label it prehistoric; it would be quite as attractive as
preraphaelite," said Inness. "I don't know what _you_ think," he
continued, turning to Verney, "but to me there is nothing so ugly as the
way some of the girls--generally the tall ones--are getting themselves
up nowadays in what they call the preraphaelite style--a general effect
of awkward lankness as to shape and gown, a classic fillet, hair to the
eyebrows, and a gait not unlike that which would be produced by having
the arms tied together behind at the elbows. If your Botticelli is
responsible for this, his canvases should be demolished."
Verney laughed; he was at heart, I think, a strong preraphaelite both of
the present and the past; but how could he avow it when a reality so
charming and at the same time so unlike that type stood beside him?
Janet's costumes were not at all preraphaelite; they were
American-French.
We left the Red Rocks, and went slowly onward along the sea-shore
towards home. Miss Elaine, having first taken me aside to ask if I
thought it "quite proper," had challenged Inness to a rapid walk, and
soon carried him away from us and out of sight. On our way we passed the
St. Louis brook, where the laundresses were at work in two rows along
the stream, each kneeling at the edge in a broad open basket like a
boat, and bending over the low pool, alternately soaping and beating her
clothes with a flat wooden mallet. It was a picturesque sight--the long
rows of figures in baskets, the heads decked with bright-colored
handkerchiefs. But to a housewifely mind like my own the idea which most
forcibly presented itself was the small amount of water. Of a celebrated
trout fisherman it was once said that all he required was a little damp
spot, and forthwith he caught a trout; and the Mentone laundresses seem
to consider that only a little damp spot is needed for their daily
labors.
But in truth they cannot help themselves; the crying fault of Mentone is
the want of water. A spring is more precious than the land itself, and
is divided between different proprietors for stated periods of each day.
The poor little rills do a dozen tasks before they reach the laundresses
and the beach. The beautiful terrace vegetation which clothes the sides
of the mountains is supported by an elaborate and costly system of tanks
and watercourses which would dishearten an American proprietor at the
outset. The Mentone laundresses work for wages which a New World
laundress would scorn; but there is one marked difference between them
and between all the French and Italian working-people and those of
America, and that is that among these foreigners there seems to be not
one too poor to have his daily bottle of wine. We saw the necks of these
bottles peeping from the rough dinner-baskets of the laundresses, and
afterwards from those also of the quarry-men, vine-dressers,
olive-pickers, and lemon-gatherers. It was an inexpensive "wine of the
country"; still, it was wine.
The sun was now sinking into the water, and exquisite hues were stealing
over the soft sea. The picturesque Mediterranean boats with lateen-sails
were coming towards home, and one whose little sail was crimson made a
lovely picture on the water. At the sea-wall we met Miss Graves gloomily
taking a walk, and presently the phaeton with Margaret and Lloyd stopped
near us as we stood looking at the hues. Two ships in the distance
sailed first on blue water, then on rose, on lilac, on purple, violet,
and gold. Over the sea fell a pink flush, met on the horizon by salmon
in a broad band, then next above it amber, then violet edged with rose,
and higher still a zone of clear pale green bordered with gold. At the
same moment the Red Rocks were flooded with rose light which extended in
a lovely flush up the high gray peaks behind far in the sky, lingering
there when all the lower splendor was gone, and the sea and shore veiled
in dusky twilight gray.
[Illustration: A MEDITERRANEAN BOAT]
"It is almost as beautiful at sunrise," said Mrs. Clary; "and then, too,
you can see the Fairy Island."
"What is that?" I asked.
"Never mind what it is in reality," answered Mrs. Clary. "I consider it
enchanted--the Fortunate Land, whose shores and mountain-peaks can be
seen only between dawn and sunrise, when they loom up distinctly, soon
fading away, however, mysteriously into the increasing daylight, and
becoming entirely invisible when the sun appears."
"I saw it this morning," said Miss Graves, soberly. "It is only
Corsica."
"Brigands and vendetta," said Inness.
"Napoleon," said all the rest of us.
"My idea of it is much the best," said Mrs. Clary; "it is Fairy-land,
the lost Isles of the Blest."
After that each morning at breakfast the question always was, who had
seen Corsica. And a vast amount of ingenious evasion was displayed in
the answers. However, I did see it once. It rose from the water on the
southeastern horizon, its line of purple mountain-peaks and low shore so
distinctly visible that it seemed as if one could take the little boat
with the crimson sail and be over there in an hour, although it was
ninety miles away; but while I gazed it faded slowly, melted, as it
were, into the gold of the awakening day.
The weeks passed, and we rode, drove, walked, and climbed hither and
thither, looking at the carouba-trees, the stiff pyramidal cypresses,
the euphorbias in woody bushes five feet high, the great planes, the
grotesque naked figs, the aloes and oleanders growing wild, and the
fantastic shapes of the cacti. We searched for ferns, finding the rusty
ceterach, the little trichomanes, and _Adiantum nigrum_, but especially
the exquisite maiden-hair of the delicate variety called _Capillus
veneris_, which fringed every watercourse and bank and rock where there
is the least moisture with its lovely green fretwork. There is a phrase
current in Mentone and applied to this fern, as well as to the violets
which grow wild in rich profusion, starring the ground with their blue;
unthinking people say of them that they are "so common they become
weeds." This phrase should be suppressed by a society for the
cultivation of good taste and the prevention of cruelty to plants. Ivy
was everywhere, growing wild, and heather in bloom.
Miss Graves was brought almost to tears one day by finding her old
friend the wild climbing smilax of Florida on these Mediterranean rocks,
and only recovered her self-possession because Lloyd would call it
"sarsaparilla," and she felt herself called upon to do battle. But the
profusion of the violets, the pomp of the red anemones, the perfume of
the white narcissus, the hyacinths and sweet alyssum, all growing wild,
who shall describe them? There were also tulips, orchids, English
primroses, and daisies. Even when nothing else could grow there was
always the demure rosemary. Of course, too, we made close acquaintance
with the olive and lemon, the characteristic trees of Mentone, whose
foliage forms its verdure, and whose fruit forms its commerce. The
orange groves were insignificant and the oranges sour compared with
those of Florida; but the olive and lemon groves were new to us, and in
themselves beautiful and luxuriant. Our hotel stood on the edge of an
old olive grove climbing the mountain-side slowly on broad terraces
rising endlessly as one looked up. After some weeks' experience we found
that we represented collectively various shades of opinion concerning
olive groves in general, which may be given as follows:
Mrs. Clary: "These old trees are to me so sacred! When I walk under
their great branches I always think of the dove bringing the leaf to the
ark, of the olive boughs of the entry into Jerusalem, and of the Mount
of Olives."
[Illustration: BRINGING LEMONS FROM THE TERRACE]
The Professor: "Olives are interesting because their manner of growth
allows them to attain an almost indefinite age. The trunk decays and
splits, but the bark, which still retains its vigor, grows around the
dissevered portions, making, as it were, new trunks of them, although
curved and distorted, so that three or four trees seem to be growing
from the same root. It is this which gives the tree its characteristic
knotted and gnarled appearance. This species of olive attains a very
fine development in the neighborhood of Mentone; there are said to be
trees still alive at Cap Martin which were coeval with the Roman
Empire."
Verney: "The light in an old olive grove is beautiful and peculiar; it
is like nothing but itself. It is quite impossible to give on canvas the
gray shade of the long aisles without making them dim, and they are not
in the least dim. I have noticed, too, that the sunshine never filters
through sufficiently to touch the ground in a glancing beam, or even a
single point of yellow light; and yet the leaves are small, and the
foliage does not appear thick."
Baker: "Olives and olive oil, the groundwork of every good dinner! I
wonder how much a grove would cost?"
Mrs. Trescott: "How they murmur to us--like doves! My one regret now is
that I did not name my child Olive. She would then have been so
Biblical."
Inness: "I should think more of the groves if I did not know that they
were fertilized with woollen rags, old boots, and bones."
Janet: "The inside tint of the leaves would be lovely for a summer
costume. I have never had just that shade."
Miss Graves: "Live-oak groves draped in long moss are much more
imposing."
Miss Elaine: "It is so jolly, you know, to sit under the trees with
one's embroidery, and have some one read aloud--something sweet, like
Adelaide Procter."
Margaret: "Sitting here is like being in a great cathedral in Lent."
Lloyd: "Shall we go quietly on, Miss Severin?"
And Lloyd, I think, had the best of it. I mean that he knew how to
derive the most pleasure from the groves. This English use of "quietly,"
by-the-way, always amused Margaret and myself greatly. Lloyd and Verney
were constantly suggesting that we should go here or there "quietly," as
though otherwise we should be likely to go with banners, trumpets, and
drums. The longer one remains in Mentone, the stronger grows attachment
to the olive groves. But they do not seem fit places for the young,
whose gay voices resound through their gray aisles; neither are they for
the old, who need the cheer and warmth of the sun. But they are for the
middle-aged, those who are beyond the joys and have not yet reached the
peace of life, the poor, unremembered, hard-worked middle-aged. The
olives of Mentone are small, and used only for making oil. We saw them
gathered: men were beating the boughs with long poles, while old women
and children collected the dark purple berries and placed them in sacks,
which the patient donkeys bore to the mill. The oil mills are venerable
and picturesque little buildings of stone, placed in the ravines where
there is a stream of water. We visited one on the side hill; its only
light came from the open door, and its interior made a picture which
Gerard Douw might well have painted. The great oil jars, the old hearth
and oven, the earthen jugs, hanging lamps with floating wicks, and the
figures of the men moving about, made a picturesque scene. The fruit was
first crushed by stone rollers, the wheel being turned by water-power;
the pulp, saturated with warm water, was then placed in flat, round rope
baskets, which were piled one upon the other, and the whole subjected to
strong pressure, which caused the clear yellow oil to exude through the
meshes of the baskets, and flow down into the little reservoir below.
"Our manners would become charmingly suave if we lived here long," said
Inness. "It would be impossible to resist the influence of so much oil."
The lemon terraces were as unlike the olive groves as a gay love song is
unlike a Gregorian chant. The trees rose brightly and youthfully from
the grassy hill-side steps, each leaf shining as though it was
varnished, and the yellow globes of fruit gleaming like so much
imprisoned sunshine. Here was no shade, no weird grayness, but
everything was either vivid gold or vivid green. Janet said this.
"_I_ am the latter, I think," said Baker, "to be caught here again on
these terraces. I don't know what your experience has been, but for my
part I detest them; I have been lost here again and again. You get into
them and you think it all very easy, and you keep going on and on. You
climb hopefully from one to the next by those narrow sidling little
stone steps, only to find it the exact counterpart of the one you have
left, with still another beyond. And you keep on plunging up and up
until you are worn out. At last you meet a man, and you ask him
something or other beginning with 'Purtorn'--"
"What in the world do you mean?" said Janet, breaking into laughter.
"I am sure I don't know; but that is what you all say."
"Perhaps you mean 'Peut-on,'" suggested Margaret.
"Well, whatever I mean, the man always answers 'Oui,' and so I am no
better off than I was before, but keep plunging on," said Baker,
ruefully.
But the Professor now opened a more instructive subject. "Lemons are the
most important product of Mentone," he began. "As they can be kept
better than those of Naples and Sicily, they command a large price. The
tree flowers all the year through, and the fruit is gathered at four
different periods. The annual production of lemons at Mentone is about
thirty millions."
"Thirty millions of lemons!" I said, appalled. "What an acid idea!"
"The idea may be acid, but the air is not," said Margaret. "It is
singularly delicious, almost intoxicating."
And in truth there was a subtle fragrance which had an influence upon
me, although no doubt it had much more upon Margaret, who was peculiarly
sensitive to perfumes.
"Have you heard the legend of the Mentone lemons?" said Verney.
"No; what is it? We should be _very_ pleased to hear it," said Miss
Elaine, throwing herself down upon the grass in what she considered a
rural way. She was bestowing her smiles upon Verney that day; she had
mentioned to me on the way up the hill that she did not approve of
giving too much of one's attention "to one especial gentleman
exclusively"--it was so "conspicuous." I was smiling inwardly at this,
since the only "conspicuous" person among us, as far as attention to
"the gentlemen" was concerned, was Miss Elaine herself, when I caught
her glance directed towards Margaret and Lloyd. This set me to thinking.
Could she be referring to them? They had been much together, without
doubt, for Margaret liked him, and he was very kind to her. My poor
Margaret, she was very precious, to me; but to others she was only a
pale, careworn woman, silent, quiet, and no longer young. With the
remembrance of Miss Elaine's words in my mind, I now looked around for
Margaret as we sat down on the grass to hear Verney's legend; but she
had strolled off down the long green and gold aisle with Lloyd.
"Miss Severin is so well informed that she does not care for our simple
little amusements," said Miss Elaine, in her artless way.
[Illustration: ON THE WAY TO L' ANNUNZIATA]
"Once upon a time, as we all know," began Verney, "Adam and Eve were
banished from the garden of Paradise. Poor Eve, sobbing, put up her hand
just before passing through the gate and plucked a lemon from the last
tree beside the angel. The two then wandered through the world together,
wandered far and wide, and at last, following the shores of the
Mediterranean, they came to Mentone. Here the sea was so blue, the
sunshine so bright, and the sky so cloudless, that Eve planted her
treasured fruit. 'Go, little seed,' she said; 'grow and prosper. Make
another Eden of this enchanting spot, so that those who come after may
know at least something of the tastes and the perfumes of Paradise.'"
The Professor had not remained to hear the legend; he had gone up the
mountain, and we now heard him shouting; that is, he was trying to
shout, although he produced only a sort of long, thin hoot.
"What can that be?" I said, startled.
"It is the Professor," answered Mrs. Trescott. "It is his way of
calling. He has his own methods of doing everything."
It turned out that he had found a path down which the lemon girls were
coming from the terraces above. We went up to this point to see them
pass. They were all strong and ruddy, and walked with wonderful
erectness, balancing the immense weight of fruit on their heads without
apparent effort; they were barefooted, and moved with a solid, broad
step down the steep, stony road. The load of fruit for each one was one
hundred and twenty pounds; they worked all day in this manner, and
earned about thirty cents each! But they looked robust and cheerful, and
some of them smiled at us under their great baskets as they passed.
