One marvels perhaps—when he sees these boxes of luscious cherries in the Paris market—as to how they may have been packed with such symmetry. It is very simple, though the writer had to see it done at Solliès-Pont before he realized it. The boxes are simply packed from the top downwards, so to speak. The first layer is packed in close rows, the stems all pointing upwards, then the rest of the contents are put in without plan or design, and the cover fastened down. When the packages are opened, it is the bottom that is lifted, and thus one sees first the rosy-red globules, all in rows, like the little wooden balls of the counting machines.
The south of France is destined to provision a great part of Europe, and already it is playing its part well. The cherries of Solliès-Pont go—after Paris has had its fill—to England, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, and Russia, though doubtless only the “milords” and millionaires get a chance at them.
Besides the consumption of the fruit au naturel, the cherries of the Var are the most preferred of all those delicacies which are preserved in brandy, and a cocktail, of any of the many varieties that are made in America (and one place, and one only, in Paris—which shall be nameless), with one of the cherries of Solliès-Pont drowned therein, is a superdelicious thing, unexcelled in all the “made drinks” the world knows to-day.
CHAPTER III.
THE REAL RIVIERA
THE real French Riviera is not the resorts of rank and fashion alone; it is the whole ensemble of that marvellous bit of coast-line extending eastward from Toulon to the Italian frontier. Topographically, geographically, and climatically it abounds in salient features which, in combination, are unknown in any similar strip of territory in all the world, though there is very little that is strange, outré, or exotic about any of its aspects. It is simply a combination of conditions which are indigenous to the sunny, sheltered shores of the northern Mediterranean, which are here blessed, owing to a variety of reasons, with a singularly equable climate and situation.
Doubtless the region is not the peer of southern California in topography or climate; indeed, without fear or favour, the statement is here made that it is not; but it has what California never has had, nor ever will, a history-strewn pathway traversing its entire length, where the monuments left by the ancient Greeks and Romans tell a vivid story of the past greatness of the progenitors and moulders of modern civilization.
This in itself should be enough to make the Riviera revered, as it justly is; but it is not this, but the gay life of those who neither toil nor spin that makes this world’s beauty-spot (for Monaco and Monte Carlo are assuredly the most beautiful spots in the world) so worshipped by those who have sojourned here.
This is wrong of course, but the simple life has not yet come to be the institution that its prophets would have us believe, and, after all, a passion of some sort is the birthright of every man, whether it be gambling at Monte Carlo, automobiling on sea or land, painting, or attempting to paint, the masterpieces of nature, or studying historic monuments. At any rate, all these diversions are here, and more, and, as one may pursue any of them under more idyllic conditions here than elsewhere, the Riviera is become justly famed—and notorious.
Not all Riviera visitors live in palatial hotels; some of them live en pension, which, like the boarding-house of other lands, has its undeniable advantage of economy, and its equally undeniable disadvantages too numerous to mention and needless to recall.
Of course the Riviera has undeniable social attractions, since it was developed (so far as the English—and Americans—are concerned) by that vain man, Lord Brougham.