Riviera Towns

by Herbert Adams Gibbons

"Pure nonsense!" was her disrespectful answer. "With all the young men away, the one thing to do is to make the music go."

I had to speak in order to be noticed. "So even in Cagnes the young girls know how to give orders to M. le Curé? The Holy Father's encyclical—" I could stop without finishing the sentence, for I had succeeded. The dancing eyes and the moue now included me.

"M. l'Abbé, it is time for the service," she said firmly. "If this Anglais comes in, he will see that I have reason."

She disappeared. The abbé looked after her indulgently, shrugged his shoulders, with the palms of his hands spread heavenward, and followed her.

In the meantime the worshipers, practically all of them women and children, had been turning corners above and below. I made the round of the group of buildings, and saw only little doors here and there at different levels. There was no portal, no large main entrance. When I came back to the bend of the road, the music had started. I was about to enter the tower door—Mademoiselle Simone's!—when I saw the Artist put up his pencil. The service would last for some time, so I joined him, and we continued to mount.

Above the church tower, steps led to the very top of the hill, which was crowned by a château. Skirting its walls, we came to an open place. On the side of the hill looking towards the Alps, a spacious terrace had been built out far beyond the château wall. Along the parapet were a number of primitive tables and benches. The tiny café from which they were served was at the end of a group of nondescript buildings that had probably grown up on a ruined bastion of the château. Seated at one of these tables, you see the Mediterranean from Nice to Antibes, with an occasional steamer and a frequent sailing-vessel, the Vintimille rapide (noting its speed by the white engine smoke), one tramway climbing by Villeneuve-Loubet towards Grasse and another by Saint-Paul-du-Var to Vence, and more than a semi-circle of the horizon lost in the Alps.

The Sunday afternoon animation in the place was wholly masculine. No woman was visible except the white-coiffed grandmother who served the drinks. The war was not the only cause of the necessity of Mademoiselle Simone's opposition to antiphonal Gregorian singing. I fear that the lack of male voices in the vesper service is a chronic one, and that Mademoiselle Simone's attempt to put life into the service would have been equally justifiable before the tragic period of la guerre. For the men of Cagnes were engrossed in the favorite sport of the Midi, jeu aux boules. I have never seen a more serious group of Tartarins. From Monsieur le Maire to cobbler and blacksmith, all were working very hard. A little ball that could be covered in one's fist is thrown out on the common by the winner of the last game. The players line up, each with a handful of larger wooden balls about the size and weight of those that are used in croquet. You try to roll or throw your balls near the little one that serves as goal. Simple, you exclaim. Yes, but not so simple as golf. For the hazard of the ground is changed with each game.

Interest in what people around you are doing is the most compelling interest in the world. Train yourself to be oblivious to your neighbor's actions and your neighbor's thoughts, on the ground that curiosity is the sign of the vulgarian and indifference the sign of the gentleman, and you succeed in making yourself colossally stupid. Here lies the weakest point in Anglo-Saxon culture. The players quickly won me from the view. Watch one man at play, and you can read his character. He is an open book before you. Watch a number of men at play, and you are shown the general masculine traits of human nature. Generosity, decision, alertness, deftness, energy, self-control—meanness, hesitation, slowness, awkwardness, laziness, impatience: you have these characteristics and all the shades between them. The humblest may have admirable and wholesome virtues lacking in the highest, but a balance of them all weighs and marks one Monsieur le Maire or the stonebreaker on the road.

The councils of Generals at Verdun did not take more seriously in their day the problem of moving their men nearer the fortress than were these players the problem of rolling their big balls near the little ball. Had the older men been the only group, I should have got the idea that jeu aux boules is a game where the skill is all in cautious playing. But there were young chasseurs alpins, home on leave from the front, who were playing the game in an entirely different way. Instead of making each throw as if the destinies of the world were at stake, the soldiers played fast and vigorously, aiming rather to knock the opponent's ball away from a coveted position near the goal than to reach the goal. The older men's balls, to the number of a couple of dozen, clustered around the goal at the end of a round. Careful marking, by cane-lengths, shoe-lengths and handkerchief-lengths preceded agreement as to the winner. At the end of a round of the chasseurs alpins, two or three balls remained: the rest had gone wide of the mark, or had been knocked many feet from the original landing-place by a successor's throw. During half an hour I did not see the young men measure once. The winning throw was every time unmistakable.

The Artist leaned against the château wall, putting it down. The thought of Mademoiselle Simone, playing the organ, came to me. How was the music going? I must not miss that service. The view and the château and the jeu aux boules no longer held me. Down the steps I went, and entered the first of the church doors. It was on the upper level, and took me into the gallery; I was surprised to find so large a church. One got no idea of its size from the outside.