Our climb to La Turbie was in every respect delightful. We stopped often to comment on the cathedral-like character of the peaks, to speculate as to the age of the stone huts.
About half way up we came to a little inn called the Corniche, which really hangs on the cornice of this great range, commanding the wide, blue sweep of the Mediterranean below; and here, under the shade of umbrella trees and cypresses and with the mimosa in full bloom and with some blossom which Barfleur called “cherry-pie” blowing everywhere, we took seats at a little green table to have a pot of tea. It is an American inn—this Corniche—with an American flag fluttering high on a white pole, and an American atmosphere not unlike that of a country farmhouse in Indiana. There were some chickens scratching about the door; and at least three canaries in separate bright brass cages hung in the branches of the surrounding trees. They sang with tremendous energy. With the passing of a muleteer, whose spotted cotton shirt and earth-colored trousers and dusty skin bespoke the lean, narrow life of the peasant, we discussed wealth and poverty, lavish expenditure and meager subsistence, the locust-like quality of the women of fashion and of pleasure, who eat and eat and gorge and glut themselves of the showy things of life without aim or even thought; the peasant on this mountainside, with perhaps no more than ten cents a day to set his beggar board, while below the idle company in the Casino, shining like a white temple from where we sat, were wasting thousands upon thousands of dollars hourly. Barfleur agreed most solemnly with it all. He was quite sympathetic. The tables there, he said, even while we looked, were glutted with gold, and the Prince of Monaco was building, with his surplus earnings, useless marine museums which no one visited.
I was constantly forgetting in our peregrinations about the neighborhood how small the Principality of Monaco is. I am sure it would fit nicely into ten city blocks. A large portion of Monte Carlo encroaches on French territory—only the Casino, the terrace, the heights of Monaco belong to the Principality. One-half of a well-known restaurant there, I believe, is in Monaco and the other half in France. La Turbie, on the heights here, the long road we had come, almost everything in fact, was in France. We went into the French post-office to mail cards and then on to the French restaurant commanding the heights. This particular restaurant commands a magnificent view. A circle about which the automobiles turned in front of its door was supported by a stone wall resting on the sharp slope of the mountain below. All the windows of its principal dining-room looked out over the sea, and of the wonderful view I was never weary. The room had an oriental touch, and the white tables and black-coated waiters accorded ill with this. Still it offered that smartness of service which only the French restaurants possess.
Barfleur was for waiting for Scorp who had not arrived. I was for eating, as I was hungry. Finally we sat down to luncheon and we were consuming the sweet when in he came. His brownish-black eyes burned with their usual critical fire. If Sir Scorp had been born with a religious, reforming spirit instead of a penchant for art he would have been a St. Francis of Assisi. As it was, without anything to base it on, except Barfleur’s gormandizing propensities, he had already established moral censorship over our actions.
“Ah, here you are, eating as usual,” he observed with that touch of lofty sarcasm which at once amused and irritated me. “No excursion without a meal as its object.”
“Sit down, El Greco,” I commented, “and note the beautiful view. This should delight your esthetic soul.”
“It might delight mine, but I am not so sure about yours. Barfleur would certainly see nothing in it if there were not a restaurant here—ha!”
“I found a waiter here who used to serve me in the Café Royal in London,” observed Barfleur cheerfully.
“Now we can die content,” sighed Scorp. “We have been recognized by a French waiter on the Riviera. Ha! Never happy,” he added, turning to me, “unless he is being recognized by waiters somewhere—his one claim to glory.”
We went out to see the ruined monument to Augustus Cæsar, crumbling on this high mountain and commanding the great blue sweep of the Mediterranean below. There were a number of things in connection with this monument which were exceedingly interesting. It illustrated so well the Roman method of construction: a vast core of rubble and brick, faced with marble. Barfleur informed me that only recently the French government had issued an order preventing the removal of any more of the marble, much of which had already been stolen, carted away or cut up here into other forms. Immense marble drums of pure white stone were still lying about, fallen from their places; and in the surrounding huts of the peasant residents of La Turbie could be seen parts of once noble pillars set into the fabric of their shabby doorways or used as corner-stones to support their pathetic little shelters. I recall seeing several of these immense drums of stone set at queer angles under the paper walls of the huts, the native peasants having built on them as a base, quite as a spider might attach its gossamer net to a substantial bush or stone. I reflected at length on the fate of greatness and how little the treasures of one age may be entrusted to another. Time and chance, dullness and wasteful ignorance, lie in wait for them all.