The Fairy Prince's Ring
"Rub the ring, and the Genius will appear."
--_Arabian Nights_.
Down, down a winding and beautiful road we plunged, on leaving the
Grande Chartreuse, while the afternoon sunlight was still golden. The
monastery sank out of our sight as we went, as the moon sinks into the
sea, and was gone for us as if it were on the other side of the world.
Ah, but a sweet, warm world, and I was glad after all that I was not a
monk in carved oak cells and walled gardens, but a free young man who
could vibrate between the South Pole and the Albany.
Molly said that the monastery of the Grande Chartreuse was like a body
without a soul; and in another breath she was asking Jack, quite
seriously, whether she could buy one of the cells from the French
Government, all complete, to "express" as a present to her father in
New York.
We flew, our motor humming like a bee, through exquisite forests
clothing the sides of a narrow ravine, where hidden streams made
music. Then in a twinkling we slipped out from the secret recesses of
scented woods, into a village almost too beautiful to accept as
reality, in a practical mood. There it lay, like a little heap of
pearls tossed down from the lap of one mountain at the feet of
another--and we were at St. Pierre de Chartreuse.
The tiny gem of beauty had caught the glory of Switzerland, and the
soft, fairy charm of Dauphiné. Its guardian mountain was a miniature
Matterhorn of indescribable grace and airy stateliness; its lesser
attendants formed a group of peaks, grey and green and rose. As if
enough gifts had not yet been bestowed upon the little place at its
christening, a playground of forest land, rolling up over grassy
slopes, had been given, with a neighbouring river, swift and clear, to
sing it a lullaby.
I had the impulse to clap my hands at St. Pierre de Chartreuse, as at
some "setting" excellently designed and carried out by the most
celebrated of scene painters. It was a place in which to stop a month,
finding a new walk for each new day; but one does not discover walks
in a motor car. One sweeps over the country, sounding notes of
triumph. We glanced at St. Pierre de Chartreuse and sped on towards
Grenoble, through a landscape markedly different from that of Savoie.
In Savoie everything is done lavishly, on a large scale. The eye roams
over spaces of noble amplitude, expressing strength in repose.
Dauphiné is livelier and daintier; more lovable, too. Fairies or
brownies (since no mortals do it) keep the whole country like a vast
private park. In crossing from Savoie into Dauphiné one seemed to hear
the allegro movement after listening to the andante.
With each twist of our road the prospect changed. The mountains grew,
soared more abruptly, and the youthful-looking landscape smiled at
their strange shapes. As for the Cham Chaude, which had been the
Matterhorn at St. Pierre de Chartreuse, it now disguised itself for
some new part at every turn. Such lightning changes must have been
fatiguing, even for so extraordinarily versatile and clever a
mountain, for within fifteen minutes after playing it was the
Matterhorn, it was a giant, tonsured monk; a Greek soldier in a
helmet; a Dutch cheese; a hen, and a camel.
When Dragon Mercédès had rushed us up the great Col, and whirled round
a corner, suddenly a battalion of magnificent white warrior-mountains
sprang at us from an ambush of invisibility. Then, no sooner had they
struck awe to our hearts with their warlike majesty, than, repentant,
they turned into lovely white ladies, bidding us welcome to the rich,
ripe figs and purple grapes which they held in their generous laps. I
thought of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary with her fair face, her candid
sky-blue eyes, her high, noble bearing, and her white dress caught up,
heaped with the roses into which her loaves had been transformed. The
tallest, purest white mountain of all I chose for sweet Elizabeth, and
that was none other than far Mont Blanc, floating magically in pure
blue ether, like a gleaming pearl.
Flying down the perfect road towards the plain where two rivers met,
loved, and wedded, the valley which was the white mountain's lap
blended vague, soft greens and blues and purples, hinting of grapes
and figs clustering under leaves. Here and there a vine had been
nipped by early frosts and flung its crimson wreaths, like diadems of
rubies, in a red arch across distant billows of mountain snows.
Autumn was in the air, and though the grass and most of the trees kept
all their richness of summer greenery, a faint, pungent fragrance of
dying leaves and the smoke of bonfires came to one's nostrils with
the breeze. Mingled with the exciting scent of petrol, it was
delicious.