One afternoon not long after this we went to the Capuchin monastery of
the Annunziata. Some of us were on donkeys and some on foot, forming
one of those processions so often seen winding through the streets of
the little Mediterranean town. We passed the shops filled with the
Mentone swallow, singing his "Je reviendrai" upon articles in wood, in
glass, mosaic, silver, straw, canvas, china, and even letter-paper, with
continuous perseverance; we passed the venders of hot chestnuts, which
we not infrequently bought and ate ourselves. Then we came to the
perfume distilleries, where thousands of violets yield their sweetness
daily.
"They cultivate them for the purpose, you know," said Verney. "It's a
poetical sort of agriculture, isn't it? Imagination can hardly go
further, I think, than the idea of a violet farm."
We passed small chapels with their ever-burning lamps; the new villas
described by the French newspapers as "ravishing constructions"; and
then, turning from the road, we ascended a narrow path which wound
upward, its progress marked here and there by stone shrines, some
freshly repainted, others empty and ruined, pointing the way to the holy
church of the Annunziata.
"The only way to appreciate Mentone is to take these excursions up the
valleys and mountains," said Mrs. Clary. "Those who confine themselves
to sitting in the gardens of the hotels or strolling along the Promenade
du Midi have no more idea of its real beauty than a man born blind has
of a painting. Descriptions are nothing; one must _see_. I think the
mountain excursions may be called the shibboleth of Mentone; if you do
not know them, you are no true Israelite."
Verney had a graceful way of gathering delicate little sprays and
blossoms here and there and silently giving them to Janet. The Professor
had noticed this, and to-day emulated him by gathering a bunch of
mallow with great care--a bunch nearly a yard in circumference--which
he presented to Janet with much ceremony.
"Oh, thanks; I am _so_ fond of flowers!" responded that young person.
"Is it asphodel? I long to see asphodel."
Now asphodel was said to grow in that neighborhood, and Janet knew it;
by expressing a wish to see the classic blossom she sent the poor
Professor on a long search for it, climbing up and down and over the
rocks, until I, looking on from my safe donkey's back, felt tired for
him. And it was not long before our donkeys' steady pace left him far
behind.
"With its pale, dusty leaves and weakly lavender flowers, it is, I
think, about as depressing a flower as I have seen," said Inness,
looking at the mammoth bouquet.
"I might fasten it to the saddle, and relieve your hands, Miss
Trescott," suggested Verney. So the delicate gray gloves relinquished
the pound of mallow, which was tied to the saddle, and there hung
ignominiously all the remainder of the day.
The church and convent of L'Annunziata crown an isolated vine-clad hill
between two of the lovely valleys behind Mentone. The church was at the
end of a little plaza, surrounded by a stone-wall; in front there was an
opening towards the south, where stood an iron cross twenty feet high,
visible, owing to its situation, for many a mile. The stone monastery
was on one side; and the whole looked like a little fortification on the
point of the hill. We went into the church, and looked at the primitive
ex-votos on the wall, principally the offerings of Mediterranean sailors
in remembrance of escape from shipwreck--fragments of rope and chain,
pictures of storms at sea, and little wooden models of ships. In
addition to these marine souvenirs, there were also some tokens of
events on dry land, generally pictures of run-aways, where such
remarkable angels were represented sitting unexpectedly but calmly on
the tops of trees by the road-side that it was no wonder the horses ran.
But the lovely view of sea and shore at the foot of the great cross in
the sunshine was better than the dark, musty little church, and we soon
went out and seated ourselves on the edge of the wall to look at it.
While we were there one of the Capuchins, clad in his long brown gown,
came out, crossed the plaza, gazed at us slowly, and then with equal
slowness stooped and kissed the base of the cross, and returned, giving
us another long gaze as he passed.
[Illustration: THE MONASTERY OF L'ANNUNZIATA]
"Was that piety or curiosity?" I said.
"I think it was Miss Trescott," said Baker.
Now as Miss Elaine was present, this was a little cruel; but I learned
afterwards that Baker had been rendered violent that day by hearing that
his American politeness regarding Miss Elaine's self-bestowed society
had been construed by that young lady into a hidden attachment to
herself--an attachment which she "deeply regretted," but could not
"prevent." She had confided this to several persons, who kept the secret
in that strict way in which such secrets are usually kept. Indeed, with
all the strictness, it was quite remarkable that Baker heard it. But not
remarkable that he writhed under it. However, his remarks and manners
made no difference to Miss Elaine; she attributed them to despair.
While we were sitting on the wall the Professor came toiling up the
hill; but he had not found the asphodel. However, when Janet had given
him a few of her pretty phrases he revived, and told us that the plaza
was the site of an ancient village called Podium-Pinum, and that the
Lascaris once had a chateau there.
"The same Lascaris who lived in the old castle at Mentone?" said Janet.
"The same."
"These old monks have plenty of wine, I suppose," said Inness, looking
at the vine terraces which covered the sunny hill-side.
"Very good wine was formerly made around Mentone," said the Professor;
"but the vines were destroyed by a disease, and the peasants thought it
the act of Providence, and for some time gave up the culture. But lately
they have replanted them, and wine is now again produced which, I am
told, is quite palatable."
"That is but a cold phrase to apply to the _bon petit vin blanc_ of
Sant' Agnese, for instance," said Verney, smiling.
Soon we started homeward. While we were winding down the narrow path, we
met a Capuchin coming up, with his bag on his back; he was an old man
with bent shoulders and a meek, dull face, to whom the task of patient
daily begging would not be more of a burden than any other labor. But
when we reached the narrow main street, and found a momentary block,
another Capuchin happened to stand near us who gave me a very different
impression. Among the carriages was a phaeton, with silken canopy, fine
horses, and a driver in livery; upon the cushioned seat lounged a young
man, one of Fortune's favorites and Nature's curled darlings, a little
stout from excess of comfort, perhaps, but noticeably handsome and
noticeably haughty--probably a Russian nobleman. The monk who stood near
us with his bag of broken bread and meat over his back was of the same
age, and equally handsome, as far as the coloring and outline bestowed
by nature could go. His dark eyes were fixed immovably upon the occupant
of the phaeton, and I wondered if he was noting the difference; it
seemed as if he must be noting it. It was a striking tableau of life's
utmost riches and utmost poverty.
That evening there was music in the garden; a band of Italian singers
chanted one or two songs to the saints, and then ended with a gay
Tarantella, which set all the house-maids dancing in the moonlight. We
listened to the music, and looked off over the still sea.
"Isn't it beautiful?" said Mrs. Clary. "I think loving Mentone is like
loving your lady-love. To you she is all beautiful, and you describe her
as such. But perhaps when others see her they say: 'She is by no means
all beautiful; she has this or that fault. What do you mean?' Then you
answer: 'I love her; therefore to me she is all beautiful. As for her
faults, they may be there, but I do not see them: I am blind.'"
[Illustration: CAPUCHIN MONKS]
That same evening Margaret gave me the following verses which she had
written:
MENTONE.
"_And there was given unto them a short time before they went forward._"
Upon this sunny shore
A little space for rest. The care and sorrow,
Sad memory's haunting pain that would not cease,
Are left behind. It is not yet to-morrow.
To-day there falls the dear surprise of peace;
The sky and sea, their broad wings round us sweeping,
Close out the world, and hold us in their keeping.
A little space for rest. Ah! though soon o'er,
How precious is it on the sunny shore!
Upon this sunny shore
A little space for love, while those, our dearest,
Yet linger with us ere they take their flight
To that far world which now doth seem the nearest,
So deep and pure this sky's down-bending light
Slow, one by one, the golden hours are given
A respite ere the earthly ties are riven.
When left alone, how, 'mid our tears, we store
Each breath of their last days upon this shore!
Upon this sunny shore
A little space to wait: the life-bowl broken,
The silver cord unloosed, the mortal name
We bore upon this earth by God's voice spoken,
While at the sound all earthly praise or blame,
Our joys and griefs, alike with gentle sweetness
Fade in the dawn of the next world's completeness.
The hour is thine, dear Lord; we ask no more,
But wait thy summons on the sunny shore.
II
"Thy skies are blue, thy crags as wild,
Thine olive ripe, as when Minerva smiled."
--BYRON.
"So having rung that bell once too often, they were all carried off,"
concluded Inness, as we came up.
"Who?" I asked.
"Look around you, and divine."
We were on Capo San Martino. This, being interpreted, is only Cape
Martin; but as we had agreed to use the "dear old names," we could not
leave out that of the poor cape only because it happened to have six
syllables. We looked around. Before us were ruins--walls built of that
unintelligible broken stone mixed at random with mortar, which confounds
time, and may be, as a construction, five or five hundred years old.
"They--whoever they were--lived here?" I said.
"Yes."
"And it was from here that they were carried off?"
"It was."
"Were they those interesting Greek Lascaris?" said Mrs. Trescott.
"No."
"The Troglodytes?" suggested Mrs. Clary.
"No."
"The poor old ancient gods and goddesses of the coast?" said Margaret.
"No."
"But who carried them off?" I said. "That is the point. It makes all the
difference in the world."
"I know it does," replied Inness; "especially in the case of an
elopement. In this case it happened to be Miss Trescott's friends
(always with two r's), the Sarrasins. The story is but a Mediterranean
version of the boy and the wolf. These ruins are the remains of an
ancient convent built in--in the remote Past. The good nuns, after
taking possession (perhaps they were inland nuns, and did not know what
they were coming to when they came to a shore), began to be in great
fear of the sea and Sarrasin sails. They therefore besought the men of
Mentone and Roccabruna to fly to their aid if at any time they heard the
bell of the chapel ringing rapidly. The men promised, and held
themselves in readiness to fly. One night they heard the bell. Then
westward ran the men of Mentone, and down the hill came those of
Roccabruna, and together they flew out on Capo San Martino to this
convent--only to find no Sarrasins at all, but only the nuns in a row
upon their knees entreating pardon: they had rung the bell as a test.
Not long afterwards the bell rang again, but no one went. This time it
really was the Sarrasins, and the nuns were all carried off."
"Very dramatic. The slight discrepancy that this happened to be a
monastery for monks makes no difference: who cares for details!" said
Verney, who, under the pretence of sketching the ruins, was making his
eighth portrait of Janet. He said of these little pencil portraits that
he "threw them in." Janet was therefore thrown into the Red Rocks, the
"old town," the Bone Caverns, the Pont St. Louis, Dr. Bennet's garden,
the cemetery, Capo San Martino, and before we finished into Roccabruna,
Castellare, Monaco, Dolce Acqua, Sant' Agnese, and the old Roman Trophy
at Turbia.
Leaving the ruins, we went down to the point, where the cape juts out
sharply into the sea, forming the western boundary of the Mentone bay.
Opposite, on the eastern point, lay blanche Bordighera, fair and silvery
as ever in the sunshine. We found the Professor on the point examining
the rocks.
"This is a formation similar to that which we may see in process of
construction at the present moment off the coast of Florida," he
explained.
"Not _coquina_?" cried Miss Graves, instantly going down and selecting a
large fragment.
"It is conglomerate," replied the Professor, disappearing around the
cliff corner, walking on little knobs of rock, and almost into the
Mediterranean in his eagerness.
"That word conglomerate is one of the most useful terms I know," said
Inness. "It covers everything: like Renaissance."
"The rock is also called pudding-stone," said Verney.
"Away with pudding-stone! we will have none of it. We are nothing if not
dignified, are we, Miss Elaine?" said Inness, turning to that young
lady, who was bestowing upon him the boon of her society for the happy
afternoon.
"I am sure I have always thought you had a _great_ deal of dignity, Mr.
Inness," replied Miss Elaine, with her sweetest smile.
We sat down on the rocks and looked at the blue sea. "It is commonplace
to be continually calling it blue," I said; "but it is inevitable, for
no one can look at it without thinking of its color."
"It has seen so much," said Mrs. Clary, in her earnest way; "it has
carried the fleets of all antiquity. The Egyptians, the Greeks, the
Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, and the Romans passed to and fro
across it; the Apostles sailed over it; yet it looks as fresh and young
and untraversed as though created yesterday."
[Illustration: MONACO]
"It certainly is the fairest water in the world," said Janet. "It must
be the reflection of heaven."
"It is the proportion of salt," said the Professor, who had come back
around the rock corner on the knobs. "A larger amount of salt is held in
solution in the Mediterranean than in the Atlantic. It is a very deep
body of water, too, along this coast: at Nice it was found to be three
thousand feet deep only a few yards from the shore."
"These Mediterranean sailors are such cowards," said Inness. "At the
first sign of a storm they all come scudding in. If the Phoenicians
were like them, another boyhood illusion is gone! However, since they
demolished William Tell, I have not much cared."
"The Mediterranean sailors of the past were probably, like those of the
present, obliged to come scudding in," said Verney, "because the winds
were so uncertain and variable. They use lateen-sails for the same
reason, because they can be let down by the run; all the coasting xebecs
and feluccas use them."
"Xebecs and feluccas--delicious words!" said Janet.
"I still maintain that they are cowards," resumed Inness. "The other
day, when there was that capful of wind, you know, twenty of these
delicious xebecs came hurrying into our little port, running into each
other in their haste, and crowding together in the little pool like
frightened chickens under a hen's wings. And they were not all delicious
xebecs, either; there were some good-sized sea-going vessels among them,
brig-rigged in front with the seven or eight small square sails they
string up one above the other, and a towel out to windward."
"The winds of Mentone are wizards," said Margaret; "they never come from
the point they seem to come from. If they blow full in your face from
the east, make up your mind that they come directly from the west. They
are enchanted."
"They are turned aside by the slopes of the mountains," said Baker,
practically.
"But the Mediterranean has not lived up to its reputation, after all,"
said Janet. "I expected to see fleets of nautilus, and I have not seen
one. And not a porpoise!"
"For porpoises," said Miss Graves, who had knotted a handkerchief around
her conglomerate, and was carrying it tied to a scarf like a
shawl-strap--"for porpoises you must go to Florida."
We left the cape and went inland through the woods, looking for the old
Roman tomb. We found it at last, appropriately placed in a gray old
olive grove, some of whose trees, no doubt, saw its foundations laid.
