After all, however, to the lover of the picturesque Nice town itself is but the threshold and starting point for that lovely country which spreads on all sides its endless objects of interest and scenic beauty from Antibes to Mentone. The excursions to be made from it in every direction are simply endless. Close by lie the monastery and amphitheater of Cimiez; the Italianesque cloisters and campanile of St. Pons; the conspicuous observatory on the Mont Gros, with its grand Alpine views; the hillside promenades of Le Ray and Les Fontaines. Farther afield the carriage-road up the Paillon valley leads direct to St. André through a romantic limestone gorge, which terminates at last in a grotto and natural bridge, overhung by the moldering remains of a most southern château. A little higher up, the steep mountain track takes one on to Falicon, perched “like an eagle’s nest” on its panoramic hill-top, one of the most famous points of view among the Maritime Alps. The boundary hills of the Magnan, covered in spring with the purple flowers of the wild gladiolus; the vine-clad heights of Le Bellet, looking down on the abrupt and rock-girt basin of the Var; the Valley of Hepaticas, carpeted in March with innumerable spring blossoms; the longer drive to Contes in the very heart of the mountains: all alike are lovely, and all alike tempt one to linger in their precincts among the shadow of the cypress trees or under the cool grottos green and lush with spreading fronds of wild maidenhair.
Among so many delicious excursions it were invidious to single out any for special praise; yet there can be little doubt that the most popular, at least with the general throng of tourists, is the magnificent coast-road by Villefranche (or Villafranca) to Monte Carlo and Monaco. This particular part of the coast, between Nice and Mentone, is the one where the main range of the Maritime Alps, abutting at last on the sea, tumbles over sheer with a precipitous descent from four thousand feet high to the level of the Mediterranean. Formerly, the barrier ridge could only be surmounted by the steep but glorious Corniche route; of late years, however, the French engineers, most famous of road-makers, have hewn an admirable carriage-drive out of the naked rock, often through covered galleries or tunnels in the cliff itself, the whole way from Nice to Monte Carlo and Mentone. The older portion of this road, between Nice and Villefranche, falls well within the scope of our present subject.
You leave modern Nice by the quays and the Pont Garibaldi, dash rapidly through the new broad streets that now intersect the Italian city, skirt the square basins lately added to the more shapeless ancient Greek port of Limpia, and begin to mount the first spurs of the Mont Boron among the villas and gardens of the Quartier du Lazaret. Banksia roses fall in cataracts over the walls as you go; looking back, the lovely panorama of Nice opens out before your eyes. In the foreground, the rocky islets of La Réserve foam white with the perpetual plashing of that summer sea. In the middle distance, the old Greek harbor, with its mole and lighthouse, stands out against the steep rocks of the Castle Hill. The background rises up in chain on chain of Alps, allowing just a glimpse at their base of that gay and fickle promenade and all the Parisian prettinesses of the new French town. The whole forms a wonderful picture of the varied Mediterranean world, Greek, Roman, Italian, French, with the vine-clad hills and orange-groves behind merging slowly upward into the snow-bound Alps.
Turning the corner of the Mont Boron by the grotesque vulgarisms of the Château Smith (a curious semi-oriental specimen of the shell-grotto order of architecture on a gigantic scale) a totally fresh view bursts upon our eyes of the Rade de Villefranche, that exquisite land-locked bay bounded on one side by the scarped crags of the Mont Boron itself, and on the other by the long and rocky peninsula of St. Jean, which terminates in the Cap Ferrat and the Villefranche light. The long deep bay forms a favorite roadstead and rendezvous for the French Mediterranean squadron, whose huge ironclad monsters may often be seen ploughing their way in single file from seaward round the projecting headlands, or basking at ease on the calm surface of that glassy pond. The surrounding heights, of course, bristle with fortifications, which, in these suspicious days of armed European tension, the tourist and the sketcher are strictly prohibited from inspecting with too attentive an eye. The quaintly picturesque town of Villefranche itself, Italian and dirty, but amply redeemed by its slender bell-tower and its olive-clad terraces, nestles snugly at the very bottom of its pocket-like bay. The new road to Monte Carlo leaves it far below, with true modern contempt for mere old-world beauty; the artist and the lover of nature will know better than to follow the example of those ruthless engineers; they will find many subjects for a sketch among those whitewashed walls, and many a rare sea-flower tucked away unseen among those crannied crags.
