Had it not been for the moon, we should certainly have gone from the table to our rooms. But the full moon on the Riviera makes a more fascinating fairyland than one can find in dreams. We did not hesitate, when the last of our friends left, to follow them out-of-doors. Villeneuve-Loubet might prove to be a modest town tomorrow, old, of course, and interesting: but we were going to see it tonight under the spell of the moon. We were going to wander where we willed, with all the town to ourselves. We were going to live for an hour in the Middle Ages. For if there was anything modern in Villeneuve-Loubet, the moonlight would hide it or gloss it over; if there was anything ancient, the moonlight would enable us to see it as we wanted to see it. I pity the limited souls who do not believe in moonshine, and use the word contemptuously. One is illogical who contends that moonshine gives a false idea of things; for he is testing the moonshine impression by sunshine. It would be as illogical to say that sunshine gives a false idea of things on the ground that moonshine is the standard. If sunshine is reality, so is moonshine. The difference is that we are more accustomed to see things by sunlight than by moonlight. Our test of reality is familiarity, and of truth repetition.
Villeneuve-Loubet is built against a cliff. The houses rise on tiers of stone terraces. They are made of stone quarried on the spot. Red tiles, the conspicuous feature of Mediterranean cities, are lacking in Villeneuve-Loubet. The roofs are slabs of stone. The streets are the surface of the cliff. We climbed toward the castle through a ghost-city. The moon enhanced the gray-whiteness that was the common color of ground, walls and roofs. The shadows, sharp and black, were needed to set forth the lines of the buildings.
The picture called for a witch. The silence was broken by the tapping of a cane. Around the corner the witch hobbled into the scene, testing each step before her. She was dressed in black, of course, and bent over with just the curve of the back the Artist loves to give to his old women. She was a friendly soul, and did not seem amazed to find strangers strolling late at night in her town. We were "Anglais," and that was explanation enough to one who had seen three generations of tourists. She stopped to talk with us. When had we arrived at Villeneuve-Loubet? Had we come up from Nice that afternoon and did we plan to stay for a day or two with Jean Alphonse at the Hôtel Beau-Site? Did we not agree that Villeneuve-Loubet was superb? Perhaps we were artists? So many artists came here to paint and sketch the old houses. What was our impression of her country? We knew that she meant by "country" not France but Villeneuve-Loubet, and mustered our best vocabulary to admire the town, the solid foundations, the houses, the protecting castle, and above all, the unique streets of stone.
"But it must be very difficult to go up and down in winter. How do you manage when the rock is frozen over with snow and ice?" I asked.
"It does not freeze here," she answered.
The moon-whiteness had made me think of winter, and it had not occurred to me that there would be no snow and ice. Ideas are pervasive. We place them immediately and unquestioningly upon the hypothesis that happens to fit.
The church, of eighteenth-century architecture, is the last building at the upper end of the town. It stands on a terrace outside the lower wall of the castle, an eloquent witness of the survival of feudal ideas. In order that the lord of the manor need not go far to mass, when there happened to be no private chaplain in the castle, the town-folk must climb to their devotions. I tried the church door from habit. It was not locked. The Artist refused to go in.
"Why should one poke around a church, especially at night and this night?" he remonstrated, and walked over to the wall of the terrace.
"There may be something inside," I urged.
"There is something outside," he answered, with his back turned upon the castle as well as church.