The snow still lying on the crests of the Maritime Alps and the intermediate ranges broken into fantastic forms, the lovely range of red porphyry Esterel to the south, with the intensely blue sea drawing a thread of silver about its base, together made a picture of incomparable loveliness.
The sun was so hot that the horses had already assumed their summer hats. "A good man is merciful to his beast," and the good-hearted peasants of the Riviera and Provence, thinking that their horses must suffer from the burning heat of the sun, provide, them with straw hats, very much the same sort of hats as girls wear, adorned also with ribbons and rosettes, but to suit the peculiarity of formation of the horse's head, two holes are cut in the hat through which the ears are drawn. The effect is comical when you are being driven in a carriage with a pair of horses before you wearing straw hats, and their ears protruding, one on each side, like the horns in the helmets of mediæval German knights. One lovely glimpse of the sea I got that I shall never forget. The blue sea was in the background gleaming; against it stood a belt of sombre cypresses; before the cypresses the silvery, smoke-grey tufts of olive, in a grove; and before the olive, in mid-distance, a field of roses in young claret-red foliage—a landscape of belts of colour right marvellous.
[Illustration: A Horse in a Hat.]
Then Antibes—a blue bay with castle on one horn, on the other the little town, its lighthouse, and a couple of bold towers.
It was at Cannes that Prince Honoré IV. of Monaco encountered Napoleon in 1815, as he was returning from Paris in his carriage to take possession of his principality, that had been restored to him by the Treaty of Paris in 1814.
The Grenadiers of the Imperial Guard stopped his carriage, made the prince descend, and conducted him before a little man with clean-cut features, whom he at once knew as the Emperor—returned from Elba.
"Où allez-vous, Monaco?" asked Napoleon bluntly.
"Sire," replied Honoré IV., "je vais à la découverte de mon royaume."
The Emperor smiled.
"Voilà une singulière rencontre, monsieur," said Napoleon. "Deux majestés sans place; mais ce n'est peut-être pas la peine de vous déranger. Avant huit jours je serai à Paris, et je me verrai forcé de vous renverser du trône, mon cousin. Revenez plutôt avec moi, je vous nommerai sous-préfet de Monaco, si vous y tenez beaucoup."