"The Old Town takes you far from the psychology of cosmopolitanism and the philosophy of hedonism."
A mountain stream of varying volume, but always a river before the end of Lent, separates the ville des étrangers from the vieille ville. The Paillon, as it is called, disappears at the Square Masséna, and finds its way to sea through an underground channel. From the center of the city you cross the Paillon by the Pont Garibaldi or the Pont Vieux. Or you can enter the Old Town from the Place Masséna and the Rue Saint-François de Paule, which leads into the Cours Saleya. Here is the most wonderful flower market in the world, with vegetables and fruit and fowls encroaching upon the Place de la Préfecture. Behind the Préfecture you can lose yourself in a labyrinth of narrow streets that indicate the Italian origin of Nice. If you bear always to the right, however, you either make a circle or come out at the foot of the Château.
East of the Jardin Public, the Promenade des Anglais becomes the Quai du Midi, renamed Quai des Etats-Unis in the short-lived burst of enthusiasm of 1918. At least, the aldermen of Nice were more cautious than those of most French cities, and did not call it Quai du Président-Wilson nel dolce tempo de la prima etade! Following the quay and keeping the Old Town on the left, you come to the castle hill, still called the Château, although the great fortress of the Savoyards was destroyed by the Duke of Berwick in the siege of 1706. The hill is now a park, surmounted by a terrace, and is well worth the climb to look down upon the city and the Baie des Anges, especially at sunset. At the end of the Quai du Midi (excuse my diffidence, the Quai des Etats-Unis) stands the low Tour Bellanda, the only tower remaining of the old fortifications. The Château is a promontory, and when you take the road which skirts it, be sure to hold tight to your hat. The Niçois call the windy corner Rauba Capéu (Hat Robber).
Now you are in still another Nice, the Port, protected by a long jetty, on which is perched a lighthouse. The Niçois, traditionally seafaring folk, are proud of their little port, with its clean-cut solid stone quays. Steam-born transportation on land and sea, demanding facilities undreamed of in the good old days and tending to concentration of trade at Marseilles and Genoa, has prevented the maritime development of Nice. But there is local coast traffic and competition with Cannes and Monte Carlo for yachts. Fishing and pleasure sailing add to the volume of tonnage. And the Niçois do not let you forget that their city is the port for Corsica.
Beyond the harbor, the Boulevard de l'Impératrice de Russie leads to Villefranche. Another name to change! In the midst of what is most beautiful we cannot get away from tragedies, from reminders of blasted hopes.
CHAPTER X
ANTIBES
Between Menton and Monte Carlo the coast is broken by Cap Martin, between Monte Carlo and Nice by Cap Ferrat, between Nice and Cannes by Cap d'Antibes. The capes are larger and longer as we go west, just as the distances between more important towns grow longer. Although it does not seem so to the tourist, it is much farther from Nice to Cannes than from Nice to Menton. The eastern end of the Riviera is so crowded with things to see, and town follows town in such rapid succession, that you think you have gone a long way from Nice to the Italian frontier. And except for skipping the two larger promontories, railway and tramway alike follow right along the coast. From Nice to Cannes, the tramway is inland from the railway. So is the automobile road. You fly along at a rapid rate, with only rare glimpses of the sea, and pass through few villages until you reach Antibes.
From Nice, from Saint-Paul-du-Var, and from Cagnes you cannot see the Riviera coast beyond Antibes. The Cape, with its lighthouse and fort, is your horizon. This corresponds with history as well as with geography: for the Cap d'Antibes was the old Franco-Italian frontier. It is still in a very real sense a boundary line. The word Riviera, which has kept its Italian form, was applied historically to the coast lands of the Gulf of Genoa. From Antibes to Genoa we had the Riviera di Ponente, and from Genoa to Spezia the Riviera di Levante. Only after Napoleon III exacted the district of Nice as part payment for French intervention in the Italian war of liberation was the term "French Riviera" gradually extended to include the coast far west of Antibes.