knowledge, and religion. If we had lived then, no doubt we should all
have been monks."
"Ah, yes!" said Miss Elaine, fervently. "Do tell us the legend, Mr.
Inness. I adore legends, especially if ecclesiastical."
"Well," said Inness, "a good while ago--in 1586--the Pope decided to
raise and place upon a pedestal an Egyptian obelisk, which, transported
to Rome by Caligula, had been left lying neglected upon the ground. An
apparatus was constructed to lift the huge block, and with the aid of
one hundred and fifty horses and nine hundred men it was raised, poised,
and then let down slowly towards its position, amid the breathless
silence of a multitude, when suddenly it was seen that the ropes on one
side failed to bring it into place. All, including the engineer in
charge, stood stupefied with alarm, when a voice from the crowd called
out, 'Wet the ropes!' It was done; the ropes shortened; the obelisk
reached its place in safety. The Pope sent for the man whose timely
advice had saved the lives of many, and asked him what reward would
please him most. He was a simple countryman, and with much timidity he
answered that he lived at Bordighera, and that if the palms of
Bordighera could be used in Rome on Holy Palm-Sunday he should die
happy. His wish was granted," concluded Inness, "and--he died."
"I hope not immediately," I said, laughing.
On our way back, Verney showed us a path leading up the cliff. "Let me
give you a glimpse of a lovely garden," he said. We looked up, and there
it was on the cliff above us, like the hanging gardens of Babylon, green
terraces clothing the bare gray rock with beautiful verdure. Margaret
left the phaeton and went up the winding path with us, Mrs. Trescott and
Mrs. Clary remaining below. The gate of the garden, which bore the
inscription "Salvete Amici," opened upon a long columned walk; from
pillar to pillar over our heads ran climbing vines, and on each side
were ranks of rare and curious plants, the lovely wild flowers of the
country having their place also among the costlier blossoms. "Before you
go farther turn and look at the tower," said Verney. "It has been made
habitable within, but otherwise it is unchanged. It was built either as
a lookout in which to keep watch for the Saracens, or else by the
Saracens themselves when they held the coast."
"By the Sarrasins themselves, of course--always with two r's," said
Janet. "Think of it--a Sarrasin tower! I would rather own it than
anything else in the whole world."
Whereupon Verney, Inness, the Professor, Lloyd, and Baker all wished to
know what she would do with it.
"Do with it?" repeated Janet. "Live in it, of course. I have always had
the greatest desire to live in a tower; even light-houses tempt me."
"I shall tell Dr. Bennet," said Verney, laughing. "This is his garden,
you know."
At the end of the columned walk we went around a curve by a smaller
tower, and descended to a lower path bordered with miniature groves of
hyacinth, whose dense sweetness, mingled with that of heliotrope, filled
the air. Here Margaret seated herself to enjoy the fragrance and
sunshine, while we went onward, coming to a magnificent array of
primulas, rank upon rank, in every shade of delicate and gorgeous
coloring, a pomp of tints against a background of ferns. Below was a
little vine-covered terrace with thick, soft, English grass for its
velvet flooring; here was another paradisiacal little seat, like the one
where we had left Margaret, overlooking the blue sea. On terraces above
were camellias, roses, and numberless other blossoms, mingled with
tropical plants and curious growths of cacti; behind was a lemon grove
rising a little higher; then the background of gray rocks from which all
this beauty had been won inch by inch; then the great peaks of the
mountain amphitheatre against the sky--in all, beauty enough for a
thousand gardens here concentrated in one enchanting spot.
[Illustration: THE WASHER-WOMEN]
"That picturesque village on the height is Grimaldi," said Verney.
"The original home of the clowns, I suppose," said Baker.
"English and Americans always say that; they can never think of anything
but the great circus Hamlet," replied Verney. "In reality, however,
Grimaldi is one of the oldest of the noble names on this coast--the
family name of the Princes of Monaco."
"Who are worse than clowns," said the Professor, sternly. "The Grimaldi
who was a clown at least honestly earned his bread, but the Grimaldis of
the present day live by the worst dishonesty. Monaco, formerly called
the Port of Hercules, may now well be called the Port of Hell."
