The “good King René,” in a later century, had a great affection for Hyères also, and was equally beloved by its inhabitants. One of his legacies to Jeanne de Provence were the salt-works of Hyères, which were even then in existence.
Hyères enjoyed a strenuous enough life through all these years, but the saddest event in its whole career was when the traitorous Connétable de Bourbon took the château and turned it over to France’s arch-enemy, Charles V.
Charles IX. visited Hyères and remained five days within its walls, “his progress having been made between two rows of fruit-bearing orange-trees, freshly planted in the streets through which he was to pass.” This flattery so pleased the monarch that he himself, so history, or legend, states, carved the following inscription upon the trunk of one of those same orange-trees, “Caroli Regis Amplexu Glorior.”
One of the most beautiful strips of coast-line on the whole Riviera lies between Hyères and Fréjus. A narrow-gauge railway makes its way almost at the water’s edge for the entire distance, and the coast road, a great departmental highway, follows the same route. The distance is too great—seventy-five kilometres or more—for the pedestrian, unless he is one who keeps up old-time traditions, but nevertheless there is but one way to enjoy this everchanging itinerary to the full, and that is to make the journey somehow or other by highroad. The automobile, a bicycle, or a gentle plodding burro will make the trip more enjoyable than is otherwise conceivable, even though the striking beauties which one sees from the slow-running little train give one a glimmer of satisfaction. Seventy-five kilometres, scarce fifty miles! It is nothing to an automobile, not much more to a bicycle, and only a two-days’ jaunt for a sure-footed little donkey, which you may hire anywhere in these parts for ten francs a day, including his keeper. No more shall be said of this altogether delightful method of travelling this short stretch of wonderland’s roadway, but the suggestion is thrown out for what it may be worth to any who would taste the joys of a new experience.
Close under the frowning height of Les Maures runs the coast road, for quite its whole length up to Fréjus, while on the opposite side, and beneath, are the surging, restless waves of the Mediterranean.
First one passes the Salines de Hyères, one of those great governmental salt-works which line the Mediterranean coast, and soon reaches La Londe, famous for its lead mines and the rude gaiety of its seven or eight hundred workmen, who on a Sunday go back to primitive conditions and eat, drink, and make merry in rather a Gargantuan manner. This will not have much interest for the lover of the beautiful, but up to this point he will have regaled himself with a promenade along a beautiful sea-bordered roadway, whose opposite side has been flanked with rose-laurel, palms, orange-trees, and many exotic plants and shrubs of semi-tropical lands.
From La Londe and its sordid industrialism one has twenty straight kilometres ahead of him until he reaches Bormes, a town which has been considered as a possible rival to Nice and Cannes, but which has never got beyond the outlining of sumptuous streets and boulevards and the erecting of two great hotels to which visitors do not come. It is an exquisite little town, the old bourg parallelled with the tracery of the new streets and avenues. Take it all in all, the site is about one of the best in the south for a winter station, though the non-proximity of the sea—a strong five kilometres away—may account for the slow growth of Bormes as a popular resort.
The old town is most picturesque, its tortuous, sloping streets ever mounting and descending and making vistas of doorways and window balconies which would make a scene-painter green with envy, everything is so theatrical. Like some of the little hill-towns of the country to the westward of Aix, Bormes is a reflection of Italy, although it has its own characteristics of manners and customs.
The country immediately around this little town of less than seven hundred souls is of an incomparable splendour. There is nothing exactly like it to be seen in the whole of Provence. In every direction are seen little scattered hamlets, or a group of two or three little houses hidden away amid groves of eucalyptus and thickets of mimosa, while the flanking panorama of Les Maures on one side, and the Mediterranean on the other, gives it all a setting which has a grandeur with nothing of the pretentious or spectacular about it. It is all focussed so finely, and it is so delicately coloured and outlined that it can only be compared to a pastel.
The Rade de Bormes, though it really has nothing to do with Bormes, a half a dozen kilometres distant, is another of those delightful bays which are scattered all along the Mediterranean shore. It has all the beauty which one’s fancy pictures, and the maker of high-coloured pictures would find his paradise along its banks, for there is a brilliancy about its ensemble that seems almost unnatural.