The fragment of old roadway near it was introduced by Inness as "the
Julia Augusta, lifting up its head again." It had laid it down last at
the Red Rocks. The tomb originally was as large as a small chapel; one
of the side walls was gone, but the front remained almost perfect. This
front was in three arches; traces of fresco decoration were still
visible under the curves. Below were lines of stone in black and white
alternately, and the same mosaic was repeated above, where there was
also a cornice stretching from the sides to a central empty space, once
filled by the square marble slab bearing the inscription. We found Lloyd
here, sketching; but as we came up he closed his sketch-book, joined
Margaret, and the two strolled off through the old wood, which had, as
Inness remarked, "as many moving associations" as we chose to recall,
"from the feet of the Roman legions to those of the armies of Napoleon."
"I wish we knew what the inscription was," said Janet, who was sitting
on the grass in front of the old tomb. "I should like to know who it was
who was laid here so long, long ago."
"Some old Roman," said Baker.
"He might not have been old," said Verney, who was now sketching in his
turn. "There is another Roman tomb, or fragment of one, above us on the
side of the mountain, and the inscription on that one gives the name of
a youth who died, 'aged eighteen years and ten months,' two thousand
years ago, 'much sorrowed for by his father and his mother.'"
"Love then was the same as now, and will be the same after we are gone,
I suppose," said Janet, thoughtfully, leaning her pretty head back
against an old olive-tree.
"A reason why we should take it while we can," observed Inness.
The Professor and Miss Graves now appeared in sight, for we had come
across from the cape in accidental little groups, and these two had
found themselves one of them. As the Professor had his sack of specimens
and Miss Graves her conglomerate, we thought they looked well together;
but the Professor evidently did not think so, for he immediately joined
Janet.
"I do not know that there is any surer sign of advancing age in a man
than a growing preference for the society of very young girls--mere
youth _per se_, as the Professor himself would say," said Mrs. Clary to
me in an undertone.
Meanwhile the Professor, unconscious of this judgment, was telling Janet
that she was standing upon the site of the old Roman station "Lumone,"
mentioned in Antony's Itinerary, and that the tomb was that of a
patrician family.
Mrs. Trescott was impressed by this. She said it was "a paean moment" for
us all, if we would but realize it; and she plucked a fern in
remembrance.
* * * * *
One bright day not long after this we went to Mentone's sister city,
Roccabruna, a little town looking as if it were hooked on to the side
of the mountain. As we passed through the "old town" on our donkeys we
met a wedding-party, walking homeward from the church, in the middle of
the street. The robust bride, calm and majestic, moved at the head of
the procession with her father, her white muslin gown sweeping the
pavement behind her. Probably it would have been considered undignified
to lift it. The father, a small, wizened old man, looked timorous, and
the bridegroom, next behind with the bride's mother, still more so, even
the quantity of brave red satin cravat he wore failing to give him a
martial air. Next came the relatives and friends, two and two, all the
gowns of the women sweeping out with dignity. In truth this seemed to be
the feature of the occasion, since at all other times their gowns were
either short or carefully held above the dust. There was no music, no
talking, hardly a smile. A christening party we had met the day before
was much more joyous, for then the smiling father and mother threw from
the carriage at intervals handfuls of sugar-plums and small copper
coins, which were scrambled for by a crowd of children, while the
gorgeously dressed baby was held up proudly at the window.
We were going first to Gorbio. The Gorbio Valley is charming. Of all the
valleys, the narrow Val de Menton is the loveliest for an afternoon
walk; but for longer excursions, and compared with the valleys of Carrei
and Borrigo, that of Gorbio is the most beautiful, principally because
there is more water in the stream, which comes sweeping and tumbling
over its bed of flat rock like the streams of the White Mountains,
whereas the so-called "torrents" of Carrei and Borrigo are generally but
wide, arid torrents of stone. We passed olive and lemon groves, mills,
vineyards, and millions upon millions of violets. Then the path, which
constantly ascended, grew wilder, but not so wild as Inness. I could not
imagine what possessed him. He sang, told stories, vaulted over Baker,
and laughed until the valley rang again; but as his voice was good and
his stories amusing, we enjoyed his merriment. Miss Elaine looked on, I
thought, with an air of pity; but then Miss Elaine pitied everybody. She
would have pitied Jenny Lind at the height of her fame, and no doubt
when she was in Florence she pitied the Venus de' Medici.
We found Gorbio a little village of six hundred inhabitants, perched on
the point of a rock, with the ground sloping away on all sides; the
remains of its old wall and fortified gates were still to be seen. We
entered and explored its two streets--narrow passageways between the old
stone houses, whose one idea seemed to be to crowd as closely together
and occupy as little of the ground space as possible. Above the
clustered roofs towered the ruined walls of what was once the castle,
the tower only remaining distinct. This tower bore armorial bearings,
which I was trying to decipher, when Verney came up with Janet. "Nothing
but those same arms of the Lascaris," he said.
"Why do you say 'nothing but'?" said Janet. "To be royal, and Greek, and
have three castles--for this is the third we have seen--is not nothing,
but something, and a great deal of something. How I wish _I_ had lived
in those days!"
As the Professor was not with us, we knew nothing of the story of
Gorbio, and walked about rather uncomfortable and ill-informed in
consequence. But it turned out that Gorbio, like the knife-grinder, had
no story. "Story? Lord bless you! I have none to tell, sir." Inness,
however, had reserved one fact, which he finally delivered to us under
the great elm in the centre of the little plaza, where we had assembled
to rest. "This peaceful village," he began, "whose idyllic children now
form a gazing circle around us, was the scene of a sanguinary combat
between the French and Spanish-Austrian armies in 1746."
"Oh, modern! modern!" said Verney from behind (where he was throwing
Janet into Gorbio).
"Your pardon," said Inness, with majesty; "not modern at all. In 1746,
as I beg to remind you, even the foundation-stones of our great republic
were not laid, yet the man who ventures to say that it is not, as a
construction, absolutely venerable, from exceeding merit, will be a rash
one. In America, Time is not old or slow; he has given up his
hour-glass, and travels by express. Each month of ours equals one of
your years, each year a century. Therefore have we all a singularly
mature air--as exemplified in myself. But to return. Upon this spot,
then, my friends, there was once--carnage! The only positive and
historical carnage in the neighborhood of Mentone. Therefore all warlike
spirits should come to Gorbio, and breathe the inspiring air."
We did not stay long enough in the inspiring air to become belligerent,
however, but, on the contrary, went peacefully past a quiet old shrine,
and took the path to Roccabruna--one of the most beautiful paths in the
neighborhood of Mentone. By-and-by we came to a tall cross on the top of
a high ridge. We had seen it outlined against the sky while still in the
streets of Gorbio. These mountain-side crosses were not uncommon. They
are not locally commemorative, as we first supposed, but seem to be
placed here and there, where there is a beautiful view, to remind the
gazer of the hand that created it all. Some distance farther we found a
still wider prospect; and then we came down into Roccabruna, and spread
out our lunch on the battlements of the old castle. From this point our
eyes rested on the coast-line stretching east and west, the frowning
Dog's Head at Monaco, and the white winding course of the Cornice Road.
The castle was on the side of the mountain, eight hundred feet above the
sea. Although forming part of the village, it was completely isolated by
its position on a high pinnacle of rock, which rose far above the roofs
on all sides.
[Illustration: STREET IN ROCCABRUNA]
"How these poor timid little towns clung close to and under their lords'
walls!" said Baker, with the fine contempt of a young American. "They
are all alike: the castle towering above; next the church and the
priest; and the people--nowhere!"
"The people were happy enough, living in this air," said Mrs. Clary.
"How does it strike you? To me it seems delicious; but many persons find
it too exciting."
"It certainly gives me an appetite," I said, taking another sandwich.
Miss Elaine found it "too warm." Miss Graves found it "too cold." Mrs.
Trescott, having been made herself again by a glass of the "good little
white wine" of Gorbio, said that it was "almost too idealizing." Lloyd
remarked that it was not "too anything unless too delightful," and that,
for his part, he wished that, with the present surroundings, he might
"breathe it forever!" This was gallant. Janet looked at him: he was the
only one who had not bowed at her shrine, and it made her pensive.
Meanwhile Inness's gayety continued; he made a voyage of discovery
through the narrow streets below, coming back with the legend that he
had met the prettiest girl he had seen since his "pretty girl of Arles,"
whose eyes, "enshrined beside those of Miss Trescott" (with a grand
bow), had remained ever since in his "heart's inmost treasury." This,
like Baker's L' Annunziata speech, was both un-American and unnecessary
in the presence of a second young lady, and I looked at Inness,
surprised. But Miss Elaine only smiled on.
The Professor now appeared, having come out from Mentone on a donkey. We
immediately became historical. It appeared that the castle upon whose
old battlements we were idly loitering was one of the "homes" of the
Lascaris, Counts of Ventimiglia, who in 1358 transferred it with its
domains to the Grimaldis, Princes of Monaco.
"These Lascaris and Grimaldis seem to have played at seesaw for the
possession of this coast," said Baker. "Now one is up, and now the
other, but never any one else."
But Janet was impressed. "_Again_ the Lascaris!" she murmured.
"What is your idea of them?" said Verney.
"I hardly know; but of course they were knights in armor; and of course,
being Greeks, they had classic profiles. They were impulsive, and they
were generous; but if any one seriously displeased them, they
immediately ordered him cast into that terrible _oubliette_ we saw
below."
"That," said the Professor, mildly, "is only the well." Then, as if to
strengthen her with something authentic, he added, "The village was
sacked by the Duke of Guise towards the end of the sixteenth century,
when this castle was reduced to the ruined condition in which we find it
now."
"Happily it is not altogether ruined," said Mrs. Trescott, putting up
her eye-glass; "one of the--the apartments seems to be roofed, and to
possess doors."
"That," said the Professor, "is a donkey-stable, erected--or rather
adapted--later."
"Do the donkeys come up all these stairs?" I said, amused.
"I believe they do," replied the Professor. "Indeed, I have seen them
coming up after the day's work is over."
"I am sorry, Janet, but I shall never be able to think of this home of
your Lascaris after this without seeing a procession of donkeys coming
up-stairs on their way to their high apartments," I said, laughing.
"The _procession_ might have been the same in the days of the Lascaris,"
suggested Baker.
Roccabruna--brown rock--is an appropriate name for the village, which is
so brown and so mixed with and built into the cliff to which it clings
that it is difficult to tell where man's work ends and that of nature
begins.
"The town was the companion of Mentone in its rebellion against the
Princes of Monaco," said the Professor. "Mentone and Roccabruna freed
themselves, but Monaco remained enslaved."
"They are all now in France," said Baker.
"Sir!" replied the Professor, with heat, "it is in a much worse place
than France that wretched Monaco now finds herself!"
We went homeward down the mountain-side, passing the little chapel of
the Madonna della Pausa--a pause being indeed necessary when one is
ascending. Here, where the view was finest, there was another way-side
cross. Farther on, as we entered the old olive wood below, Margaret
dismounted; she always liked to walk through the silver-gray shade; and
Lloyd seemed to have adopted an equal fondness for the same tint.
That evening, when we were alone, Margaret explained the secret of
Inness's remarkable and unflagging gayety. It seemed that Miss Elaine
had, during the day before, confided to Verney--as a fellow-countryman,
I suppose--her self-reproach concerning "that poor young American
gentleman, Mr. Inness." What _should_ she do? Would he advise her? She
must go to some one, and she did not feel like troubling her dear mamma.
It was true that Mr. Inness had been with her a good deal, had helped
her wind her worsteds in the evening, but she never meant
anything--never dreamed of anything. And now, she could not but
feel--there was something in his manner that forced her to see--In
short, had not Mr. Verney noticed it?
Now I have no doubt but that Verney told her he had "seen" and had
"noticed" everything she desired. But in the meanwhile he could not
resist confiding the story to Baker, who having been already a victim,
was overcome with glee, and in his turn hastened to repeat the tale to
Inness.
Inness raged, but hardly knew what to do. He finally decided to become a
perfect Catharine-wheel of gayety, shooting off laughter and jokes in
all directions to convince the world that he remained heart-whole.
"But it will be of no avail," I said to Margaret, laughing, as I
recalled the look of soft pity on Miss Elaine's face all day; "she will
think it but the gayety of desperation." Then, more soberly, I added:
"Mr. Lloyd told you this, I suppose? You are with him a great deal, are
you not?"
"You see that I am, aunt. But it is only because she has not come yet."
"Who?"
"The brighter and younger woman who will take my place." But I did not
think she believed it.
* * * * *
On another day we went to Castellare, a little stone village much like
Gorbio, perched on its ridge, and rejoicing in an especial resemblance
to one of Caesar's fortified camps. The castle here was not so much a
castle as a chateau; its principal apartment was adorned with frescos
representing the history of Adam and Eve. We should not have seen these
frescos if it had not been for Miss Graves: I am afraid we should have
(there is no other word) shirked them. But Miss Graves had heard of the
presence of ancient works of art, and was bent upon finding them. In
vain Lloyd conducted her in and out of half a dozen old houses,
suggesting that each one was "probably" all that was left of the
"chateau." Miss Graves remained inflexibly unconvinced, and in the end
gained her point. We all saw Adam and Eve.
"Why did they want frescos away out here in this primitive little
village to which no road led, hardly even a donkey path?" I said.
"That is the very reason," replied Margaret. "They had no society,
nothing to do; so they looked at their frescos exhaustively."
"What do those eagles at the corners represent?" said Janet.
"They are the device of the Lascaris," replied the Professor.
"Do you mean to tell me that _this_ was one of their homes also?" she
exclaimed. "Let a chair be brought, and all of you leave me. I wish to
remain here alone, and imagine that I am one of them."
"Couldn't you imagine two?" said Inness. And he gained his point.
On our way home we found another block in the main street, and paused.
We were near what we called the umbrella place--an archway opening down
towards the old port; here against the stone wall an umbrella-maker had
established his open-air shop, and his scarlet and blue lined parasols
and white umbrellas, hung up at the entrance, made a picturesque spot of
color we had all admired. This afternoon we were late; it was nearly
twilight, and, in this narrow, high-walled street, almost night. As we
waited we heard chanting, and through the dusky archway came a
procession. First a tall white crucifix borne between two swinging
lamps; then the surpliced choir-boys, chanting; then the incense and the
priests; then a coffin, draped, and carried in the old way on the
shoulders of the bearers, who were men robed in long-hooded black gowns
reaching to the feet, their faces covered, with only two holes for the
eyes. These were members of the Society of Black Penitents, who, with
the White Penitents, attend funerals by turn, and care for the sick and
poor, from charitable motives alone, and without reward. Behind the
Penitents walked the relatives and friends, each with a little lighted
taper. As the procession came through the dark archway, crossed the
street, and wound up the hill into the "old town," its effect, with
the glancing lights and chanting voices, was weirdly picturesque. It was
on its way to the cemetery above.
