Now there is little of the fisher village about St. Jean, not even the smell. There are certainly nets and boats and an appropriate brawniness about the people; but the fisher village element is wanting. St. Jean is, in fact, a popular resort for the humbler type of holiday folk, a place they can reach in the beloved tram and where they can eat and drink and be merry. The whole quay front is occupied by bars, cafés and restaurants, where langouste can be enjoyed and that rare dish the bouillabaisse which is claimed to be a speciality of the place.
St. Hospice would not approve of St. Jean in its present guise and could he find the way back to his tower he would be horrified by the placards of “American drinks” and “Afternoon teas.” There is no missionary spirit abroad in St. Jean, nothing of the old monastic life. The early morning fishermen would never again expect to see a stream of blood creeping over the tide. St. Jean, in fact, is no longer adapted for miracles; while its romance goes little beyond the romance of a lunch in the open air by a harbour-side.
VILLEFRANCHE.
Beyond St. Jean is the point of Cap de St. Hospice, a low, rocky promontory covered with firs, olive trees and cactus. On the extremity of the cape is the tower erected by Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, in 1561. It is a structure in yellowish stone, plain, round and squat, with a few emplacements for small guns on its summit and a few narrow slits in its uncompromising flanks. It is as insolent and as defiant a structure as can be imagined. By its side is placed a most astonishing object—a newly-made statue of the Virgin, some 28 feet in height and nearly as tall as the tower itself. The statue stands on the grass facing the east, is of a bilious tint but otherwise unpainted. Few more incongruous things have ever been brought together in this world. The statue is so very modern, so artificial and so frail; while the tower is so old, so primitive and so coarse in its braggart strength. The statue, it appears, was provided by the subscriptions of the faithful, but want of funds or want of purpose has prevented its being placed on the top of the tower where it was intended that it should ultimately stand.
The tower has walls of enormous thickness. An upper story can be reached by a stair and there the visitor will be brought face to face with the most substantial apparition that has ever been found in a mediæval stronghold. He will find himself, when near the roof, confronted by the ashen face of the Madonna, a face as big as a boulder, for the tower is occupied by a model of the statue which is of the same proportions as the stupendous image itself. To complete the anomalies of this remarkable household the ground floor of the tower is occupied by a family surrounded by the amenities of a cave dwelling.
Beyond the tower is the chapel of St. Hospice. It is a humble, barn-like little church with a roof of red tiles and a bell gable. It is comparatively modern, for it has been in existence for just one hundred years. It is only opened once annually—viz. on October 16th—for the celebration of the Mass.
The spot on which it may reasonably be assumed that the monastery of St. Hospice stood is occupied by a café-restaurant where dancing is indulged in on Sundays and holidays to the music of a pianola. One wonders what the saint—who was eloquent and forcible of speech—would say if he could visit again the cape that bears his name.
There are some half-buried fragments of old walls on the promontory, and these the imaginative man, if free from scruples, can assume to belong to whatever building and whatever period in the history of the place he may particularly affect.