small town of La Valette, from which the road to Hieres diverges, the
mountain barrier under which Toulon is situated ends abruptly in a
precipice, fortified by a strong redoubt. From this spot a detachment of
the combined forces were driven by the republicans, who scaled the rock
during the night at the most imminent risk; and the evacuation of Toulon
was the ultimate consequence of this daring coup de main, in which
Buonaparte is said to have first distinguished himself. After passing
this point, and leaving on the right the distant hills of Hieres, no
remarkable feature presents itself. The country is chiefly an extensive
olive forest, varied by a few vineyards, and enlivened by hedges of
pomegranate, and Spanish broom. We found Puget les Crottes but a bad
exchange for the fountains, and clean airy streets of Toulon: and it
better deserves the name of Puget le Crotte, by which it is laid down by
some mistake in some maps. The inn was perfectly worthy of the place; a
frowzy kennel of bustling Yahoos, totally deficient in that readiness
and attention which can put a reasonable traveller in good humour with
the worst accommodations. Our servant fought his way to the kitchen fire
to execute our orders; finding them neither attended to by the old dame
who presided in the kitchen, of whom Gil Blas's Leonarda was a faint
type, nor by the maid who screamed rejoinders at the top of the stairs,
to the ravings of her mistress at the bottom, in a tone that deafened
us. The arrival of the Draguignan diligence, which we had passed on the
road, heavily laden with money and passengers, and travelling at a foot
pace, escorted like a condemned cart by two gens d'armes, accounted for
this mighty sensation. We were glad enough to escape from the din of
tongues and the steams of garlic, and resume our road, which did not
offer any variety, till we had nearly reached La Luc, 17 miles from
Puget, whose situation and red sandy soil reminded us of a Herefordshire
glen. The junction of two main roads has created a tolerable inn at this
small place, which may with safety be recommended to persons on an
abstemious regimen, and to none else.
May 28.--To La Muy 19 miles, without any remarkable feature, though the
character of the country is rather pleasing. La Muy is a wretched
village, whose _tout ensemble_ is completed by a ruinous house of the
Count de Muy: this, as well as his castle at Grignan, was destroyed in
the Revolution, and the annexed property alienated from him. To Frejus
12 miles: the few last of which improve as to scenery. We saw cork trees
for the first time, and a profusion of myrtle in hedges and bushes.
There is something peculiarly stagnant and wo-begone in the appearance
of Frejus, which, however, is in more strict poetical character with its
Roman ruins, than the populous and wealthy streets of Nismes would be.
The inn where we dined and slept preserved the same character most
rigidly; indeed, Madame, whose ideas seemed perfectly in unison with
those of mine hostess of La Luc, wished apparently that our feast at
Forum Julii should be entirely intellectual, and that we should rise
from dinner with unclouded heads, to enjoy a walk among its antiquities.
We were really diverted by the formal parsimony with which the good
woman had contrived to invent a dinner for four, out of what would have
hardly have sufficed as a whet to an English farmer. Were I blest with
the culinary accuracy of the facetious Christopher North, or his friend
Dr. Morris, I could better record a bill of fare which would form a
complete contrast to the vaunted luxuries of their inspiring deity, Mr.
Oman of Edinburgh. Suffice it, as a specimen, that three pettitoes of
an unfortunate roasting-pig, or rather pigling, which I fear must have
died a natural death, formed the most substantial part of our repast.
The amphitheatre of Frejus, to pass to a more dignified subject, is
situated without the walls of the town, on the side by which we had
entered from Toulon; and is sufficiently perfect to be interesting,
though it must suffer by a comparison with the better known, and finer
specimens of the same sort which exist. There is also a temple, and an
arch, the latter known by the name of the Porte Doree, neither of which
possesses any thing remarkable when compared with the ruins of Nismes
and Orange. The aqueduct built by Vespasian, and situated to the
north-east of the town, is on a more extensive scale, and taken with its
concomitants, better merits the attention of a painter: even when viewed
from under the walls of Frejus, which it adjoins at one end, it
possesses as sombre a character of repose as Poussin could have wished,
and which is unbroken by the intervention of mean houses, and busy
figures. Its scattered groupes recede from the eye up a solitary valley,
interspersed with clumps of olive trees, and backed by pine forests, and
the foreground derives a degree of wildness from the profusion of
Spanish broom of an unusual size and beauty, with which its scattered
blocks are fringed. We walked also to the small village of St. Raphael,
a mile or two from the town, which is the modern port of Frejus, and
stands in what was formerly the main sea; while the Pharos which marked
the entrance of the ancient harbour is now surrounded by an alluvial
meadow, and in place of the numerous vessels which must have crowded the
ancient quay, a brig, and two or three feluccas, were quietly at anchor.
