The party then proceeded to Sospel. Their arrival caused some amazement, for even in 1366 it was unusual to see a reigning prince walking down the High Street followed by armed men and an esteemed citizen at whose heels a wild boar was limping like a faithful dog. The animal became a great pet, but it was probably a long time before Viteola’s wife was accustomed to the sight of a wild boar stretched out in front of the sitting-room fire.
When the robbers returned from Mentone and entered the cave with derisive cheers and coarse laughter they were surprised to find themselves seized by armed men from Gorbio and their valued citizen gone. These wicked men were, without any tedious inquiry, hanged from a tree which the chronicle states, with topographical precision, “stood by the pathway leading from Sospello to Mentone.”
XLI
TWO QUEER OLD TOWNS
A LUXURIANT valley of pure delight mounts inland from the sea by Mentone. It is a happy, friendly-looking valley, richly cultivated, full of orange groves and vineyards, of comfortable gardens and of merry mills. The valley ends suddenly in a vast amphitheatre of bare heights which shuts out all the world beyond. As if by a stroke of magic vegetation ceases and the green becomes grey. In the centre of the semicircle and on a steep promontory that commands the valley stands Gorbio, like a monument at the end of an avenue. It is eight kilometres by road from Mentone, for the way to it twists about like a wounded snake.
It is difficult to determine what adjective should be applied to Gorbio. The guide book says that it is picturesque, but the “Concise Oxford Dictionary” defines “picturesque” as “fit to be the subject of a striking picture.” Now there is nothing about Gorbio that is fit for a striking picture. It may be fit for pieces of a picture as they lie in a toy-box as parts of a puzzle town waiting to be put together. Then a visitor told me that Gorbio was “awfully quaint”; but there is little in Gorbio to excite awe and the dictionary says that “quaint” means that which is “piquant in virtue of unfamiliar, especially old fashioned, appearance.” This town is happily of unfamiliar appearance and is also without pretence to any fashion old or new, but yet it is not piquant, except in its smell.
It would rather be called a whimsical town, a medley, a revue of mediæval towns made up of selected fragments, an ancient mongrel of a town of involved and bewildering parentage. It is like three people all talking at once and in different languages. Those who regard a town as a place of habitation made by man, a place with streets, ordered residences, a square, a church and public buildings would maintain that Gorbio is not a town.
It begins well. It commences with an orthodox square containing a café on either side, an aged tree, a fountain, a postcard shop and a sleeping dog. All this is reassuring and in order. At one corner of the Place a few steps slope up to a gateway with a pointed arch. This also is quite a normal entry to a town. But once inside the gate everything is topsy-turvy and unexpected. You find yourself in a lane, but it is more like a passage through rocks than the high street of a town. The road at once dives under buildings and comes up in a narrow square on one side of which is an official-looking Mairie, very modern, with walls of a fashionable yellow, green sun-shutters and a flag pole. Opposite to it are some deserted houses of great age which are in a state of advanced decomposition.
A STREET IN GORBIO.