[Illustration: THE KING OF THE OLIVES]
"Did you ever read this, Mr. Lloyd?" I heard Margaret say behind me, as
we went onward towards home:
"'One day, in desolate wind-swept space,
In twilight-land, in no-man's-land,
Two hurrying Shapes met face to face,
And bade each other stand.
"And who art thou?" cried one, agape,
Shuddering in the gloaming light.
"I do not know," said the second Shape:
"I only died last night."'"
I turned. Lloyd was looking at her curiously, or rather with wonder.
"Come, Margaret," I said, falling behind so as to join them, "the
English are not mystical, as some of us are. They are content with what
they can definitely know, and they leave the rest."
During the next week, after a long discussion, we decided to go up the
valley of the Nervia. The discussion was not inharmonious: we liked
discussions.
"This is by no means one of the ordinary Mentone excursions," said Mrs.
Clary, as our three carriages ascended the Cornice Road towards the
east, on a beautiful morning after one of the rare showers. "Many
explore all of the other valleys, and visit Monaco and Monte Carlo; but
comparatively few go up the Nervia."
The scene of the instalment of our twelve selves in these three
carriages, by-the-way, was amusing. Between the inward determination of
Inness, Verney, Baker, and the Professor to be in the carriage which
held Janet, and the equally firm determination of Miss Elaine to be in
the carriage which held _them_, it seemed as if we should never be
placed. But no one said what he or she wished; far from it. Everybody
was very polite, wonderfully polite; everybody offered his or her place
to everybody else. Lloyd, after waiting a few moments, calmly helped
Margaret into one of the carriages, handed in her shawl, and then took a
seat himself opposite. But the rest of us surged helplessly to and fro
among the wheels, not quite knowing what to do, until the arrival of the
hotel omnibus hurried us, when we took our places hastily, without any
arrangement at all, and drove off as follows: in the first carriage,
Mrs. Trescott, Janet, Miss Elaine, and myself; in the second, Miss
Graves, Inness, Verney, and Baker; in the third, Mrs. Clary, Margaret,
Lloyd, and the Professor. This assortment was so comical that I laughed
inwardly all the way up the first hill. Miss Elaine looked as if she was
on the point of shedding tears; and the Professor, who did not enjoy the
conversation of either Margaret or Mrs. Clary, was equally discomfited.
As for the faces of the three young men shut in with Miss Graves, they
were a study. However, it did not last long. The young men soon
preferred "to walk uphill." Then we stopped at Mortola to see the
Hanbury garden, and took good care not to arrange ourselves in the same
manner a second time. Still, as four persons cannot, at least in the
present state of natural science, occupy at the same moment the space
only large enough for one, there was all day more or less manoeuvring.
From Mortola to Ventimiglia I was in the carriage with Janet, Inness,
and Verney.
"What ruin is that on the top of the hill?" said Janet. "It looks like a
castle."
"It is a castle--Castel d'Appio," said Verney; "a position taken by the
Genoese in 1221 from the Lascaris, who--"
"Stop the carriage!--I must go up," said Janet.
"I assure you, Miss Trescott, that, Lascaris or no Lascaris, you will
find yourself mummied in mud after this rain," said Inness. "_I_ went up
there in a dry time, and even then had to wade."
Now if there is anything which Janet especially cherishes, it is her
pretty boots; so Castel d'Appio remained unvisited upon its height, in
lonely majesty against the sky. The next object of interest was a square
tower, standing on the side-hill not far above the road; it was not
large on the ground, rather was it narrow, but it rose in the air to an
imposing height. I could not imagine what its use had been: it stood too
far from the sea for a lookout, and, from its shape, could hardly have
been a residence; in its isolation, not a fortress. Inness said it
looked like a steeple with the church blown away; and then, inspired by
his own comparison, he began to chant an ancient ditty about
"'The next thing they saw was a barn on a hill:
One said 'twas a barn;
The other said "Na-ay;"
And t'other 'twas a church with its steeple blown away:
Look--a--there!'"
This extremely venerable ballad delighted Miss Graves in the carriage
behind so that she waved her black parasol in applause. She asked if
Inness could not sing "Springfield Mountain."
"There is nothing left now," I said, laughing, "but the 'Battle of the
Nile.'"
Verney, who had sketched the tower early in the winter, explained that
the old road to Ventimiglia passed directly through the lower story,
which was built in the shape of an arch. All the carriages were now
together, as we gazed at the relic.
"The road goes through?" said Miss Graves. "Probably, then, it was a
toll-gate."
[Illustration: FEUDAL TOWER NEAR VENTIMIGLIA]
This was so probable, although unromantic, that thereafter the venerable
structure was called by that name, or, as Inness suggested, "not to be
too disrespectful, the mediaeval T.G."
Ventimiglia, seven miles from Mentone, was "one of the most ancient
towns in Liguria," the Professor remarked. Mrs. Trescott, Mrs. Clary,
and I looked much wiser after this information, but carefully abstained
from saying anything to each other of the cloudy nature of our ideas
respecting the geographical word. However, we noticed, unaided, that its
fortifications were extensive, for we rolled over a drawbridge to enter
it, passing high stone-walls, bastions, and port-holes, while on the
summit of the hill above us frowned a large Italian fort. The Roya, a
broad river which divides the town into two parts, is crossed by a long
bridge; and we were over this bridge and some distance beyond before we
discovered that we had left the old quarter on the other side, its
closely clustering roofs and spires having risen so directly over our
heads on the steep side-hill that we had not observed them. Should we go
back? The carriages drew up to consider. We had still "a long drive
before us;" these "old Riviera villages" were "all alike;" the hill
seemed "very steep;" and "we can come here, you know, at any time"--were
some of the opinions given. The Professor, who really wished to stop,
gallantly yielded. Miss Graves, alone in the opposition, was obliged to
yield also; but she was deeply disappointed. The cathedral, formerly
dedicated to Jupiter, "'possesses a white marble pulpit incrusted with
mosaics, and an octagon font, very ancient,'" she read, mournfully,
aloud, from her manuscript note-book. "'The Church of St. Michael, also,
guards Roman antiquities of surpassing interest.'" This word "guards"
had a fine effect.
But, "we can come here at any time, you know," carried the day; and we
drove on. I may as well mention that, as usual in such cases, we never
did "come here at any time," save on the one occasion of our departure
for Florence--an occasion which no railway traveller going to Italy by
this route is likely soon to forget, the Ventimiglia custom-house being
modelled patriotically upon the circles of Dante's "Inferno."
When we were at a safe distance--"I suppose you know, Miss Trescott,
that Ventimiglia was the principal home of your Lascaris?" said Verney.
"First of all, they were Counts of Ventimiglia: that Italian port stands
on the site of their old castle. I have been looking into their
genealogy a little on your account; and I find that the first count of
whom we have authentic record was a son of the King of Italy, A.D. 950.
His son married the Princess Eudoxie, daughter of Theodore Lascaris,
Emperor of Greece, and assumed the arms and name of his wife's family.
Their descendants, besides being Counts of Ventimiglia, became Seigniors
of Mentone, Castellare, Gorbio, Peille, Tende, and Briga, Roccabruna,
and what is now L'Annunziata. They also had a chateau at Nice."
"Let us go back!" said Janet.
"To Nice?" I asked, smiling.
But Verney appeased her with an offering--nothing less than a sketch he
had made. "The Lascaris," he said, as if introducing them. And there
they were, indeed, a group of knights on horseback, dressed in velvet
doublets and lace ruffles, with long white plumes, followed by a train
of pages and squires with armor and led-horses. All had Greek profiles:
in truth, they were but various views of the Apollo Belvedere. This
splendid party was crossing the drawbridge of a castle, and, from a
latticed casement above, two beautiful and equally Greek ladies, attired
in ermine, with long veils and golden crowns, waved their scarfs in
token of adieu.
"Charming!" said Janet, much pleased. (And in truth it was, if fanciful,
a very pretty sketch.) "But who are those ladies above?"
"I suppose they had wives and sisters, did they not?" said Verney.
"I suppose they did--of _some_ sort," said Janet, disparagingly.
But Verney now produced a second sketch; "another study of the same
subject," he called it. This was a picture of the same number of men,
clad in clumsy armor, with rough, coarse faces, attacking a pass and
compelling two miserable frightened peasants with loaded mules to yield
up what they had, while, from a rude tower above, like our mediaeval T.
G., two or three swarthy women with children were watching the scene.
The wrappings of the two sketches being now removed, we saw that one was
labelled, "The Lascaris--her Idea of them;" and the other, "The
Lascaris--as they were."
We all laughed. But I think Janet was not quite pleased. After the next
change Verney found himself, by some mysterious chance, left to occupy
the seat beside Miss Elaine, while Baker had his former place.
The Nervia, a clear rapid little snow-formed river, ran briskly down
over its pebbles towards the sea. Our road followed the western bank,
and before long brought us to Campo Rosso, a little village with a
picturesque belfry, a church whose facade was decorated with old
frescos, two marble sirens spouting water, and numberless "bits" in the
way of vistas through narrow arched passages and crooked streets, which
are the delight of artists. But Campo Rosso was not our destination, and
entering the carriage again, we went onward through an olive wood whose
broad terraces extended above, below, and on all sides as far as eye
could reach. When we had stopped wondering over its endlessness, and had
grown accustomed to the gray light, suddenly we came out under the open
sky again, with Dolce Acqua before us, its castle above, its church
tower below, and, far beyond, our first view of snow-capped peaks rising
high and silvery against the deep blue sky. Inness and Baker threw up
their hats and saluted the snow with an American hurrah. "What with
those white peaks and this Italian sky, I feel like the Merry Swiss Boy
and the Marble Faun rolled into one," said Baker.
We drove up to the Locanda Desiderio, or "Desired Inn," as Inness
translated it. It was now noon, and in the brick-floored apartment below
a number of peasants were eating sour bread and drinking wine. But the
host, a handsome young Italian, hastened to show us an upper chamber,
where, with the warm sunshine flooding through the open windows across
the bare floor, we spread our luncheon on a table covered with coarse
but snowy homespun, and decked with remarkable plates in brilliant hues
and still more brilliant designs. The luncheon was accompanied by
several bottles of "the good little white wine" of the neighborhood--an
accompaniment we had learned to appreciate.
Upon the chimney-piece of a room adjoining ours, whose door stood open,
there was an old brass lamp. In shape it was not unlike a high
candlestick crowned with an oval reservoir for oil, which had three
little curving tubes for wicks, and an upright handle above ending in a
ring; it was about a foot and a half high, and from it hung three brass
chains holding a brass lamp-scissors and little brass extinguishers.
Mrs. Clary, Mrs. Trescott, Miss Graves, Miss Elaine, and myself all
admired this lamp as we strolled about the rooms after luncheon before
starting for the castle. It happened that Janet was not there; she had
gone, by an unusual chance, with Lloyd, to look at some cinque-cento
frescos in an old church somewhere, and was, I have no doubt, deeply
interested in them. When she returned she too spied the old lamp, and
admired it. "I wish I had it for my own room at home," she exclaimed. "I
feel sure it is Aladdin's."
[Illustration: DOLCE ACQUA]
"Come, come, Janet," called Mrs. Trescott from below. "The castle
waits."
"It has waited some time already," said Inness--"a matter of six or
seven centuries, I believe."
"And looks as though it would wait six or seven more," I said, as we
stood on the arched bridge admiring the massive walls above.
"It has withstood numerous attacks," said the Professor. "Genoese armies
came up this valley more than once to take it, and went back
unsuccessful."
"To me it is more especially distinguished by _not_ having been a home
of the Lascaris," said Baker.
"To whom, then, did it belong?" said Janet, contemptuously.
We all, in a chorus, answered grandly, "To the Dorias!" (We were so glad
to have reached a name we knew.)
The castle crowned the summit of a crag, ruined but imposing; in shape a
parallelogram, it had in front square towers, five stories in height,
pierced with round-arched windows. It was the finest as well as largest
ruin we lately landed Americans had seen, and we went hither and thither
with much animation, telling each other all we knew, and much that we
did not know, about ruined towers, square towers, drawbridges, moats,
donjon keeps, and the like; while Miss Elaine, who had placed herself
beside Verney on the knoll where he was sketching, looked on in a kindly
patronizing way, as much as to say: "Enjoy yourselves, primitive
children of the New World. We of England are familiar with ruins."
Margaret and Lloyd found a seat in one of the ruined windows of the
south tower; I stood beside them for a few moments looking at the view.
On the north the narrow valley curved and went onward, while over its
dark near green rose the glittering snowy peaks so far away. In the
south, the blue of the Mediterranean stretched across the mouth of the
valley, whose sides were bold and high; the little river gleamed out in
spots of silver here and there, and the white belfry of Campo Rosso rose
picturesquely against the dark olive forest. Directly under us were the
roofs of the village, and the old stone bridge of one high arch. "Do you
notice that many of these roofs are flat, with benches, and pots of
flowers?" said Lloyd. "You do not see that in Mentone. It is thoroughly
Italian."
Janet, Mrs. Trescott, Inness, Baker, and the Professor were up on the
highest point of the crag, where the Professor was giving a succinct
account of the Guelphs and Ghibellines. His words floated down to us,
but to which of those celebrated and eternally quarrelling factions
these Dorias belong I regret to say I cannot now remember. But it was
evident that he was talking eloquently, and Inness, who was quite
distanced, by way of diversion threw pebbles at the north tower.
We came down from the castle after a while, and strolled through the
village streets--all of us save Margaret and Lloyd, who remained sitting
in their window. Mrs. Trescott, seeing a vaulted entrance, stopped to
examine it, and the broad doors being partly open, she peeped within. As
there was more vaulting and no one to forbid, she stepped into the old
hall, and we all followed her. We were looking at the massive, finely
proportioned stairway, when a little girl appeared above gazing down
curiously. She was a pretty child of seven or eight, and held some
little thumbed school-books under her arm.