A change like this, of the very soil, and local features, speaks more
strongly to the imagination than the most mighty and extensive ruins.
29th.--We rose at a very early hour to pursue our route,
----for our sleep
Was airy light, from pure digestion bred,
And temperate vapours bland,
thanks to the precautions of mine hostess of the Chapeau Rouge: the
first part of our road lay almost parallel with the line of ruins,
marking the course of the aqueduct, and afforded a more just idea of its
extent and size than the view which we had taken before. To judge from
the scattered groupes of arches, it must have extended as far as the
hills bounding the bay of Napoule, up whose sides we began to wind, at
the distance of about two miles from Frejus, and continued to ascend for
six more. This morning's drive was agreeable enough from its novelty, so
little reminding us of the usual features of France. The bold and
sombre character of its fine woods, undiversified save by an occasional
patch of cultivation, or a solitary hut, and swept by bodies of clouds
in their progress from the Mediterranean, reminded us more of the
descriptions of Norwegian forests, and of the mountains haunted by the
Wild Huntsman, than of Provencal scenery. The enormous extent of these
forests has not, as may well be supposed, improved the state of society.
About fifteen years ago a banditti, composed of deserters, and of the
peasantry of the country, and regularly organized, held them for a
length of time, and defied the efforts of a numerous body of
gend'armerie sent to subdue them. We observed also the traces of a wider
spread conflagration, which we understood to have caused damage to the
amount of a million of francs, and the perpetrators of which had equally
escaped detection: it had made but a small comparative gap in these
immense tracts of wood.
Soon after passing the post-house of Estrelles, situated on the summit
of the mountain, the view which opens on the other side becomes
strikingly fine, and extensive. The shores of the bay of Napoule,
beautifully wooded and interspersed with white villas, lie under foot in
a complete bird's-eye view, backed by the sweeping mountains of the
neighbourhood of Grasse, and terminated by the cape where Antibes
stands. Farther still the back-ground is surmounted by the colossal
groups of the Maritime Alps. The descent from this hill to level ground
is about seven miles of road as excellent as the former part of the
stage; the whole having been very much improved by Buonaparte; and
although the distance from Frejus to Cannes cannot be less than
twenty-eight miles, it appears to occupy a shorter space of time than
many much shorter stages.
A nearer approach to Cannes in no way disappointed us: the bay of
Napoule, in the centre of which it is situated, presents, in different
points of view, every variety of Italian scenery; and there may be
conjectures less probable than that it was called originally by mariners
the bay of Napoli, from some fancied likeness. To the latter celebrated
spot it bears somewhat of a resemblance, but a stronger still to the
Porto Venere, or bay of Spezia, both in the wilder and the softer part
of its features; and the illusion is kept up by the grouping and form of
the houses, and the Italian patois of the inhabitants, who are mostly a
colony of Genoese fishermen. Nor ought the Hotel des Trois Pigeons to be
forgotten, though its cleanliness and comfort, and the cheerful alacrity
of its inmates, remind the traveller more of some quiet country inn on
the Devon or Somerset coast, than of any thing Italian or French. It
stands on a little rock just out of the town, looking on the sea, and
facing the island of St. Marguerite; and there is perhaps no scene in
which more historical recollections are combined under one point of
view, than that which its windows command. The island, whose garrison
and buildings are distinguishable by the naked eye, was for many years
the prison of the mysterious Masque de Fer, whose identity, like that of
Junius, has hitherto baffled conjecture. In the room where we were
sitting Murat passed some of the time intervening between his expulsion
from Naples, and the crisis of his fate; and on the sands about half a
mile to the left, is the spot where Buonaparte first landed from Elba,
and bivouacked during the night, surrounded by numbers whom curiosity
had drawn out of the town to behold him. There is perhaps something
characteristic of the different fortunes of this singular man, in the
place from which he had embarked for Elba a year before, and in that
where he first set foot on his return, full of hope and confidence. The
former was Frejus, a place dreary and comfortless, surrounded by
memorials of departed greatness, shrunk within a small part of its
former limits, and deserted by the very sea, and it might have been
mercifully chosen on purpose as the scene of his exit, in order to blunt
his regret at leaving France. The latter was Cannes, a place,[52] as I
have fully described it, full of cheerfulness, beauty, and rich distant
prospects, corresponding almost in brilliancy to those which his mind
was forming at the time.
