In the third week of December I went out to join my friend for a part
of the Christmas vacation, and found him without tangible disease,
but very weak and ailing: ill-health and anxiety, however, neither
then nor at any time diminished his charm as a companion. He left
Mentone to meet me at the old town of Monaco, where we spent a few
days and from whence these stray notes of nature and human nature
were written.
_Monaco, Tuesday [December 1873]._
We have been out all day in a boat; lovely weather and almost dead calm,
only the most infinitesimal and indeterminate of oscillations moved us
hither and thither; the sails were duly set, and flapped about idly
overhead. Our boatman was a man of a delightful humour, who told us many
tales of the sea, notably one of a doctor, who was an Englishman, and
who seemed almost an epitome of vices--drunken, dishonest, and utterly
without faith; and yet he was a _charmant garcon_. He told us many
amusing circumstances of the doctor's incompetence and dishonesty, and
imitated his accent with a singular success. I couldn't quite see that
he was a charming _garcon_--"_O, oui_--_comme caractere, un charmant
garcon_." We landed on that Cap Martin, the place of firs and rocks and
myrtle and rosemary of which I spoke to you. As we pulled along in the
fresh shadow, the wonderfully clean scents blew out upon us, as if from
islands of spice--only how much better than cloves and cinnamon!
_Friday._--Colvin and I are sitting on a seat on the battlemented
gardens of Old Monaco. The day is grey and clouded, with a little red
light on the horizon, and the sea, hundreds of feet below us, is a sort
of purple dove-colour. Shrub-geraniums, firs, and aloes cover all
available shelves and terraces, and where these become impossible, the
prickly pear precipitates headlong downwards its bunches of oval plates;
so that the whole face of the cliff is covered with an arrested fall
(please excuse clumsy language), a sort of fall of the evil angels
petrified midway on its career. White gulls sail past below us every now
and then, sometimes singly, sometimes by twos and threes, and sometimes
in a great flight. The sharp perfume of the shrub-geraniums fills the
air.
I cannot write, in any sense of the word; but I am as happy as can be,
and wish to notify the fact, before it passes. The sea is blue, grey,
purple and green; very subdued and peaceful; earlier in the day it was
marbled by small keen specks of sun and larger spaces of faint
irradiation; but the clouds have closed together now, and these
appearances are no more. Voices of children and occasional crying of
gulls; the mechanical noise of a gardener somewhere behind us in the
scented thicket; and the faint report and rustle of the waves on the
precipice far below, only break in upon the quietness to render it more
complete and perfect.