"Is this a school?" asked Verney, in Italian.
She nodded shyly, and ran away, but soon returned accompanied by a
Sister, or nun, who, with a mixture of politeness and timidity, asked if
we wished to see their schools. Of course we wished to see everything,
and going up the broad stairway, we were ushered into an unexpected and
remarkable apartment.
"We came to see an infant school, and we find a row of noblemen," said
Baker. "They must be all the Dorias upon their native heath!"
The "heath" was the wall, upon which, in black frames, were ranged
forty-two portraits in a long procession going around three sides of the
great room, which must have been fifty feet in length. At the head of
the apartment was a picture seven feet square, representing a
full-blooming lady in a long-bodied white satin dress, with an
extraordinary structure of plumes and pearls on her head, accompanied by
a stately little heir in a pink satin court suit, and several younger
children. One grim, dark old man in red, farther down the hall, was
"Roberto: Seigneur Dolce Acqua. Anno 1270." A dame in yellow brocade,
with hoop, ruff, and jewels, and a little curly dog under her arm, was
"Brigida: Domina Dolce Acqua. 1290."
"So they carried dogs in that way then as well as now," observed Janet.
The Mother Superior now came in. She informed us that this was the
chateau of the Dorias, built after their castle was destroyed, and
occupied by descendants of the family until a comparatively recent
period. Its plain exterior, extending across one end of the little
square, we had not especially distinguished from the other buildings
which joined it, forming the usual continuous wall of the Riviera towns.
The chateau was now a convent and school. There were benches across one
side of the large apartment where the village children were already
assembled under the black-framed portraits, but there was not much
studying that day, I think, save a study of strangers.
"Here is the real treasure," said Verney.
It was a chimney-piece of stone, extending across one end of the room,
richly carved with various devices in relief, figures, and ornaments,
and a row of heads on shields across the front, now the profile of an
old bearded man looking out, and now that of a youth in armor. It was
fifteen feet high, and a remarkably fine piece of work.
"Quite thrown away here," said Miss Graves.
"Oh, I don't know; the portraits can see it," replied Janet.
The Mother Superior conducted us all over the chateau, reserving only
the corridor where were her own and the Sisters' apartments. The
dignified stone stairway with its broad stone steps extended unchanged
to the top of the house.
"In the matter of stairways," I said, "I must acknowledge that our New
World ideas are deficient. We have spacious rooms, broad windows, high
ceilings, but such a stairway as this is beyond us."
The empty sunny rooms above were gayly painted in fresco. At one end of
the house a door opened into a little latticed balcony, into which we
stepped, finding ourselves in an adjoining church, high up on the wall
at one side of the altar. Here the Sisters came to pray, and as we
departed, one of them glided in and knelt down in the dusky corner.
"Perhaps she is going to pray for us," said Inness.
"I am sure we need it," replied Janet, seriously.
In the garret was a Sedan-chair, once elaborately gilded.
"I suppose they went down to Ventimiglia in that," said Baker--"those
fine old dames below."
From one of the rooms on the second floor opened a little cell or
closet, part of whose flooring had been removed, showing a hollow space
beneath following the massive exterior wall.
[Illustration: PIFFERARI]
"Here," said the Mother Superior, "the papers of the family were
concealed at the approach of the first Napoleon, and not taken out for a
number of years. The flooring has never been replaced."
The Mother Superior spoke only Italian, which Verney translated, much to
the envy of the younger men. The Professor was not with us, for as soon
as he learned that the place was "papist" he departed, although Inness
suggested that the street was papist also, and likewise the very air
must be redolent of Rome. But the Professor was an example of "coelum,
non animum, mutant, qui trans mare currunt," and quite determined to be
as Protestant in Italy as he was in Connecticut. He would not desert his
colors because under a foreign sky, as so many Americans desert them.
The Mother now conducted us to a little square parlor, with south
windows opening upon a balcony full of pots of flowers; the walls and
ceiling of this little room were glowing with color--paintings in fresco
more suited to the Dorias, I fancy, than to the "Sisters of the Snow,"
for this was the poetical name of the little black-robed band. In this
worldly little room we found wine waiting for us, and grapes which were
almost raisins: we had never seen them in transition before. The wine
was excellent, and Mrs. Trescott partook with much graciousness. After
partaking, she employed Verney in translating to the Mother a number of
her own characteristic sentences. But Verney must have altered them
somewhat en route, for I hardly think the Mother would have remained so
calmly placid if she had comprehended that "this whole scene--the
grapes, the wine, and the frescos"--reminded Mrs. Trescott of
"Cleopatra, and of Sardanapalus and his golden flagons." Presently two
of the Sisters entered with coffee which they had prepared for us; after
serving it, they retired to a corner, where they stood gently regarding
us. Then another entered, and then another, unobtrusively taking their
places beside the others. It was interesting to notice the simplicity of
their mild gaze; although brown and middle-aged, their expression was
like that of little children. When they learned that some of us were
from America they were much impressed, and looked at each other
silently.
"I suppose it does not seem to them but a little while since Columbus
discovered us," said Baker.
At last it was time for us to go: we bade the little group farewell, and
left some coins "for their poor."
"Though we may not meet on earth, we shall see you all again in heaven,"
said the Mother, and all the Sisters bowed assent. They accompanied us
down to the outer door, and waved their hands in adieu as we crossed the
little square. When, at the other side, we turned to look back, we saw
their black skirts retiring up the stairway to their little school.
"Farewell, Sisters of the Snow," said Janet. "May we all so live as to
keep that rendezvous you have given us!"
The carriages were now ordered, and Margaret and Lloyd summoned from the
castle tower. We were standing at the door of the Desired Inn,
collecting our baskets and wraps, when the Professor appeared with a
long narrow parcel in his hand. This he stowed away carefully in one of
the carriages, changing its position several times, as if anxious it
should be carried safely. While he was thus engaged in his absorbed,
near-sighted way, Inness came down the stone stairs from the upper
chamber, and going across to Janet, who was leaning on the parapet
looking at the river, he was on the point of presenting something to
her, when his little speech was stopped by the appearance of Baker
coming around the corner from the front of the house, with a parcel
exactly like his own.
[Illustration: MONACO--THE PALACE AND PORT]
"Two!" cried Inness, bursting into a peal of laughter; and then we
saw, as he tore off the paper, that he had the old brass lamp which
Janet had admired. Meanwhile Baker had another, the Desired Inn having
been evidently equal to the occasion, and to driving a good bargain. Our
laughter aroused the Professor, who turned and gazed at our group from
the step of the carriage. But having no idea of losing the credit of his
unusual gallantry simply because some one else had had the same thought,
he now extracted his own parcel and silently extended it.
"A third!" cried Inness. And then we all gave way again.
"I am so much obliged to you," said Janet, sweetly, when there was a
pause, "but I am sorry you took the trouble. Because--because Mr. Verney
has already kindly given me one, which is packed in one of the baskets."
At this we laughed again, more irresistibly than before--all, I mean,
save Miss Elaine, who merely said, in the most unamused voice, "How
_very_ amusing!" As we had all admired the ancient lamp (although no one
thought of offering it to _us_), the superfluous gifts easily found
places among us, and were not the less thankfully received because
obtained in that roundabout way.
We now left the "Sweet Waters" behind us, and went down the valley
towards the sea.
"There is another town as picturesque as Dolce Acqua some miles farther
up the valley," said Verney. "I have a sketch of it. It is called
Pigna."
"Oh, let us go there!" said Janet.
"We cannot, my daughter, spend the entire remainder of our earthly
existence among the Maritime Alps," said Mrs. Trescott.
Inness had the place beside Janet all the way home.
On the Cornice, a few miles from Mentone, we came upon a boy and girl
sitting by the road-side; they had a flageolet and a sort of bagpipe,
and wore the costume of Italian peasants, their foot-coverings being the
complicated bands and strings which are, in American eyes (the strings
transmuted into ribbons), indelibly associated with bandits. "They are
pifferari," said Verney; and we stopped the carriages and asked them to
play for us. The boy played on his flageolet, and the girl sang. As she
stood beside us in the dust, her brown hands clasped before her, her
great dark eyes never once stopped gazing at Janet, who, clad that day
in a soft cream-white walking costume, with gloves, round hat, and plume
of the same tint, looked not unlike a lily on its stem. The Italian girl
was of nearly the same age in years, and of fully the same age in
womanhood, and it seemed as if she could not remove her fascinated gaze
from the fair white stranger. Inness and Verney both tried to attract
her attention; but the boy gathered up the coins they dropped, and the
girl gazed on. As the Professor was tired, and did not care for music,
we drove onward; but, as far as we could see, the Italian girl still
stood in the centre of the road, gazing after the carriages.
"What do you suppose is in her mind?" I said. "Envy?"
"Hardly," said Verney. "To her, probably, Miss Trescott is like a being
from another world--a saint or Madonna."
"Ah, Mr. Verney, what exaggerated comparisons!" said Miss Elaine, in
soft reproach. "Besides, it is irreligious, and you _promised_ me you
would not be irreligious."
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE PALACE, MONACO]
Verney looked somewhat aghast at this revelation, of course overheard by
Mrs. Clary and myself. It was rather hard upon him to have his misdeeds
brought up in this way--the little sentimental speeches he had made
to Miss Elaine in the remote past--i.e., before Janet arrived. But he
was obliged to bear it.
* * * * *
"I suppose," said Inness, one morning, "that you are not all going away
from Mentone without even _seeing_ Mon--Monaco?"
"It can be _seen_ from Turbia," answered the Professor, grimly. "And
that view is near enough."
Inness made a grimace, and the subject was dropped. But it ended in our
seeing Turbia from Monaco, and not Monaco from Turbia.
"There is no use in fighting against it," said Mrs. Clary, shrugging her
shoulders. "You will have to go once. Every one does. There is a fate
that drives you."
"And the joke is," said Baker, in high glee, "that the Professor is
going too. It seems that the view from Turbia was not near enough for
him, after all."
"I am not surprised," said Mrs. Clary. "I thought he would go: they all
do. I have seen English deans, Swiss pastors, and American Presbyterian
ministers looking on in the gambling-rooms, under the principle, I
suppose, of knowing something of the evil they oppose. They do not go
but once; but that once they are very apt to allow themselves."
The views along the Cornice west of Mentone are very beautiful. As we
came in sight of Monaco, lying below in the blue sea, we caught its
alleged resemblance to a vessel at anchor.
"Monaco, or Portus Herculis Monoeci, was well known to the ancients,"
said the Professor. "Its name appears in Virgil, Tacitus, Pliny, Strabo,
and other classical writers. Before the invention of gunpowder its
situation made it impregnable. It was one of the places of refuge in the
long struggle between the Guelphs and Ghibellines" (we were rather
discouraged by the appearance of these names so early in the day), "and
it is mentioned by an Italian historian as having become in the
fourteenth century a 'home for criminals' and a 'gathering-place for
pirates'--terms equally applicable at the present day." The Professor's
voice was very sonorous.
Inness, the Professor, Janet, and myself were in a carriage together. As
Mrs. Clary and Miss Graves did not accompany us that day, we had two
carriages and a phaeton, the latter occupied by Lloyd and Verney.
"As to Monaco history," remarked Inness, carelessly, when the Professor
ceased, "I happen to remember a few items. The Grimaldis came next to
Hercules, and have had possession here since A.D. 980. Marshal
Boucicault, who was extremely devout, and never missed hearing two
masses a day, besieged the place and took it before Columbus and the
other Boucicault discovered America. In the reign of Louis the
Fourteenth a Prince of Monaco was sent as ambassador to Rome, and
entered that city with horses shod in silver, the shoes held by one nail
only, so that they might drop the sooner. Another Prince of Monaco went
against the Turks with his galleys, and brought back to this shore the
inestimable gift of the prickly-pear, for which we all bless his memory
whenever we brush against its cheerful thorns. _Three_ Princes of Monaco
were murdered in their own palace, which of course was much more
home-like than being murdered elsewhere. The Duke of York died there
also: not murdered, I believe, although there is a ghost in the story.
The principality is now three miles long, and the present prince retains
authority under the jurisdiction of France. To preserve this authority
he maintains a strictly disciplined standing army (they never sit down)
of ten able-bodied men."
These sentences were rolled out by Inness with such rapidity that I was
quite bewildered; as for the Professor, he was hopelessly stranded
half-way down the list, and never came any farther.
Passing Monte Carlo, we drove over to the palace.
"Certainly there is no town on the Riviera so beautifully situated as
Monaco," I said, as the road swept around the little port and ascended
the opposite slope. "The high rock on which it stands, jutting out
boldly into the sea, gives it all the isolation of an island, and yet
protects by its peninsula this clear deep little harbor within."
The old town of Monaco proper is on the top of this rocky presqu'ile,
three hundred feet above the sea, and west of Monte Carlo, the suburb of
Condamine, and the chapel of St. Devote. Leaving the carriages, we
entered the portal of the palace, conducted by a tenth of the standing
army.
"My first living and roofed palace," said Janet, as we ascended the
broad flight of marble steps leading to the "Court of Honor," which was
glowing with recently renewed frescos. A solemn man in black received
us, and conducted us with much dignity through thirteen broad, long
rooms, with ceilings thirty feet high--a procession of stately
apartments which left upon our minds a blurred general impression of
gilded vases, crimson curtains, slippery floors, ormolu clocks, wreaths
of painted roses, fat Cupids, and uninhabitableness. The only trace of
home life in all the shining vista was a little picture of the present
Prince, taken when he was a baby, a life-like, chubby little fellow,
smiling unconcernedly out on all this cold splendor. It was amusing to
see how we women gathered around this little face, with a sort of
involuntary comfort.
In the Salle Grimaldi there was a vast chimney-piece of one block of
marble covered with carved devices.
In the room where the Duke of York died there was a broad bed on a
platform, curtained and canopied with heavy damask, and surrounded by a
gilded railing. We stood looking at this structure in silence.
"It is very impressive," murmured Mrs. Trescott at last. Then, with a
long reminiscent sigh, as if she had been present and chief mourner on
the occasion, she added: "There is nothing more inscrutable than the
feet of the flying hours: they are winged!--winged!"