[Footnote 52: Vide Cooke's Views.]
Far different must have been the feelings of Murat during the anxious
interval of forced leisure which he spent at this place; and I will
confess, that while listening to the landlord's simple account of the
manner in which he passed his time, we forgot the massacre of Madrid in
the well-known anecdote of the drowning officer's rescue. During the
first eight days he remained shut up in the bed-room or sitting-room
which we occupied, in expectation of despatches from Buonaparte, to whom
he wrote on his arrival at Cannes. At the end of this time, having
received no answer, he used to beguile his impatience by rambling on the
sea shore, or watching the sports of the peasants, till at length,
evidently heart-sick and desperate, he set out for Toulon on the rash
expedition which closed his career. "Toujours, toujours, il avoit la
mine triste.--Ah! si vous l'aviez connu, vous auriez pleure son sort--il
etoit un si bel homme!--d'une taille superbe!" said our honest host,
whose knowledge of Murat was probably confined to his soldier-like
figure, and his desolate state: he could have been no judge of the small
extent of Buonaparte's obligations to his brother-in-law, whose former
defection was but repaid in kind. He pointed out a green spot under the
walls of an old castle which overlooked the inn, where he had frequently
observed Murat lying with his face concealed in his hands, or in his
more cheerful moments, watching the dances of the country people who
resorted thither, and whose sports seemed to interest him considerably.
It would be a task for the hand of a master poet or painter, to describe
an ambitious and desperate man, softened for a time by disappointment,
overleaping in thought the immeasurable distance between his present and
his former self, and contemplating the sports of his youth with a sort
of melancholy pleasure, yet under the influence of the strong fatality
which hurried him to his end. It is by mixing somewhat of this feeling
in the character of Macbeth, that Shakspeare has excited a momentary
interest even for a murderer and usurper, who perceives "his life fallen
into the sere and yellow leaf," and pauses for a moment in melancholy
reflection as he rushes to "die with harness on his back."
"Out, out, brief, candle," &c.
Having spent an hour among the sunny basking places which abound in the
rocks of this place, we hired a fishing-boat to convey us to the island
of St. Marguerite. It was impossible to help being diverted by the
uncouth appearance of our new conductors, which was two or three
degrees wilder than that of poor Murat's amphibious subjects: one fellow
in particular, was
"A man,
Cast in the roughest mould Dame Nature boasts,
With back much broader than a dripping pan,
And legs as thick about the calves as posts,"[53]
or indeed thicker, and tanned a bright copper colour by sun and salt
water; his broad face grinning with good humour, from beneath a mane as
shaggy as a lion's. It may be supposed that two or three such rowers,
proud of the new honour of officiating in a pleasure-boat, got us on
more quickly than the less athletic boatmen of show lakes, and we soon
landed at the small fort which was the object of our pursuit, and which
the commandant politely allowed us to explore. At its eastern extremity
is situated a guard-house, a chamber of which on the ground floor served
as the prison of the mysterious captive; it is airy and commodious
enough, in comparison with places of the sort in general; but the height
of its only window, strengthened by treble bars from the sea, and the
perpendicular cliff which it overhangs, with the dangerous breach under
it, are sufficient protections against any escape. For the last five
years no persons have been confined in this fort, which was formerly
used exclusively as a state prison, but in the Revolution its benefits
were extended to persons of all ranks. Restraint, indeed, is not at
present the order of the day within its precincts, to judge from
appearances. The soldiers seemed to have little or nothing to do, but to
flirt with two or three gaudily-dressed negresses, who showed their
white teeth and their black muzzles from the doors of the casernes, and
to laugh at the chaplain of the garrison, for such I conclude was the
grade of the old priest, who met us, toddling about in a state of
drunken fatuity, very much resembling the condition of Obadiah in the
Committee, with a nose exhibiting the visible effects of a fight or a
fall. Having escaped at last from the good man's persecuting attentions,
we got back to Cannes in time to make a sketch from the precise spot
where Buonaparte landed.[54]
[Footnote 53: See Colman.]