And now, when all is said and done, I, who have known and loved Nice for so many bright winters, feel only too acutely how utterly I have failed to set before those of my readers who know it not the infinite charms of that gay and rose-wreathed queen of the smiling Riviera. For what words can paint the life and movement of the sparkling sea-front? the manifold humors of the Jardin Public? the southern vivacity of the washer-women who pound their clothes with big stones in the dry bed of the pebbly Paillon? the luxuriant festoons of honeysuckle and mimosa that drape the trellis-work arcades of Carabacel and Cimiez? Who shall describe aright with one pen the gnarled olives of Beaulieu and the palace-like front of the Cercle de la Méditerranée? Who shall write with equal truth of the jewelers’ shops on the quays, of the oriental bazaars of the Avenue, and of the dome after dome of bare mountain tops that rise ever in long perspective to the brilliant white summits of the great Alpine backbone? Who shall tell in one breath of the carmagnoles of the Carnival, or the dust-begrimed bouquets of the Battle of Flowers, and of the silent summits of the Mont Cau and the Cime de Vinaigrier, or the vast and varied sea-view that bursts on the soul unawares from the Corniche near Eza? There are aspects of Nice and its environs which recall Bartholomew Fair, or the Champs Élysées after a Sunday review; and there are aspects which recall the prospect from some solemn summit of the Bernese Oberland, mixed with some heather-clad hill overlooking the green Atlantic among the Western Highlands. Yet all is so graciously touched and lighted with Mediterranean color and Mediterranean sunshine, that even in the midst of her wildest frolics you can seldom be seriously angry with Nice. The works of God’s hand are never far off. You look up from the crowd of carriages and loungers on the Promenade des Anglais, and the Cap Ferrat rises bold and bluff before your eyes above the dashing white waves of the sky-blue sea: you cross the bridge behind the Casino amid the murmur of the quays, and the great bald mountains soar aloft to heaven above the brawling valley of the snow-fed Paillon. It is a desecration, perhaps, but a desecration that leaves you still face to face with all that is purest and most beautiful in nature.
And then, the flowers, the waves, the soft air, the sunshine! On the beach, between the bathing places, men are drying scented orange peel to manufacture perfumes: in the dusty high roads you catch whiffs as you pass of lemon blossom and gardenia: the very trade of the town is an expert trade in golden acacia and crimson anemones: the very gamins pelt you in the rough horse-play of the Carnival with sweet-smelling bunches of syringa and lilac. Luxury that elsewhere would move one to righteous wrath is here so democratic in its display that one almost condones it. The gleaming white villas, with carved caryatides or sculptured porches of freestone nymphs, let the wayfarer revel as he goes in the riches of their shrubberies or their sunlit fountains and in the breezes that blow over their perfumed parterres. Nice vulgar! Pah, my friend, if you say so, I know well why. You have a vulgar soul that sees only the gewgaws and the painted ladies. You have never strolled up by yourself from the noise and dust of the crowded town to the free heights of the Mont Alban or the flowery olive-grounds of the Magnan valley. You have never hunted for purple hellebore among the gorges of the Paillon or picked orchids and irises in big handfuls upon the slopes of Saint André. I doubt even whether you have once turned aside for a moment from the gay crowd of the Casino and the Place Masséna into the narrow streets of the Italian town; communed in their own delicious dialect with the free fisherfolk of the Limpia quarter; or looked out with joy upon the tumbled plain of mountain heights from the breezy level of the Castle platform. Probably you have only sat for days in the balcony of your hotel, rolled at your ease down the afternoon Promenade, worn a false nose at the evening parade of the Carnival, or returned late at night by the last train from Monte Carlo with your pocket much lighter and your heart much heavier than when you left by the morning express in search of fortune. And then you say Nice is vulgar! You have no eyes, it seems, for sea, or shore, or sky, or mountain; but you look down curiously at the dust in the street, and you mutter to yourself that you find it uninteresting. When you go to Nice again, walk alone up the hills to Falicon, returning by Le Ray, and then say, if you dare, Nice is anything on earth but gloriously beautiful.
VII
THE RIVIERA