[Illustration: THE SALLE GRIMALDI, IN THE PALACE, MONACO]
"On the whole," said Janet, as we went down the marble steps towards
the army--"on the whole, taking it as a _palace_, I am disappointed."
"What did you expect?" said Verney.
"Oh, all the age of chivalry," she answered, smiling.
"The so-called age of chivalry--" began the Professor; but he never
finished; because, by some unexpected adjustment of places, he found
himself in the phaeton with Baker, and that adventurous youth drove him
over to Monte Carlo at such a speed that he could only close his eyes
and hold on.
The Casino of Monte Carlo is now the most important part of the
principality of Monaco; instead of being subordinate to the palace, the
latter has become but an appendage to the modern splendor across the
bay. Monte Carlo occupies a site as beautiful as any in the world. In
front the blue sea laves its lovely garden; on the east the soft
coast-line of Italy stretches away in the distance; on the west is the
bold curving rock of Monaco, with its castle and port, and the great
cliff of the Dog's Head. Behind rises the near mountain high above; and
on its top, outlined against the sky, stands the old tower of Turbia in
its lonely ruined majesty, looking towards Rome.
"That tower is nineteen hundred feet above the sea," said the Professor.
"It was built by the Romans, on the boundary between Liguria and Gaul,
to commemorate a victory gained by Augustus Caesar over the Ligurians. It
was called Tropaeum Augusti, from which it has degenerated into Turbia.
Fragments of the inscription it once bore have been found on stones
built into the houses of the present village. The inscription itself is,
fortunately, fully preserved in Pliny, as follows: 'To Caesar, son of the
divine Caesar Augustus, Emperor for the fourteenth time, in the
seventeenth year of his reign, the Senate and the Roman people have
decreed this monument, in token that under his orders and auspices all
the Alpine races have been subdued by Roman arms. Names of the
vanquished:' and here follow the names of forty-five Alpine races."
At first we thought that the Professor was going to repeat them all; but
although no doubt he knew them, he abstained.
"The village behind the tower--we cannot see it from here--seems to be
principally built of fragments of the old Roman stone-work," said Lloyd.
"I have been up there several times."
"Then we do not see the Trophy as it was?" I said.
"No; it is but a ruin, although it looks imposing from here. It was used
as a fortress during the Middle Ages, and partially destroyed by the
French at the beginning of the last century."
"It must have been majestic indeed, since, after all its dismemberment,
it still remains so majestic now," said Margaret.
We were standing on the steps of the Casino during this conversation; I
think we all rather made ourselves stand there, and talk about Turbia
and the Middle Ages, because the evil and temptation we had come to see
were so near us, and we knew that they were. We all had a sentence ready
which we delivered impartially and carelessly; but none the less we knew
that we were going in, and that nothing would induce us to remain
without.
[Illustration: THE RIDE TO SANT' AGNESE]
From a spacious, richly decorated entrance-hall, the gambling-rooms
opened by noiseless swinging doors. Entering, we saw the tables
surrounded by a close circle of seated players, with a second circle
standing behind, playing over their shoulders, and sometimes even a
third behind these. Although so many persons were present, it was very
still, the only sounds being the chink, chink, of the gold and silver
coins, and the dull, mechanical voices of the officials announcing
the winning numbers. There were tables for both roulette and trente et
quarante, the playing beginning each day at eleven in the morning and
continuing without intermission until eleven at night. Everywhere was
lavished the luxury of flowers, paintings, marbles, and the costliest
decoration of all kinds; beyond, in a superb hall, the finest orchestra
on the Continent was playing the divine music of Beethoven; outside, one
of the loveliest gardens in the world offered itself to those who wished
to stroll awhile. And all of this was given freely, without restriction
and without price, upon a site and under a sky as beautiful as earth can
produce. But one sober look at the faces of the steady players around
those tables betrayed, under all this luxury and beauty, the real horror
of the place; for men and women, young and old alike, had the gambler's
strange fever in the expression of the eye, all the more intense
because, in almost every case, so governed, so stonily repressed, so
deadly cold! After a half-hour of observation, we left the rooms, and I
was glad to breathe the outside air once more. The place had so struck
to my heart, with its intensity, its richness, its stillness, and its
terror, that I had not been able even to smile at the Professor's
demeanor; he had signified his disapprobation (while looking at
everything quite closely, however) by buttoning his coat up to the chin
and keeping his hat on. I almost expected to see him open his umbrella.
"To me, they seemed all mad," I said, with a shudder, looking up at the
calm mountains with a sense of relief.
"It is a species of madness," said Verney. Miss Elaine was with him; she
had taken his arm while in the gambling-room; she said she felt "so
timid." Margaret and Lloyd meanwhile had only looked on for a moment or
two, and had then disappeared; we learned afterwards that they had gone
to the concert-room, where music beautiful enough for paradise was
filling the perfumed air.
"For those who care nothing for gambling, that music is one of the
baits," said Lloyd. "When you really love music, it is very hard to keep
away from it; and here, where there is no other music to compete with
it, it is offered to you in its divinest perfection, at an agreeable
distance from Nice and Mentone, along one of the most beautiful
driveways in the world, with a Parisian hotel at its best to give you,
besides, what other refreshment you need. Hundreds of persons come here
sincerely 'only to hear the music.' But few go away without 'one look'
at the gambling tables; and it is upon that 'one look' that the
proprietors of the Casino, knowing human nature, quietly and securely
rely."
The Professor, having seen it all, had no words to express his feeling,
but walked across to call the carriages with the air of a man who shook
off perdition from every finger. And yet I felt sure, from what I knew
of him, that he had appreciated the attractions of the place less than
any one of us--had not, in fact, been reached by them at all. Those who
do not feel the allurements of a temptation are not tempted. Not a grain
in the Professor's composition responded to the invitation of the siren
Chance; they were not allurements to him; they were but the fantastic
phantasmagoria of a dream. The lovely garden he appreciated only
botanically; the view he could not see; abstemious by nature, he cared
nothing for the choice rarities of the hotel; while the music, the
heavenly music, was to him no more than the housewife's clatter of tin
pans. Yet I might have explained this to him all the way home, he would
never have comprehended it, but would have gone on thinking that it was
simply, on his part, superior virtue and self-control.
But I had no opportunity to explain, since I was not in the carriage
with him, but with Janet, Inness, and Baker. Margaret and Lloyd drove
homewards together in the phaeton; and as they did not reach the hotel
until dusk--long after our own arrival--I asked Margaret where they had
been.
"We stopped at the cemetery to watch the sunset beside my statue, aunt."
"Why do you care so much for that marble figure?"
"I do not think she is quite marble," answered Margaret, smiling. "When
I look at her, after a while she becomes, in a certain sense,
responsive. To me she is like a dear friend."
Another week passed, and another. And now the blossoms of the
fruit-trees--a cloud of pink and snowy white--were gone, and the winter
loiterers on the sunny shore began to talk of home; or, if they were
travellers who had but stopped awhile on the way to Italy, they knew now
that the winds of the Apennines no longer chilled the beautiful streets
of Florence, and that all the lilies were out.
"Why could it not go on and on forever? Why must there always come that
last good-bye?" quoted Mrs. Clary.
"Because life is so sad," said Margaret.
"But I like to look forward," said Janet.
"We shall meet again," said Lloyd.
"The world," I remarked, sagely, "is composed of three classes of
persons--those who live in the present, those who live in the past, and
those who live in the future. The first class is the wisest."
[Illustration: VIEW FROM SANT' AGNESE]
Our last excursion was to Sant' Agnese. This little mountain village was
the highest point we attained on our donkeys, being two thousand two
hundred feet above the sea. Its one rugged little street, cut in the
side of the cliff, had an ancient weather-beaten little church at one
end and a lonely chapel at the other, with the village green in the
centre--a "green" which was but a smooth rock amphitheatre, with a
parapet protecting it from the precipice below. From this "green" there
was a grand view of the mountains, with the sharp point of the Aiguille
towering above them all. It was a village fete day, and we met the
little procession at the church door. First came the priests and
choir-boys, chanting; then the village girls, dressed in white, and
bearing upon a little platform an image of Saint Agnes; then youths with
streamers of colored ribbons on their arms; and, last, all the
villagers, two and two, dressed in their best, and carrying bunches of
flowers. Through the winding rocky street they marched, singing as they
went. When they arrived at the lonely chapel, Saint Agnes was borne in,
and prayers were offered, in which the village people joined, kneeling
on the ground outside, since there was not place for them within. Then
forth came Saint Agnes again, a hymn was started, in which all took
part, the little church bell pealed, and an old man touched off small
heaps of gunpowder placed at equal distances along the parapet, their
nearest approach, I suppose, to cannon. When the saint had reached her
shrine again in safety, her journeyings over until the next year, the
procession dissolved, and feasting began, the simple feasting of Italy,
in which we joined so far as to partake of a lunch in the little inn,
which had a green bush as a sign over the narrow door--the "wine of the
country" proving very good, however, in spite of the old proverb. Then,
refreshed, we climbed up the steep path leading to the peak where was
perched the ruin of the old castle which is so conspicuous from Mentone,
high in the air. This castle, the so-called "Saracen stronghold" of
Sant' Agnese, pronounced, as Baker said, "either Frenchy to rhyme with
lace, or Italianly to rhyme with lazy," seemed to me higher up in the
sky than I had ever expected to be in the flesh.
"As our interesting friend" (she meant the Professor) "is not here,"
said Mrs. Trescott, sinking in a breathless condition upon a Saracen
block, "there is no one to tell us its history."
"There is no history," said Verney, "or, rather, no one knows it; and to
me that is its chief attraction. There are, of course, legends in
stacks, but nothing authentic. The Saracens undoubtedly occupied it for
a time, and kept the whole coast below cowering under their cruel sway.
But it is hardly probable that they built it; they did not build so far
inland; they preferred the shore."
Our specified object, of course, in climbing that breathless path was
"the view."
Now there are various ways of seeing views. I have known "views" which
required long gazing at points where there was nothing earthly to be
seen: in such cases there was probably something heavenly. Other "views"
reveal themselves only to two persons at a time; if a third appears,
immediately there is nothing to be seen. As to our own manner of looking
at the Sant' Agnese view, I will mention that Mrs. Trescott looked at it
from a snug corner, on a soft shawl, with her eyes closed. Mrs. Clary
looked at it retrospectively, as it were; she began phrases like these:
"When I was here three years ago--" pause, sigh, full stop. "Once I was
here at sunset--" ditto. Janet, on a remote rock, looked at it, I think,
amid a little tragedy from Inness, interrupted and made more tragic by
the incursions of Baker, who would not be frowned away. Verney looked at
it from a high niche in which he had incautiously seated himself for a
moment, and now remained imprisoned, because Miss Elaine had placed
herself across the entrance so that he could not emerge without asking
her to rise; from this niche, like the tenor of _Trovatore_ in his
tower, he occasionally sent across a Miserere to Janet in the distance,
like this: "Do you ob--serve, Miss Trescott, the col--ors of the
lem--ons below?" And Janet would gesture an assent. Lloyd and Margaret
had found a place on a little projecting plateau, where, with the warm
sunshine flooding over them, they sat contentedly talking. Meanwhile
having neither sleep, retrospect, tragedy, Miserere, nor conversation
with which to entertain myself, I really looked at the view, and
probably was the only person who did. I had time enough for it. We
remained there nearly two hours.
[Illustration: FETE, VILLAGE OF SANT' AGNESE]
At last our donkey-driver came up to tell us that dancing was going on
below, and that there was not much time if we wished to see it, since
the long homeward journey still lay before us. So we elders began to
call: "Janet!" "Janet!" "Margaret!" "Mr. Verney!" And presently from the
rock, the niche, and the plateau they came slowly in, Janet flushed, and
Inness very pale, Baker like a thunder-cloud, Miss Elaine smiling and
conscious, Verney annoyed, Lloyd just as usual, and Margaret with a
younger look in her face than I had seen there for months. In the little
rock amphitheatre below we found the villagers merrily dancing; and some
strangers like ourselves, who had come out from Mentone later, were
amusing themselves by dancing also. Janet joined the circle with Baker,
and Inness, after leaning on the parapet awhile, with his back to the
dancers, gazing into space, disappeared. I think he went homeward by
another path across the mountains. Miss Elaine admired "so much" Miss
Trescott's courage in dancing before "so many strangers." She (Miss
Elaine) was far "too shy to attempt it." But I did not notice that she
was violently urged to the attempt. In the meantime Lloyd was looking at
an English girl belonging to the other party, who was dancing near us.
She was tall and shapely, with the beautiful English rose-pink
complexion, and abundant light hair which had the glint of bronze where
the sun shone across it. After a while, as the others came near, he
recognized in one of them an acquaintance, who turned out to be the
brother of the young lady who had been dancing.
When, as we returned, we reached the main street of Mentone, Margaret
and I, who were behind, stopped a moment and looked back. The far peak
of Sant' Agnese was flushed with rose-light, although where we were it
was already night.
"It does not seem as if we could have been there," I said. "It looks so
far away."
"Yes, we have been there," said Margaret; "we _have_ been there. But
already it _is_ far, far away."
[Illustration: VESTIGES OF ROMAN MONUMENTS]
Mrs. Trescott found a letter awaiting her which made her decide to go
forward to Florence on the following day. A great deal can happen in a
short time when there is the pressure of a near departure. That evening
Janet, who was dressed in white, had a great bunch of the sweet wild
narcissus at her belt. I do not know anything certainly, of course, but
I _did_ meet Inness in the hall, about eleven o'clock, with a radiant,
happy face, and some of that same narcissus in his button-hole. He went
with the Trescott's to Florence the next day. And Baker, with disgust,
went to Nice. Soon afterwards Verney said that he felt that he required
"a closer acquaintance with early art," and departed without saying
exactly whither. "Etruscan art, I believe, is considered extremely
'early,'" remarked Mrs. Clary.
The Professor was to join the Trescotts later; at present he was much
engaged with some cinerary urns. Miss Elaine, who was to remain a month
longer with her mother, remarked to me, on one of the last mornings,
that "really, for his age," he was a "very well preserved man."
Margaret and I remained for two weeks after Mrs. Trescott's departure.
We saw Mr. Lloyd now and then; but he was more frequently off with the
English party.