"Well," said Inness, "if Monaco, on one side of us, represents
l'Inferno, Bordighera, on the other, represents Paradiso, and so we are
saved."
"It depends upon which way you go, young man," said the Professor, still
sternly.
After a while we came back to the bench among the hyacinths where we had
left Margaret, and found Lloyd with her, looking at the sea; the lovely
garden overhangs the sea, whose beautiful near blue closes every
blossoming vista. It had been decided that we were to go homeward by way
of the Bone Caverns, and as Mrs. Trescott was fond of bones, and wished
to see their abode, I offered to remain and drive home with Margaret.
"Let me accompany Miss Severin," said Lloyd. "I have seen the caverns,
and do not care to see them again."
I looked at Margaret, thinking she would object; she seldom cared for
the society of strangers. But in some way Mr. Lloyd no longer seemed a
stranger; he had crossed the numerous little barriers which she kept
erected between herself and the outside world, crossed them probably
without even seeing them. But none the less were they crossed.
So we left them in the sunny garden to return homeward at their leisure,
and, descending to the road, went eastward a short distance, and turned
down a narrow path leading to the beach. It brought us under the
enormous mass of the Red Rocks, rising perpendicularly three hundred
feet from the water. Inness, who was in advance, had paused on a little
bridge of one arch over a hollow, and was holding it, as it were, when
we came up. "Behold a fragment of the ancient Roman way, Via Julia
Augusta," he began, introducing the bridge with a wave of his cane.
"When we think of this road in the past, what visions rise in the
mind--visions like--like mists on the mountain-tops floating away,
which--which merge in each other at dawning of day! In comparison with
the ancient Romans, the builders of this bridge, Hercules, the Lascaris,
even the Sarrasins (always with two r's), are _nowhere_. Roman feet
touched this very archway upon which my own unworthy shoes now stand."
We looked at his shoes with respect, the Professor (who had gone onward
to the Bone Caverns) not being there to contradict.
"The Romans," continued Inness, "never stayed long. They dropped here a
tomb, there an aqueduct, and then moved on. They were the first great
pedestrians. We cannot _see_ them, but we can imagine them. As Pope well
says,
"'While fancy brings the vanished piles to view,
And builds imaginary Rome anew.'"
"Ah, yes," said Mrs. Trescott, "the Romans, the Romans, how dreamy they
were! They always remind me of those lines:
"'Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound,
The primal sympathy,
Which, having been, must ever be!'"
This finished the bridge. As we had no idea what she meant, even Inness
deserted it, and we all went onward to the Bone Caverns. The caverns
were dark hollows in the cliff some distance above the road. From the
entrance of one of them issued a cloud of dust; the Professor was in
there digging.
"Let us ascend at once," said Mrs. Trescott, enthusiastically. "I wish
to stand in the very abode of the primitive man."
But it was something of a task to get her up; there was always a great
deal of loose drapery about Mrs. Trescott, which had a way of catching
on everything far and near. With her veil, her plumes, her lace shawl,
her long watch-chain, her dangling fan, her belt bag and scent bottle,
her parasol and basket, it was difficult to get her safely through any
narrow or bushy place. But to-day Verney gallantly undertook the feat:
he knew the advantages of propitiating the higher powers.
Men were quarrying the face of the Red Rocks at a dizzy height, hanging
suspended in mid-air by ropes in order to direct the blasting; below,
the patient horses were waiting to convey the great blocks of stone to
the town, and destroy, by their daily procession, the last traces of the
Julia Augusta.
"I hope these rocks are porphyry," said Janet, gazing upward; "it is
such a lovely name."
"Yes, they are," said the unblushing Inness. "The Troglodytes, whose
homes are beneath, were fond of porphyry. They were very aesthetic, you
know."
We now reached the entrance of one of the caverns and looked in.
"The Troglodytes," continued Inness, "were the original, _really_
original, proprietors of Mentone. They lived here, clad in bear-skins,
and their voices are said to have been not sweet. See Pliny and Strabo.
The bones of their dinners left here, and a few of their own (untimely
deaths from fighting with each other for more), have now become the most
precious treasures of the scientific world, equalling in richness the
never-to-be-sufficiently-prized-and-investigated kitchen refuse of the
Swiss lakes."
