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.