At the confluence of the newly married Drac and Isère rose the domes
and towers of stately old Grenoble, hoary with history; and never a
town had a nobler setting. Swooping down in half-circles, as if our
car had been a great bird of prey, we saw the valley veiled with a
silver haze, which wrapped the city in mystery, while through this
gleaming gauze the two rivers threaded like strings of turquoise
beads.
"How the Boy would have loved this!" I found myself exclaiming over my
shoulder to Molly. "He used often to talk of the great charm of
descending from heights upon places, especially new-old places, which
one has never seen before."
"Used he?" echoed Molly. "Why, that is rather odd. It is exactly what
Mercédès has just been saying."
The Perpetual Mushroom moved impatiently. I fancied by the movement of
her shoulder that she resented having her thoughts passed on to me. I
hastened to turn away, sorry that I had reminded her inadvertently of
my cumbersome existence; but I could not help wondering what she had
been thinking of in the monastery when we had walked for full five
moments side by side.
There was no disappointment when we had plunged into the silver haze,
torn it apart, and entered the town over a dignified bridge. All
around us spread the city old and new; above, on the hills, were
numerous châteaux, a strange fort, and the queerest of ancient
convents, like the cork castles I had seen in shop windows and coveted
as a child. In the town there were statues, many statues--statues
everywhere and in honour of everybody. Bayard was there, dying; and
there was a delightfully human old fellow (humorous even in marble)
who cleverly "lay low" till his worst enemy had finished an
elaborately fortified castle, then promptly took it. Not a spacious
modern street that had not at least one magnificent old palace, a
façade of joyous Renaissance invention, or at least a crumbling
mediæval doorway of divine beauty; and nothing of romance was lost
because Grenoble makes gloves for all the world.
We sailed out of the town along the straight five-mile road to the
Pont de Claix, and now it was ho! for the Basses Alpes, over a road
which might have been engineered for an emperor's motoring; past the
quaint twin bridges spanning the stream side by side, which our
guide-book taught us to recognise as one of the Seven Wonders (with
capitals) of Dauphiné. Then came a valley, almost theatrical in its
romantic grace. One would not have believed in it for a moment if one
had seen it first in a sketch. Even the railway, on which we soon
looked down, was inspired to gymnastic feats, leaping across chasms on
giddy viaducts, and twisting back upon itself in corkscrew tunnels.
There were thrilling retrospective views away to the giant Alps we
were leaving behind, but soon, nearer mountains crowded them out of
sight. The country grew wild, with a strange grimness, like the face
of a blind Fate; cultivation ceased in despair of success; and alike
on the bare uplands and in the deep-scored valleys there were few
signs of human life. Then, suddenly, in such a setting, we came upon
the grandest of the Seven Marvels, the most wonderful lone rock in
Europe, Mont Aiguille, more like an obelisk of incalculable immensity
than a mountain. Once, it had been considered unscalable, and might
have remained virgin until this century of hardy climbers, had not
Charles the Eighth had a fancy to hear (not to see!) what was on top.
Up went a few of his bravest satellites, hoisting themselves on to the
aërial plateau by means of ropes and ladders, and bringing down
wondrous tales of impossible chamois, savage, brilliant-coloured
birds, and singular vegetation, which stories promptly went into all
the geographies of the day and were believed until a more practical
explorer named Jean Liotard climbed up, to please himself, in 1834.
We lost sight of this second Dauphiné Marvel (the last one we were to
see) just before running up the steep hill which led down again into
the dark jaws of another mountain pass. It was the Col de la Croix
Haute; and once past this gateway of the Alps the landscape changed
slowly and indefinably, here and there suggesting that we were drawing
nearer to the south. Though we were still encompassed on every side by
mountains, they had lost their Alpine splendour of bearing; they
stooped, or poked their chins.
The country was now all brown and green; and, surfeited with beauty,
it seemed to me that here was nothing great. We sped through Aspres;
through Serres, on its rocky promontory; and on through Laragne, whose
ancient inn with the sign of a spider gave a name to the town. Pointed
brown-green mountains were crowned with pointed green-brown ruins,
hoary after much history-making; and at the pointed mountains'
brown-green feet those _avant-courriers_ of the South, almond trees,
had sat down to rest on their way home.
Still we flew on; but at Sisteron Jack slowed down the motor. Here
was something too curious for even spoiled sightseers to pass in a
hurry.