But the Professor, overhearing something of this frivolity at the sacred
door, emerged from the hole in which he had been digging, and, covered
with dust, but rich in the possession of a ball and socket joint of some
primeval animal, came to the entrance, and forcibly, if not by force,
addressed us:
"At a recent period it has been discovered that these five caverns in
this limestone rock--"
"Alas, my porphyry!" murmured Janet.
"--contain bones of animals mixed with flint instruments imbedded in
sand. The animals were the food and the flint instruments the weapons of
a race of men who must have existed far back in prehistoric times. This
was a rich discovery; but a richer was to come. In 1872 a human
skeleton, all but perfect, a skeleton of a tall man, was discovered in
the fourth cavern, surrounded by bones which prove its great
antiquity--which prove, in fact, almost beyond a doubt, that it belonged
to--the--_Paleolithic epoch_!" And the Professor paused, really overcome
by the tremendous power of his own words.
[Illustration: OIL MILL]
But I am afraid we all gazed stupidly enough, first at him, then into
the cave, then at him again, with only the vaguest idea of
"Paleolithic's" importance. I must except Verney; he knew more. But
he had gone inside, and was now digging in the hole in his turn to find
flints for Janet.
Mrs. Trescott, who was our bone-master (she had studied anatomy, and
highly admired "form"), asked if the skeleton had been "painted in
oils."
Miss Elaine hoped that they buried it again "reverently," and "in
consecrated ground."
The Professor gazed at them in turn; he literally could not find a word
for reply.
Then I, coming to the rescue, said: "I am very dull, I know, but pity my
dulness, and tell me why the skeleton was so important, and how they
knew it was so old."
The poor man, overcome by such crass ignorance, gazed at his ball and
socket joint and at our group in silence. Then, in a spiritless voice,
he said, "The bones surrounding the skeleton were those of animals now
extinct--animals that existed at a period heretofore supposed to have
been before that of man; but by their presence here they prove a
contemporary, and we therefore know that he existed at a much earlier
age of the world's history than we had imagined."
Verney now gave Janet the treasures he had found--some pieces of flint
about an inch long, rudely pointed at one end. "These," he said, "are
the knives of the primitive man."
"They are very disappointing," said Janet, surveying them as they lay in
the palm of her slender gray glove, buttoned half-way to the elbow.
"Did you expect carved handles and steel blades?" I said, smiling.
"And here are some nummulites," pursued Verney, taking a quantity of the
round coin-like shells from his pocket. "You might have a necklace made,
with the nummulites above and the flints below as pendants."
"And label it prehistoric; it would be quite as attractive as
preraphaelite," said Inness. "I don't know what _you_ think," he
continued, turning to Verney, "but to me there is nothing so ugly as the
way some of the girls--generally the tall ones--are getting themselves
up nowadays in what they call the preraphaelite style--a general effect
of awkward lankness as to shape and gown, a classic fillet, hair to the
eyebrows, and a gait not unlike that which would be produced by having
the arms tied together behind at the elbows. If your Botticelli is
responsible for this, his canvases should be demolished."
Verney laughed; he was at heart, I think, a strong preraphaelite both of
the present and the past; but how could he avow it when a reality so
charming and at the same time so unlike that type stood beside him?
Janet's costumes were not at all preraphaelite; they were
American-French.
We left the Red Rocks, and went slowly onward along the sea-shore
towards home. Miss Elaine, having first taken me aside to ask if I
thought it "quite proper," had challenged Inness to a rapid walk, and
soon carried him away from us and out of sight. On our way we passed the
St. Louis brook, where the laundresses were at work in two rows along
the stream, each kneeling at the edge in a broad open basket like a
boat, and bending over the low pool, alternately soaping and beating her
clothes with a flat wooden mallet. It was a picturesque sight--the long
rows of figures in baskets, the heads decked with bright-colored
handkerchiefs. But to a housewifely mind like my own the idea which most
forcibly presented itself was the small amount of water. Of a celebrated
trout fisherman it was once said that all he required was a little damp
spot, and forthwith he caught a trout; and the Mentone laundresses seem
to consider that only a little damp spot is needed for their daily
labors.
But in truth they cannot help themselves; the crying fault of Mentone is
the want of water. A spring is more precious than the land itself, and
is divided between different proprietors for stated periods of each day.