[Footnote 54: Vide Cooke's Views.]
May 30.--From Cannes to Antibes eleven miles; a pleasant drive, chiefly
running close to the sea. Though considerably flattered in Vernet's
beautiful picture at the Louvre, Antibes, nevertheless, leaves a
pleasing impression on the mind, from its airy, well-frequented,
prosperous appearance, and the bustle arising from the presence of a
garrison. Its inner harbour, and the neck of land which defends it,
terminated by a little picturesque fort, seem beautifully constructed by
nature for their respective purposes; but I do not know of any thing
else meriting notice.
CHAP. XIII.
NICE--COL DE TENDE--CONCLUSION.
FROM Antibes to Nice, sixteen miles, along a beautiful sweep of coast,
the whole extent of which, crowned by the gigantic chain of Maritime
Alps, lies in full view for the whole way. No sketch, much less any
description, can give an idea of the combined effect of this extensive
bay, or the air of cheerfulness spread over the whole; among all the
celebrated first views of Italy, there are probably few which speak to
the imagination in a more imposing as well as pleasing manner. We
crossed the frontier by a long wooden bridge over the Var, a broad, wild
stream, roaring down with violence after the storm of the preceding
night. We were immediately struck with the different culture of the
vines, festooning as near Naples, over the other trees, in a manner more
picturesque than useful. The straw hats of the Nissardes, also
resembling an inverted wicker corn basket, gave quite a new and
laughable character to the human apex. Such little novelties as this,
which would excite no more attention in a professed book of costumes,
than a view into an old fancy clothes shop, are nevertheless recollected
with interest when seen in travelling, as connected with particular
trains of thought or association, which they preserve fresh in the mind;
and to forget these extraordinary potlids of straw, and the fanciful
little red toques occasionally substituted for them, would be to forget
an important feature of the Italian frontier.
Much as I had heard of Nice, I was not disappointed either in the first
view, or in the nearer survey of it. The situation of its ruined citadel
on a commanding and insulated rock, and its narrow valley of almost
tropical richness, surrounded by tier above tier of mountains, and
studded with villas and orange-groves, present every variety of beauty;
and there is a stateliness of proportion, and a careless elegance in its
white houses, and an airiness in their situation, which very much remind
the eye of the best parts of Naples near the Chiaja and Villa Real. The
first glance of Nice, in short, bespeaks a higher and more fashionable
tone of society than that of any French town, excepting Paris, through
which we had passed. It is impossible, nevertheless, for a person
looking beyond the mere amusement of the moment, to banish a certain
train of morbid ideas which connect themselves with the sight of this
beautiful town. There are few persons perhaps moving in good English
society, whose ears do not familiarly recognise the hopeless phrase of
"being sent to die at Nice," and many have watched the departure of the
wrecks of what was once health, strength, and beauty, consigned to this
painted sepulchre with the certainty of never returning from it. Thus
the very efficacy of the air of Nice, which has brought it into vogue
when all other resources have failed, has inseparably connected it in
the mind with despondency and decay. If such ideas occurred to us, they
were certainly not removed by the sight of a funeral which past the
windows of the inn, within an hour or two after our arrival; the corpse
laid on an open bier, the hands crossed, and ornamented with flowers,
and the monks and attendants all joining in a solemn chant. A bell was
also tolling in another quarter, the signal that a man just condemned to
the galleys was passing in procession through the town, as is customary.
