The river was swirling around willows and poplars.
"Bully placer ground!" I exclaimed.
The Artist leaned over the bridge, looked down, and sighed just one word, "Salmon!"
We sought the Hôtel Beau-Site in silence.
Monuments of men's making create a diversity of atmospheres and call forth a diversity of reminiscences. They cause imagination to run riot in history. But nature is the same the world over, and there would be reactions and yearnings if one knew nothing of the past from books. There is no conflict. Nature transcends. We dreamed that night not of crusaders, but of Idaho and the Bitter Root Range.
CHAPTER V
VENCE
The most picturesque bit of mountain railway on the Riviera is the fourteen miles from Grasse to Vence. Yielding to a sudden impulse, we took it one afternoon. The train passed from Grasse through olive groves and fig orchards and over two viaducts. A third viaduct of eleven arches took us across the Loup. We were just at the season when the melting snows made a roaring torrent of what was most of the year a little stream lost in a wide gravel bed. The view up the gorge gave us the feeling of being in the heart of the mountains. And yet from the opposite windows of the train we could see the Mediterranean. Then we circled the little town of Tourettes at the foot of the Puy de Tourettes, with high cliffs in the background, and a wild luxurious growth of aloes below. We almost circled the village, crossing the ravines on either side on viaducts. A sixth long viaduct brought us to Vence. We had a rendezvous that evening at Cannes. There was no time to stop. We kept on to Nice to make the only connection that would get us back to Cannes.
Afterwards the Artist and I spoke often of Vence. Twice we planned to go to Vence, but found the fascination of Villeneuve-Loubet and Saint-Paul-du-Var justifiable deterrents.
On the terrace of our favorite café in the Allées de la Liberté at Cannes on Easter evening we announced the intention of making a special trip to Vence the next day.
"Tomorrow is Easter Monday, and the children have no school," said the Artist's hostess. "We shall make a family party of it, train to Cagnes where I may have a chance to see your Mademoiselle Simone, a trout luncheon at Villeneuve-Loubet with the rest of that bottle of which you boys spoke, and Vence in the afternoon."
The orders had been given. There was an early morning stir at the Villa Étoile, a scramble to the Théoule railway station, and before nine o'clock we were all aboard for the hour's ride to Cagnes. When we got off the train, there was just one cocher available. He looked at papa and mamma and Uncle Lester and the four babies and their nurse, and raised his hands to heaven. But Villeneuve-Loubet was not far off and we were careful to say nothing of the afternoon's program. Léonie and the children were packed into the carriage. The rest of us followed afoot.
Our cheerful host at Villeneuve-Loubet greeted us effusively. He had many holiday guests, but he remembered the Artist and me, and the splendid profit accruing from every drink out of the bottle only les Anglais called for. There were plenty of trout, fresh sliced cucumbers, and a special soup for the kiddies. The cocher was so amenable to Léonie's charms and to drinks that cost less than ours that he consented to further exertion for his horse. But the climb to Vence was out of the question—a physical impossibility, he declared. And we, having seen the horse at rest and in action, could only sorrowfully agree. It was too much of a job to maneuver all the children (the baby could not walk) to the tramway halt, nearly a mile away, and on and off the cars. The mother said that she could not be a good sport to the point of abandoning all her handicaps for several hours in a place where the river flowed fast and deep. So it was agreed that she would have at least the excursion to Saint-Paul-du-Var, and the Artist and I, determined this time on Vence, would see her the next evening for dinner at Cannes.
So we made our adieux, and hurried off to get the tram at the bifurcation below the castle. Half an hour later our tram passed the carriage jogging up the hill. As luck had it, we turned out just then on a switch to let the down car pass. The temptation of Vence was too much for Helen. The cocher seemed a fatherly sort of a man. There was a quick consultation from tram to carriage. A reunion with the handicaps was set for two hours later in front of the triple gate of Saint-Paul-du-Var, and another passenger got on the tram.
Around a curve we waved farewell to our children. After all, Vence was only three miles beyond Saint-Paul. As we passed the Saint-Paul halt, our old friend, the postman, was on the platform to receive the mailbag. We told him that the kiddies were coming, and slipped him ten francs to look after them until our return.
"Soyes tranquilles, M'sieu-dame," he reassured us. "Moi, je suis grand'père."
Beyond Saint-Paul the tramway left the road and climbed over a viaduct to Vence.
Ventium Cassaris was a military base of great importance in the days of imperial Rome. It was the central commissariat depot for the armies in Gaul, and had a forum and temples. During the Middle Ages it was a stronghold of the Holy Roman Empire. It stands on the side of a fertile hill more than a thousand feet above the sea. The site was probably chosen because of the wall of rocks on the north which shelter it from the mistral, a wind that the Romans found as little to their liking as later interlopers. In peace as in war the outside world has never been able to keep away from the Riviera.
The Artist announced his intention of spending a couple of days sketching, and left us to seek a hotel. Helen and I found that there was no tram to Saint-Paul-du-Var that would enable us to pick up the children in time for the train to Théoule unless we returned without seeing Vence. So we decided to give an hour to the town and walk back to Saint-Paul.
As at Grasse a boulevard runs along the line of the old fortifications. Some of the houses facing it have used the town wall for foundations or are themselves remnants of the wall. But at Vence the boulevard de l'enceinte is circular—a modest Ringstrasse, marking without interruption the old town from the new. We dipped in and out of alleys under arches, and made a turn of the streets of the old town. Much of the medieval still survives in Vence, as in other hill towns of the Riviera. But only behind the cathedral did we find a remnant of imperial Rome. A granite column supporting an arch, and reliefs and inscriptions built in the north wall of the cathedral, are all that we saw of Vence's latinity.
The cathedral, however, is the most interesting we found on the Riviera. It is a Romanesque building, built on the site of the second-century temple, and its tall battlemented tower harks back to a tenth-century château fort. The interior is striking: double aisles, simple nave with tiers of arches of the tenth century, a choir with richly carved oak stalls, a fourth-century sarcophagus for altar, and a font and lectern of the Italian Renaissance.
It was just a glimpse. But sometimes glimpses make more vivid memories than longer acquaintance. At the end of our hour we left Vence and hurried down the broad road of red shale past meadows thick with violets. We went through the deep pine-filled ravine over which we had crossed on the viaduct. Then the climb to Saint-Paul-du-Var.