The poor little rills do a dozen tasks before they reach the laundresses
and the beach. The beautiful terrace vegetation which clothes the sides
of the mountains is supported by an elaborate and costly system of tanks
and watercourses which would dishearten an American proprietor at the
outset. The Mentone laundresses work for wages which a New World
laundress would scorn; but there is one marked difference between them
and between all the French and Italian working-people and those of
America, and that is that among these foreigners there seems to be not
one too poor to have his daily bottle of wine. We saw the necks of these
bottles peeping from the rough dinner-baskets of the laundresses, and
afterwards from those also of the quarry-men, vine-dressers,
olive-pickers, and lemon-gatherers. It was an inexpensive "wine of the
country"; still, it was wine.
The sun was now sinking into the water, and exquisite hues were stealing
over the soft sea. The picturesque Mediterranean boats with lateen-sails
were coming towards home, and one whose little sail was crimson made a
lovely picture on the water. At the sea-wall we met Miss Graves gloomily
taking a walk, and presently the phaeton with Margaret and Lloyd stopped
near us as we stood looking at the hues. Two ships in the distance
sailed first on blue water, then on rose, on lilac, on purple, violet,
and gold. Over the sea fell a pink flush, met on the horizon by salmon
in a broad band, then next above it amber, then violet edged with rose,
and higher still a zone of clear pale green bordered with gold. At the
same moment the Red Rocks were flooded with rose light which extended in
a lovely flush up the high gray peaks behind far in the sky, lingering
there when all the lower splendor was gone, and the sea and shore veiled
in dusky twilight gray.
[Illustration: A MEDITERRANEAN BOAT]
"It is almost as beautiful at sunrise," said Mrs. Clary; "and then, too,
you can see the Fairy Island."
"What is that?" I asked.
"Never mind what it is in reality," answered Mrs. Clary. "I consider it
enchanted--the Fortunate Land, whose shores and mountain-peaks can be
seen only between dawn and sunrise, when they loom up distinctly, soon
fading away, however, mysteriously into the increasing daylight, and
becoming entirely invisible when the sun appears."
"I saw it this morning," said Miss Graves, soberly. "It is only
Corsica."
"Brigands and vendetta," said Inness.
"Napoleon," said all the rest of us.
"My idea of it is much the best," said Mrs. Clary; "it is Fairy-land,
the lost Isles of the Blest."
After that each morning at breakfast the question always was, who had
seen Corsica. And a vast amount of ingenious evasion was displayed in
the answers. However, I did see it once. It rose from the water on the
southeastern horizon, its line of purple mountain-peaks and low shore so
distinctly visible that it seemed as if one could take the little boat
with the crimson sail and be over there in an hour, although it was
ninety miles away; but while I gazed it faded slowly, melted, as it
were, into the gold of the awakening day.
The weeks passed, and we rode, drove, walked, and climbed hither and
thither, looking at the carouba-trees, the stiff pyramidal cypresses,
the euphorbias in woody bushes five feet high, the great planes, the
grotesque naked figs, the aloes and oleanders growing wild, and the
fantastic shapes of the cacti. We searched for ferns, finding the rusty
ceterach, the little trichomanes, and _Adiantum nigrum_, but especially
the exquisite maiden-hair of the delicate variety called _Capillus
veneris_, which fringed every watercourse and bank and rock where there
is the least moisture with its lovely green fretwork. There is a phrase
current in Mentone and applied to this fern, as well as to the violets
which grow wild in rich profusion, starring the ground with their blue;
unthinking people say of them that they are "so common they become
weeds." This phrase should be suppressed by a society for the
cultivation of good taste and the prevention of cruelty to plants. Ivy
was everywhere, growing wild, and heather in bloom.