One afternoon I went with Margaret to watch the sunset from her favorite
post beside the statue. She sought the place almost every evening now,
and occasionally I went with her. We had never found any one there at
that hour; but this evening we heard voices, and came upon Lloyd and the
English girl of Sant' Agnese, strolling to and fro.
"I have brought Miss Read to see the view here, Miss Severin," he said;
and then introductions followed, and we stood there together watching
the beautiful tints of sky and sea. The English girl talked in her
English voice with its little rising and falling inflections, so
different from our monotonous American key. Margaret answered
pleasantly, and, indeed, talked more than usual; I was glad to see her
interested.
After a while Lloyd happened to stroll forward where he could see the
face of the statue. Then, suddenly, "Wonderful!" he exclaimed. "Strange
that I never thought of it before! Do come here, please, and see for
yourselves. There is the most extraordinary resemblance between this
statue and Miss Read."
Then, as we all went forward, "Wonderful!" he repeated.
Margaret said not a word. The English girl only laughed. "Surely you
_see_ it?" he said.
"There may be a little something about the mouth--" I began.
But he interrupted me. "Why, it is perfect! The statue is her portrait
in marble. Miss Read, will you not let me place you in the same
position, just for an instant?" And, leading her to a little mound, he
placed her in the required pose; she had thrown off her hat to oblige
him, and now clasped her hands and turned her eyes over the sea towards
the eastern horizon. What was the result?
The only resemblance, as I had said, was about the mouth; for the
beautifully cut lips of the statue turned downward at the corners, and
the curve of Miss Read's sweet baby-like mouth was the same. But that
was all. Above was the woman's face in marble, beautiful, sad, full of
the knowledge and the grief of life; below was the face of a young girl,
lovely, fresh, and bright, and knowing no more of sorrow than a
blush-rose upon its stem.
"Exact!" said Lloyd.
Miss Read laughed, rose, and resumed her straw hat; presently they went
away.
[Illustration: THE STATUE IN THE CEMETERY]
"There was not the slightest resemblance," I said, almost with
indignation.
"People see resemblances differently," answered Margaret. Then, after a
pause, she added, "She is, at least, much more like the statue than I
am."
"Not in the spirit, dear," I said, much touched; for I saw that as she
spoke the rare tears had filled her eyes. But they did not fall;
Margaret had a great deal of self-control; perhaps too much.
Then there was a silence. "Shall we go now, aunt?" she said, after a
time. And we never spoke of the subject again.
"Look, look, Margaret! the palms of Bordighera!" I said, as our train
rushed past. It was our last of Mentone.
CAIRO IN 1890
I
[Illustration: CONTEMPORARY PORTRAIT OF CLEOPATRA
On the wall of the Temple at Denderah.--From a photograph by Sebah,
Cairo.]
"The way to Egypt is long and vexatious"--so Homer sings; and so also
have sung other persons more modern. A chopping sea prevails off Crete,
and whether one leaves Europe at Naples, Brindisi, or Athens, one's
steamer soon reaches that beautiful island, and consumes in passing it
an amount of time which is an ever-fresh surprise. Crete, with its long
coast-line and soaring mountain-tops, appears to fill all that part of
the sea. However, as the island is the half-way point between Europe and
Africa, one can at least feel, after finally leaving it behind, that the
Egyptian coast is not far distant. This coast is as indolent as that of
Crete is aggressive; it does not raise its head. You are there before
you see it or know it; and then, if you like, in something over three
hours more you can be in Cairo.
The Cairo street of the last Paris Exhibition, familiar to many
Americans, was a clever imitation. But imitations of the Orient are
melancholy; you cannot transplant the sky and the light.
The real Cairo has been sacrificed to the Nile. Comparatively few among
travellers in the East see the place under the best conditions; for upon
their arrival they are preoccupied with the magical river voyage which
beckons them southward, with the dahabeeyah or the steamer which is to
carry them; and upon their return from that wonderful journey they are
planning for the more difficult expedition to the Holy Land. It is safe
to say that to many Americans Cairo is only a confused memory of donkeys
and dragomans, mosquitoes and dervishes, and mosques, mosques, mosques!
This hard season probably must be gone through by all. The wise are
those who stay on after it is over, or who return; for the true
impression of a place does not come when the mind is overcrowded and
confused; it does not come when the body is wearied; for the descent of
the vision, serenity of soul is necessary--one might even call it
idleness. It is during those days when one does nothing that the reality
steals noiselessly into one's comprehension, to remain there forever.
But is Cairo worth this? is asked. That depends upon the temperament. If
one must have in his nature somewhere a trace of the poet to love
Venice, so one must be at heart something of a painter to love Cairo.
Her colors are so softly rich, the Saracenic part of her architecture is
so fantastically beautiful, the figures in her streets are so
picturesque, that one who has an eye for such effects seems to himself
to be living in a gallery of paintings without frames, which stretch off
in vistas, melting into each other as they go. If, therefore, one loves
color, if pictures are precious to him, are important, let him go to
Cairo; he will find pleasure awaiting him. Flaubert said that one could
imagine the pyramids, and perhaps the Sphinx, without an actual sight of
them, but that what one could not in the least imagine was the
expression on the face of an Oriental barber as he sits cross-legged
before his door. That is Cairo exactly. You must see her with the actual
eyes, and you must see her without haste. She does not reveal herself to
the Cook tourist nor even to Gaze's, nor to the man who is hurrying off
to Athens on a fixed day which nothing can alter.
THE NEW QUARTER
(One must begin with this, and have it over.) Cairo has a population of
four hundred thousand souls. The new part of the town, called Ismailia,
has been persistently abused by almost all writers, who describe it as
dusty, as shadeless, as dreary, as glaring, as hideous, as blankly and
broadly empty, as adorned with half-built houses which are falling into
ruin--one has read all this before arriving. But what does one find in
the year of grace 1890? Streets shaded by innumerable trees; streets
broad indeed, but which, instead of being dusty, are wet (and over-wet)
with the constant watering; well-kept, bright-faced houses, many of them
having beautiful gardens, which in January are glowing with giant
poinsettas, crimson hibiscus, and purple bougainvillea--flowers which
give place to richer blooms, to an almost over-luxuriance of color and
perfumes, as the early spring comes on. If the streets were paved, it
would be like the outlying quarters of Paris, for most of the houses are
French as regards their architecture. Shadeless? It is nothing but
shade. And the principal drives, too, beyond the town--the Ghezireh
road, the Choubra and Gizeh roads, and the long avenue which leads to
the pyramids--are deeply embowered, the great arms of the trees which
border them meeting and interlacing overhead. Consider the stony streets
of Italian cities (which no one abuses), and then talk of "shadeless
Cairo"!
THE CLIMATE
If one wishes to spend a part of each day in the house, engaged in
reading, writing, or resting; if the comfortable feeling produced by a
brightly burning little fire in the cool of the evening is necessary to
him for his health or his pleasure--then he should not attempt to spend
the entire winter in the city of the Khedive. The mean temperature there
during the cold season--that is, six weeks in January and February--is
said to be 58 deg. Fahrenheit. But this is in the open air; in the houses
the temperature is not more than 54 deg. or 52 deg., and often in the evening
lower. The absence of fires makes all the difficulty; for out-of-doors
the air may be and often is charming; but upon coming in from the bright
sunshine the atmosphere of one's sitting-room and bedroom seems chilly
and prison-like. There are, generally speaking, no chimneys in Cairo,
even in the modern quarter. Each of the hotels has one or two open
grates, but only one or two. Southern countries, however, are banded
together--so it seems to the shivering Northerner--to keep up the
delusion that they have no cold weather; as they have it not, why
provide for it? In Italy in the winter the Italians spread rugs over
their floors, hang tapestries upon their walls, pile cushions
everywhere, and carpet their sofas with long-haired skins; this they
call warmth. But a fireless room, with the thermometer on its walls
standing at 35 deg., is not warm, no matter how many cushions you may put
into it; and one hates to believe, too, that necessary accompaniments
of health are roughened faces and frost-bitten noses, and the extreme
ugliness of hands swollen and red. "Perhaps if one could have in Cairo
an open hearth and three sticks, it would, with all the other pleasures
which one finds here, be too much--would reach wickedness!" was a remark
we heard last winter. A still more forcible exclamation issued from the
lips of a pilgrim from New York one evening in January. Looking round
her sitting-room upon the roses gathered that day in the open air, upon
the fly-brushes and fans and Oriental decorations, this misguided person
moaned, in an almost tearful voice: "Oh, for a blizzard and a _fire_!"
The reasonable traveller, of course, ought to remember that with a
climate which has seven months of debilitating heat, and three and a
half additional months of summer weather, the attention of the natives
is not strongly turned towards devices for warmth. This consideration,
however, does not make the fireless rooms agreeable during the few weeks
that remain.
[Illustration: THE NILE BRIDGE, CAIRO
From a photograph by Sebah, Cairo]
Another surprise is the rain. "In our time it rained in Egypt," writes
Strabo, as though chronicling a miracle. Either the climate has changed,
or Strabo was not a disciple of the realistic school, for in the January
of this truthful record the rain descended in such a deluge in Cairo
that the water came above the knees of the horses, and a ferry-boat was
established for two days in one of the principal streets. Later the rain
descended a second time with almost equal violence, and showers were by
no means infrequent. (It may be mentioned in parenthesis that there was
heavy rain at Luxor, four hundred and fifty miles south of Cairo, on the
19th of February.) One does not object to these rains; they are in
themselves agreeable; one wishes simply to note the impudence of the
widely diffused statement that Egypt is a rainless land. So far nothing
has been said against the winter climate of Cairo; objection has been
made merely to the fireless condition of the houses--a fault which can
be remedied. But now a real enemy must be mentioned--namely, the kamsin.
This is a hot wind from the south, which parches the skin and takes the
life out of one; it fills the air with a thick grayness, which you
cannot call mist, because it is perfectly dry, and through which the sun
goes on steadily shining, with a light so weird that one can think of
nothing but the feelings of the last man, or the opening of the sixth
seal. The regular kamsin season does not begin before May; the
occasional days of it that bring suffering to travellers occur in
February, March, and April. But what are five or six days of kamsin amid
four winter months whose average temperature is 58 deg. Fahrenheit? It is
human nature to detect faults in climates which have been greatly
praised, just as one counts every freckle on a fair face that is
celebrated for its beauty. Give Cairo a few hearth fires, and its winter
climate will seem delightful; although not so perfect as that of
Florida, in our country, because in Florida there are no January
mosquitoes.
MOSQUES
It must be remembered that Cairo is Arabian. "The Nile is Egypt," says a
proverb. The Nile is mythical, Pharaonic, Ptolemaic; but Cairo owes its
existence solely to the Arabian conquerors of the country, who built a
fortress and palace here in A.D. 969.
Very Arabian is still the call to prayer which is chanted by the
muezzins from the minarets of the mosques several times during the day.
We were passing through a crowded quarter near the Mooski one afternoon
in January, when there was wafted across the consciousness a faint,
sweet sound. It was far away, and one heard it half impatiently at
first, unwilling to lift one's attention even for an instant from the
motley scenes nearer at hand. But at length, teased into it by the very
sweetness, we raised our eyes, and then it was seen that it came from a
half-ruined minaret far above us. Round the narrow outer gallery of this
slender tower a man in dark robes was pacing slowly, his arms
outstretched, his face upturned to heaven. Not once did he look below as
he continued his aerial round, his voice giving forth the chant which we
had heard--"Allah akbar; Allah akbar; la Allah ill' Allah. Heyya
alas-salah!" (God is great; God is great; there is no God but God, and
Mohammed is his prophet. Come to prayer.) Again, another day, in the old
Touloun quarter, we heard the sound, but it was much nearer. It came
from a window but little above our heads, the small mosque within the
quadrangle having no minaret. This time I could note the muezzin
himself. As he could not see the sky from where he stood, his eyes were
closed. I have never beheld a more concentrated expression of devotion
than his quiet face expressed; he might have been miles away from the
throng below, instead of three feet, as his voice gave forth the same
strange, sweet chant. The muezzins are often selected from the ranks of
the blind, as the duties of the office are within their powers; but this
singer at the low window had closed his eyes voluntarily. The last time
I saw the muezzin was towards the end of the season, when the spring was
far advanced. Cairo gayety was at its height, the streets were crowded
with Europeans returning from the races, the new quarter was as modern
as Paris. But there are minarets even in the new quarter, or near it;
and on one of the highest of these turrets, outlined against the glow of
the sunset, I saw the slowly pacing figure, with its arms outstretched
over the city--"Allah akbar; Allah akbar; come, come to prayer."
There are over four hundred mosques in Cairo, and many of them are in a
dilapidated condition. Some of these were erected by private means to
perpetuate the name and good deeds of the founder and his family; then,
in the course of time, owing to the extinction or to the poverty of the
descendants, the endowment fund has been absorbed or turned into another
channel, and the ensuing neglect has ended in ruin. When a pious Muslim
of to-day wishes to perform a good work, he builds a new mosque. It
would never occur to him to repair the old one near at hand, which
commemorates the generosity of another man. It must be remembered that
a mosque has no established congregation, whose duty it is to take care
of it. A mosque, in fact, to Muslims has not an exclusively religious
character. It is a place prepared for prayer, with the fountain which is
necessary for the preceding ablutions required by Mohammed, and the
niche towards Mecca which indicates the position which the suppliant
must take; but it is also a place for meditation and repose. The poorest
and most ragged Muslim has the right to enter whenever he pleases; he
can say his prayers, or he can simply rest; he can quench his thirst; he
can eat the food which he has brought with him; if he is tired, he can
sleep. In mosques not often visited by travellers I have seen men
engaged in mending their clothes, and others cooking food with a
portable furnace. In the church-yard of Charlton Kings, England, there
is a tombstone of the last century with an inscription which concludes
as follows: "And his dieing request to his Sons and Daughters was, Never
forsake the Charitys until the Poor had got their Rites." In the Cairo
mosques the poor have their rites--both with the _gh_ and without. The
sacred character of a mosque is, in truth, only made conspicuous when
unbelievers wish to enter. Then the big shuffling slippers are brought
out to cover the shoes of the Christian infidels, so that they may not
touch and defile the mattings reserved for the faithful.