"But let the stricken deer go weep,
The hart ungalled play."
The English dance and dress during an assize week, and the lively
Nissards, more naturally still, enjoy their fine climate, and elegant
town, without entering into the gloomy reflections which haunt the mind
of an Englishman on his arrival. The cafes and public walks were
swarming with company, and the whole place appeared to take its tone of
gaiety from the gaudy young officers, whose troops were quartered in the
extensive barracks; the peasants were dancing their grand round on the
quay, or fighting between jest and earnest with open hands; the native
dandies managed their green fans with the same adroitness as their fair
companions; the shops displayed every luxury and accommodation; and
every thing, in short, savoured of the habits of a continental
Cheltenham.
The Hotel des Etrangers, where we established ourselves, is somewhat
high in its charges, but proportionably good, and possesses a delightful
garden of orange-trees adjoining. After being kept awake by mosquitos,
which seem more prevalent than at Marseilles, and whose little angry
note of preparation had apprized us of an attack, we walked in the
morning to the citadel hill, whose solid masses of ruin had attracted
our notice on the first view of the town. This point affords the best
general idea of Nice and its vicinity, though in the month of May, it is
not attained without a roasting walk. The heat indeed was tremendous, as
may be expected in a triangular tongue of land only a few miles in
extent, and encircled by lofty mountains; and the mildness of the
climate in winter, as we were informed, bears a full proportion to its
oppressiveness in summer. Green peas are to be had all the year:
mulberries and gourds were already ripe, and every garden was a wood of
the finest orange and lemon-trees loaded with ripe fruit. The
thermometer too is seldom or never lower than 55 in the depth of winter.
At the foot of the citadel hill is a road blasted out of the solid rock,
running along the edge of the sea, and connecting Nice with its port;
along which we walked towards the afternoon. I should be inclined to
remark this spot, near which is an esplanade of good houses, as the most
sheltered and desirable quarter of Nice. The breeze, which had begun to
freshen, was just perceptible where we stood, though its effects in the
open sea were visible by the plunging of the waves under our feet; and
it appears hardly possible for any but a south or south-west wind to get
at this point. Whether or not the part of Nice north of the citadel be
equally calculated for an invalid, I should doubt. The mountain gully
running up towards Escarene may possibly bring down searching winds from
the north-east; and on the whole the marine esplanade seems to afford a
situation cooler in summer, and warmer in winter, than the interior of
the town.
Such as are tolerably active pedestrians will find themselves well
repaid for an evening's toilsome walk to the height which divides Nice
from Ville Franche, and whose situation is marked by a small fort.[55]
[Footnote 55: Vide Cooke's Views.]
From hence the view to the west is very wide, including nearly the route
of the two preceding days. Towards the east it is less extensive, but
more striking. The town of Ville Franche, and the beautiful little basin
which forms its port, appear as completely under the feet, as if you
could leap over them to the opposite side of the water; and the headland
between that town and Monaco, up and down which the road to Savona is
seen meandering, is more boldly defined and on a larger scale than that
of Lulworth Cove, and though strongly resembling it possesses greater
beauty and variety.
One of Buonaparte's projects was to render the Corniche, as this giddy
track is expressively called, practicable for carriages; but the
Sardinian government, instead of completing, have defaced (as we heard,
out of jealousy) the part which he had begun: this is, I think, rather
too absurd for belief. It is at the same time probable enough, that the
undertaking has been abandoned for want of adequate funds. We were
lighted homewards by myriads of fire-flies, a circumstance which
produces on a person unaccustomed to the sight, a more novel and
brilliant effect than any other accompaniment of an Italian climate.
June 2.--Our original idea had been to have proceeded to Genoa either by
a felucca or the Corniche, but learning that the latter route was
impracticable, excepting on mules, and that the variable nature of the
wind on this coast rendered feluccas a dangerous and uncertain mode of
performing the journey, we preferred the road into Italy by the Col di
Tende.