Miss Graves was brought almost to tears one day by finding her old
friend the wild climbing smilax of Florida on these Mediterranean rocks,
and only recovered her self-possession because Lloyd would call it
"sarsaparilla," and she felt herself called upon to do battle. But the
profusion of the violets, the pomp of the red anemones, the perfume of
the white narcissus, the hyacinths and sweet alyssum, all growing wild,
who shall describe them? There were also tulips, orchids, English
primroses, and daisies. Even when nothing else could grow there was
always the demure rosemary. Of course, too, we made close acquaintance
with the olive and lemon, the characteristic trees of Mentone, whose
foliage forms its verdure, and whose fruit forms its commerce. The
orange groves were insignificant and the oranges sour compared with
those of Florida; but the olive and lemon groves were new to us, and in
themselves beautiful and luxuriant. Our hotel stood on the edge of an
old olive grove climbing the mountain-side slowly on broad terraces
rising endlessly as one looked up. After some weeks' experience we found
that we represented collectively various shades of opinion concerning
olive groves in general, which may be given as follows:
Mrs. Clary: "These old trees are to me so sacred! When I walk under
their great branches I always think of the dove bringing the leaf to the
ark, of the olive boughs of the entry into Jerusalem, and of the Mount
of Olives."
[Illustration: BRINGING LEMONS FROM THE TERRACE]
The Professor: "Olives are interesting because their manner of growth
allows them to attain an almost indefinite age. The trunk decays and
splits, but the bark, which still retains its vigor, grows around the
dissevered portions, making, as it were, new trunks of them, although
curved and distorted, so that three or four trees seem to be growing
from the same root. It is this which gives the tree its characteristic
knotted and gnarled appearance. This species of olive attains a very
fine development in the neighborhood of Mentone; there are said to be
trees still alive at Cap Martin which were coeval with the Roman
Empire."
Verney: "The light in an old olive grove is beautiful and peculiar; it
is like nothing but itself. It is quite impossible to give on canvas the
gray shade of the long aisles without making them dim, and they are not
in the least dim. I have noticed, too, that the sunshine never filters
through sufficiently to touch the ground in a glancing beam, or even a
single point of yellow light; and yet the leaves are small, and the
foliage does not appear thick."
Baker: "Olives and olive oil, the groundwork of every good dinner! I
wonder how much a grove would cost?"
Mrs. Trescott: "How they murmur to us--like doves! My one regret now is
that I did not name my child Olive. She would then have been so
Biblical."
Inness: "I should think more of the groves if I did not know that they
were fertilized with woollen rags, old boots, and bones."
Janet: "The inside tint of the leaves would be lovely for a summer
costume. I have never had just that shade."
Miss Graves: "Live-oak groves draped in long moss are much more
imposing."
Miss Elaine: "It is so jolly, you know, to sit under the trees with
one's embroidery, and have some one read aloud--something sweet, like
Adelaide Procter."
Margaret: "Sitting here is like being in a great cathedral in Lent."
Lloyd: "Shall we go quietly on, Miss Severin?"
And Lloyd, I think, had the best of it. I mean that he knew how to
derive the most pleasure from the groves. This English use of "quietly,"
by-the-way, always amused Margaret and myself greatly. Lloyd and Verney
were constantly suggesting that we should go here or there "quietly," as
though otherwise we should be likely to go with banners, trumpets, and
drums. The longer one remains in Mentone, the stronger grows attachment
to the olive groves. But they do not seem fit places for the young,
whose gay voices resound through their gray aisles; neither are they for
the old, who need the cheer and warmth of the sun. But they are for the
middle-aged, those who are beyond the joys and have not yet reached the
peace of life, the poor, unremembered, hard-worked middle-aged. The
olives of Mentone are small, and used only for making oil. We saw them
gathered: men were beating the boughs with long poles, while old women
and children collected the dark purple berries and placed them in sacks,
which the patient donkeys bore to the mill. The oil mills are venerable
and picturesque little buildings of stone, placed in the ravines where
there is a stream of water. We visited one on the side hill; its only
light came from the open door, and its interior made a picture which
Gerard Douw might well have painted. The great oil jars, the old hearth
and oven, the earthen jugs, hanging lamps with floating wicks, and the
figures of the men moving about, made a picturesque scene. The fruit was
first crushed by stone rollers, the wheel being turned by water-power;
the pulp, saturated with warm water, was then placed in flat, round rope
baskets, which were piled one upon the other, and the whole subjected to
strong pressure, which caused the clear yellow oil to exude through the
meshes of the baskets, and flow down into the little reservoir below.
"Our manners would become charmingly suave if we lived here long," said
Inness. "It would be impossible to resist the influence of so much oil."