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 Phœnicians, 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.”
“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 Phœnicians 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 pæan 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.
“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 Cæsar’s fortified camps. The castle here was not so much a castle as a château; 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 “château.” 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.
“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 manœuvring. 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.”
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 mediæval 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 château 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 mediæval 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 façade 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.”
“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 château 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 château 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 château, 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.
“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 “cœlum, 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.
“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.”
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 Monœci, 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!”
“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 Cæsar over the Ligurians. It was called Tropæum 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 Cæsar, son of the divine Cæsar 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.
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.”
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 fête 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.
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.”
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.
“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.