The town struggled hardily up one side of a gorge, deep and steep,
where the Durance has forced its patient way through a huge barrier of
rock whose tilted strata correspond curiously on both sides of the
stream. Driving down to the low bridge across the river, we gazed up
at the town piled high above our heads, culminating in a fortress
which, cut in a dark square out of the sky's turquoise, looked old as
the beginning of the world.
Sisteron was brown, too, but not at all green; and beyond, for a time,
the country was still in a grim brown study, though it ought to have
remembered that it was now laughing Provence. It gave us crumbling
châteaux, high-perched ancient rock villages without stint, and even a
house (in the strangely named village of Malijai) where Napoleon had
lain, early in the Hundred Days; but not a smile or a wild flower.
Then, in a flash, its mood changed. The savage land had been tamed by
some whispered word of Mother Nature, and grew youthfully pretty under
our eyes. The poplars, in their autumn cloaks of gold, fringed the
road with flame, and scattered largesse of red copper filings in our
path; the dark mountains drew up over their bare shoulders scarfs of
crimson, and the sun flung a million diamonds into the wide bed of the
Durance.
Night was falling as we drove into the lazy-looking Provençal town of
Digne, where all was green and sleepy, at peace with itself and the
world at large. Even the beautiful Doric _château d'eau_ was green
with moss, and the water of its fountain laughed in sleep; the famous
basilica showed grey through green lichen; its wonderful rose window
had a green frame of ivy, and the strange, sculptured beasts guarding
the door had saddles of green velvet mould.
We slept at Digne, and made an early morning start, the car plunging
us almost from the first into scenery which only Gustave Doré could
have imagined. Gnome villages and elfin castles clung to slim
pinnacles of rock which seemed to swing, like blown branches, against
the sky. Wild grey mountains bristled with rocky spines, and trails of
scarlet foliage poured like streams of blood down their rough sides,
completing the resemblance to fierce, wounded boars.
Our road was a road of steep gradients, leading us through gorges of a
grandeur which would have been called appalling when the world was a
little younger, and more in awe of savage Nature. If a midge could be
provided with a proportionately tiny motor car, and sent coasting at
full tilt down a greased corkscrew, from the handle to the sharp end
of the screw, the effect would have been somewhat that of our Mercédès
leaping down the steep defiles. We were vaguely conscious now and then
that a river far below us clamoured for our bones; on one side we had
a precipice, on the other a sheer face of towering cliff.
Gorges, glorious gorges! a plethora of gorges. No sooner were we out
of one, and drawing breath in a valley of golden sunshine and silver
river, but we were back in another majestic cañon. Finest of all,
perhaps, was the dark Clou de Rouaine; yet when we sprang out into
daylight to throw ourselves into the village of Les Scaffarels,
wonders did not cease. Now we were in the true hinterland of the gay,
blue-and-gold Riviera, following the course of the Var, down to Nice,
not many miles away. Wide and pebbly in its bed by the bright pleasure
town, here it led us through a succession of more gorges, thundered us
through rock tunnels, swept us over bridges, and at last tumbled us
into sight of a marvel which must throw the whole seven of Dauphiné
out of focus. It was the town of Entrevaux, and to my shame I had
never heard of it. Where the narrow valley opens into a broad one, and
the green, swift flowing river sweeps in a sickle-curve round the base
of a high rock, Entrevaux shoots far up into the sky. The river bathes
its dark walls, protected by devices dear to the hearts of mediæval
Vaubans. Pepper-castor sentry-boxes jut out over the water; a great
drawbridge with portcullis, triple gateway, and neat contrivances for
pouring oil and molten lead upon besiegers, alone gives access to the
town; while behind the old crowded houses a fortified stairway in the
rock leads dizzily up to a stronghold clamped upon a towering peak--a
peak like a black, giant wine-bottle, slender-necked, with the fort
castle for the cork.
"If the Boy could see this with me!" I thought. And then, because this
place was like a fairy place, I remembered the fairy prince's ring.
Never had I followed his instructions; but I rubbed it now, and wished
that the genie of the ring would give me back the Little Pal at Monte
Carlo.
After Entrevaux, picturesque Puget-Theniers was an anticlimax; though
other fairy towns peered down from high crags and sheer hillsides
where they hung by wires caught in spider webs--and though we passed
through other gorges of grim beauty, my thoughts had flown ahead of
our swift car. I was glad when at last we came into sight of a fair
white city lying on the blue curve of a bay and ringed with green
hills, glad that our journey was all but ended; for the fair city was
Nice.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: "THE ROCK OF MONACO".]