At the camera obscura kiosk postcards are sold together with articles which the vendor asserts are souvenirs and mementoes of La Turbie. These things for remembrance are hard to understand. One wonders why a polished slate inkstand from Paris, a mineral from (possibly) a Cornish mine, a sea-shell from the tropics or some beads from Cairo should call to mind a mediæval town in Provence and the wars of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines.
When the pilgrim in his progress has passed both the man with the carpet and the things that will keep green the memory of La Turbie he can enjoy the view that opens out on the edge of the cliff. It is a view that not even a camera obscura can enhance. There is the line of coast that sweeps from Bordighera on the east to the Esterels on the west; while below, as a bright splash of yellow, white and red, is Monte Carlo. The spectator looks directly down upon Monte Carlo as he would view a thing on the pavement from the top of a tower. It is not often that one can see at a glance an entire European state from frontier to frontier and from seaboard to hinterland; but here is laid out before the eye every foot of the principality of Monaco as complete as on a map.
Monte Carlo is largely a display of roofs among which it is possible to pick out those of familiar hotels and those of the villas of friends. There is an odd sense of indelicacy about the bold inspection of a friend’s roof. There is nothing indecent about a roof but there is an impression of spying, of looking down the chimneys and of taking advantage of an exceptional position, for a roof is not the best part of a house and in the case of friends it somehow comes into the category of things that you ought not to see.
A STREET IN LA TURBIE.
LA TURBIE: OLD WINDOWS IN RUE DROITE.
The most precious object in La Turbie is the Monument, although it is now in a state of woeful decay. It stands in a dismal waste where clothes are spread out to dry and where fowls wander about scratching, as if searching for Roman remains. It is surrounded by houses which appear to have contracted the leprous complaint which has attacked the great trophy. As a monument of melancholy it is not to be surpassed. As a place of dreariness the spot where it is found can hardly be exceeded in pathos. It needs only the solitary figure of Job, sitting on a broken column with his face buried in his hands, to complete the picture of its desolation.