[Illustration: BEFORE THE LITTLE MOSQUE
From a photograph by Sebah, Cairo]
After long neglect, something is being done at last to arrest the ruin
of the more ancient of these temples. A commission has been appointed by
the present government whose duty is the preservation of the monuments
of Arabian art; occasionally, therefore, in a mosque one finds
scaffolding in place and a general dismantlement. One can only hope for
the best--in much the same spirit in which one hopes when one sees the
beautiful old front of St. Mark's, Venice, gradually encroached upon by
the new raw timbers. But in Cairo, at least, the work of repairing goes
on very slowly; three hundred mosques, probably, out of the four hundred
still remain untouched, and many of these are adorned with a delicate
beauty which is unrivalled. I know no quest so enchanting as a search
through the winding lanes of the old quarters for these gems of
Saracenic taste, which no guide-book has as yet chronicled, no dragoman
discovered. The street is so narrow that your donkey fills almost all
the space; passers-by are obliged to flatten themselves against the
walls in response to the Oriental adjurations of your donkey-boy behind:
"Take heed, O maid!" "Your foot, O chief!" Presently you see a
minaret--there is always a minaret somewhere; but it is not always easy
to find the mosque to which it belongs, hidden, perhaps, as it is,
behind other buildings in the crowded labyrinth. At length you observe a
door with a dab or two of the well-known Saracenic honeycomb-work above
it; instantly you dismount, climb the steps, and look in. You are almost
sure to find treasures, either fragments of the pearly Cairo mosaic, or
a wonderful ceiling, or gilded Kufic (old Arabian text) inscriptions and
arabesques, or remains of the ancient colored glass which changes its
tint hour by hour. Best of all, sometimes you find a space open to the
sky, with a fountain in the centre, the whole surrounded by arcades of
marble columns adorned with hanging lamps (or, rather, with the bronze
chains which once carried the lamps), and with suspended ostrich
eggs--the emblems of good-luck. One day, when my donkey was making his
way through a dilapidated region, I came upon a mosque so small that it
seemed hardly more than a base for its exquisite minaret, which towered
to an unusual height above it. Of course I dismounted. The little mosque
was open; but as it was never visited by strangers, it possessed no
slippers, and without coverings of some kind it was impossible that
unsanctified shoes, such as mine, should touch its matted floor; the
bent, ancient guardian glared at me fiercely for the mere suggestion.
One sees sometimes (even in 1890) in the eyes of old men sitting in the
mosques the original spirit of Islam shining still. Once their religion
commanded the sword; they would like to grasp it again, if they could.
It was suggested that the matting might, for a backsheesh, be rolled up
and put away, as the place was small. But the stern old keeper remained
inflexible. Then the offer was made that so many piasters--ten (that is,
fifty cents)--would be given to the blind. Now the blind are sacred in
Cairo; this offer, therefore, was successful; all the matting was
carefully rolled and stacked in a corner, the three or four Muslims
present withdrew to the door, and the unbeliever was allowed to enter.
She found herself in a temple of color which was incredibly rich. The
floor was of delicate marble, and every inch of the walls was covered
with a mosaic of porphyry and jasper, adorned with gilded inscriptions
and bands of Kufic text; the tall pulpit, made of mahogany-colored wood,
was carved from top to bottom in intricate designs, and ornamented with
odd little plaques of fretted bronze; the sacred niche was lined with
alabaster, turquoise, and gleaming mother-of-pearl; the only light came
through the thick glass of the small windows far above, in
downward-falling rays of crimson, violet, and gold. The old mosaic-work
of the Cairo mosques is composed of small plates of marble and of
mother-of-pearl arranged in geometrical designs; the delicacy of the
minute cubes employed, and the intricacy of the patterns, are
marvellous; the color is faint, unless turquoise has been added; but the
glitter of the mother-of-pearl gives the whole an appearance like that
of jewelry. Upon our departure five blind men were found drawn up in a
line at the door. It would not have been difficult to collect fifty.
[Illustration: TOMB-MOSQUE OF KAIT BEY]
Another day, as my donkey was taking me under a stone arch, I saw on one
side a flight of steps which seemed to say "Come!" At the top of the
steps I found a picture. It was a mosque of the early pattern, with a
large square court open to the sky. In the centre of this court was a
well, under a marble dome, and here grew half a dozen palm-trees. Across
the far end extended the sanctuary, which was approached through arcades
of massive pillars painted in dark red bands. The pulpit was so old that
it had lost its beauty; but the entire back wall of this Mecca side
was covered with beautiful tiles of the old Cairo tints (turquoise-blue
and dark blue), in designs of foliage, with here and there an entire
tree. This splendid wall was in itself worth a journey. A few single
tiles had been inserted at random in the great red columns, reminding
one of the majolica plates which tease the eyes of those who care for
such things--set impossibly high as they are--in the campaniles of old
Italian churches along the Pisan coast.
It may be asked, What is the shape of a mosque--its exterior? What is it
like? You are more sure about this shape before you reach the Khedive's
city than you are when you have arrived there; and after you have
visited three or four mosques each day for a week, the clearness of your
original idea, such as it was, has vanished forever. The mosques of
Cairo are so embedded in other structures, so surrounded and pushed and
elbowed by them, that you can see but little of their external form;
sometimes a facade painted in stripes is visible, but often a doorway is
all. One must except the mosque of Sultan Hassan (which, to some of us,
is dangerously like Aristides the Just). This mosque stands by itself,
so that you can, if you please, walk round it. The chief interest of the
walk (for the exterior, save for the deep porch, which can hardly be
called exterior, is not beautiful) lies in the thought that as the walls
were constructed of stones brought from the pyramids, perhaps among
them, with faces turned inward, there may be blocks of that lost outer
coating of the giant tombs--a coating which was covered with
hieroglyphics. Now that hieroglyphics can be read, we may some day learn
the true history of these monuments by pulling down a dozen of the Cairo
mosques. But unless the commission bestirs itself, that task will not be
needed for the edifice of Sultan Hassan; it is coming down, piece by
piece, unaided. The mosques of Cairo are not beautiful as a Greek temple
or an early English cathedral is beautiful; the charm of Saracenic
architecture lies more in decoration than in the management of massive
forms. The genius of the Arabian builders manifested itself in ornament,
in rich effects of color; they had endless caprices, endless fancies,
and expressed them all--as well they might, for all were beautiful. The
same free spirit carved the grotesques of the old churches of France and
Germany. But the Arabians had no love for grotesques; they displayed
their liberty in lovely fantasies. Their one boldness as architects was
the minaret.
It is probably the most graceful tower that has ever been devised. In
Cairo the rich fretwork of its decorations and the soft yellow hue of
the stone of which it is constructed add to this beauty. Invariably
slender, it decreases in size as it springs towards heaven, carrying
lightly with it two or three external galleries, which are supported by
stalactites, and ending in a miniature cupola and crescent. These
stalactites (variously named, also, pendentives, recessed clusters, and
honey-combed work) may be called the distinctive feature of Saracenic
architecture. They were used originally as ornaments to mask the
transition from a square court to the dome. But they soon took flight
from that one service, and now they fill Arabian corners and angles and
support Arabian curves so universally that for many of us the mere
outline of one scribbled on paper brings up the whole pageant of the
crescent-topped domes and towers of the East.
The Cairo mosques are said to show the purest existing forms of
Saracenic architecture. One hopes that this saying is true, for a
dogmatic superlative of this sort is a rock of comfort, and one can
remember it and repeat it. With the best of memories, however, one
cannot intelligently see all these specimens of purity, unless, indeed,
one takes up his residence in Cairo (and it is well known that when one
lives in a place one never pays visits to those lions which other
persons journey thousands of miles to see). Travellers, therefore, very
soon choose a favorite and abide by it, vaunting it above all others, so
that you hear of El Ghouri, with its striking facade and magnificent
ceiling, as "the finest," and of Kalaoon as "the finest," and of Moaiyud
as ditto; not to speak of those who prefer the venerable Touloun and
Amer, and the undiscriminating crowd that is satisfied, and rightly,
with Aristides the Just--that is, the mosque of Sultan Hassan. For
myself, after acknowledging to a weakness for the mosques which are not
in the guide-books, which possess no slippers, I confess that I admire
most the tomb-mosque of Kait Bey. It is outside of Cairo proper, among
those splendid half-ruined structures the so-called tombs of the
Khalifs. It stands by itself, its chiselled dome and minaret, a
lace-work in stone, clearly revealed. It would take pages to describe
the fanciful beauty of every detail, both without and within, and there
must, in any case, come an end of repeating the words "elegance,"
"mosaic," "minaret," "arabesque," "jasper," and "mother-of-pearl." The
chief treasures of this mosque are two blocks of rose granite which bear
the so-called impressions of the feet of Mohammed; the legend is that he
rests here for a moment or two at sunset every Thursday. "How well I
understand this fancy of the prophet!" exclaimed an imaginative visitor.
"How I wish I could do the same!"
THE GIZEH MUSEUM
One of the great events of the winter of 1890 was the opening of the new
Museum of Egyptian Antiquities at Gizeh. This magnificent collection,
which until recently has been ill-housed at Boulak, is now installed in
another suburb, Gizeh, in one of the large summer palaces built by the
former Khedive, Ismail. To reach it one passes through the new quarter
and crosses the handsome Nile bridge. Not only are all these streets
watered, but the pedestrian also can have water if he likes. Large
earthen jars, propped by framework of wood, stand here and there, with
the drinking-bottle, or kulleh, attached; these jars are replenished by
the sakkahs, who carry the much-loved Nile water about the streets for
sale. One passes at regular intervals the light stands, made of split
sticks, upon which is offered for sale, in flat loaves like pancakes,
the Cairo bread. There are also the open-air cook shops--small furnaces,
like a tin pan with legs; spread out on a board before them are saucers
containing mysterious compounds, and the cook is in attendance, wearing
a white apron. These cooks never lack custom; a large majority of the
poorer class in Cairo obtains its hot food, when it obtains it at all,
at these impromptu tables. Before long one is sure to meet a file of
camels. The camel ought to appreciate travellers; there is always a
tourist murmuring "Oh!" whenever one of these supercilious beasts shows
himself near the Ezbekiyeh Gardens. The American, indeed, cannot keep
back the exclamation; perhaps when he was a child he attended (oh, happy
day!) the circus, and watched with ecstasy the "Grande Orientale Rentree
of the Lights of the Harem"--two of these strange steeds, ridden by
dazzling houris in veils of glittering gauze. The camel has remained in
his mind ever since as the attendant of sultanas; though this impression
may have become mixed in later years with the constantly recurring
painting (in a dead-gold frame and red mat) of a camel and an Arab in
the desert, outlined against a sunset sky. In either case, however,
the animal represents something which is as far as possible from an
American street traversed by horse-cars, and when the inhabitant of this
street sees the identical creature passing him, engaged not in making
rentrees or posing against the sunset, but diligently at work carrying
stones and mortar for his living, no wonder he feels that he has reached
a land of dreams.
[Illustration: A SELLER OF WATER-JUGS, CAIRO. From a photograph by
Sebah, Cairo]
Most of us do not lose our admiration for the Orientalness of the camel.
But we learn in time that he has been praised for qualities which he
does not possess. He is industrious, but he continually scolds about his
industry; he may not trouble one with his thirst, but he revenges
himself by his sneer. The smile of a camel is the most disdainful thing
I know. On the other side of the Nile bridge one comes sometimes upon an
acre of these beasts, all kneeling down in the extraordinary way
peculiar to them, with their hind-legs turned up; here they chew as they
rest, and put out their long necks to look at the passers-by. But the
way to appreciate the neck of a camel is to be on a donkey; then, when
the creature comes up behind and lopes past you, his neck seems to be
the highest thing in Cairo--higher than a mosque.
Beyond the bridge the road to Gizeh follows the river. Gizeh itself is
the typical Nile village, with the low, clustered houses built of Nile
mud (which looks like yellow-brown stucco), and beautiful feathery palms
with a minaret or two rising above. The palace stands apart from the
village, and is surrounded by large gardens. Opposite the central
portico is the tomb of Mariette Pasha, the founder of the museum--a high
sarcophagus designed from an antique model. Mariette Pasha (it may be
mentioned here that the title Pasha means General, and that of Bey,
Colonel) was a native of Boulogne. A mummy case in the museum of that
town of schools first attracted his attention towards Egyptian
antiquities, and in 1850 he came to Egypt. Khedive Said authorized him
to found a museum; and Said's successor, Ismail, conferred upon him the
exclusive right to make excavations, placing in his charge all the
antiquities of Egypt. Mariette used these powers with intelligence and
energy, giving the rest of his life to the task--a period of thirty
years. He died in Cairo, at the age of sixty-one, in January, 1882. This
Frenchman made many important discoveries, and he preserved to Egypt her
remaining antiquities; before his time her treasures had been stolen and
bought by all the world. A thought which haunts all travellers in this
strange country is, how many more rich stores must still remain hidden!
The most generally interesting among the recent discoveries was the
finding of the Pharaohs, in 1881. The story has been given to the world
in print, therefore it will be only outlined here. But by far the most
fortunate way is to hear it directly from the lips of the keeper of the
museum, Emil Brugsch Bey himself, his vivid, briefly direct narration
adding the last charm to the striking facts. By the museum authorities
it had been for several years suspected that some one at Luxor (Thebes)
had discovered a hitherto unopened tomb; for funeral statuettes, papyri,
and other objects, all of importance, were offered for sale there, one
by one, and bought by travellers, who, upon their return to Cairo,
displayed the treasures, without comprehending their value. Watch was
kept, and suspicion finally centred upon a family of brothers; these
Arabs at last confessed, and one of them led the way to a place not far
from the temple called Deir-el-Bahari, which all visitors to Thebes will
remember. Here, filled with sand, there was a shaft not unlike a well,
which the man had discovered by chance. When the sand was removed, the
opening of a lateral tunnel was visible below, and this tunnel led into
the heart of the hill, where, in a rude chamber twenty feet high, were
piled thirty or more mummy cases, most of them decorated with the royal
asp. The mummies proved to be those of Sethi the First, the conqueror
who carried his armies as far into Asia as the Orontes; and of Rameses
the Great (called Sesostris by the Greeks), the Pharaoh who oppressed
the Israelites; and of Sethi the Second, the Pharaoh of the Exodus,
together with other sovereigns and members of their famili
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