Riviera Towns | Page 7

and foreigners. There is also a wireless station. All this
shuts off from the road the town on the hill. Unless you had seen it
from the open country, before coming into the modern Cagnes, you
would not have known that there was a hill and an old city. It was not
easy for us to find the way.
Built for legs and nothing else, the thoroughfare up through Cagnes is a
street that can be called straight and steep and stiff, the adjectives
coming to you without your seeking for alliteration, just as instinctively
as you take off your hat and out your handkerchief.
"No livery stable in this town--come five francs on it," said the Artist.
"Against five francs that there are no men with a waistline exceeding
forty-five inches!" I answered, feelingly and knowingly.
But we soon became so fascinated by our transition from the twentieth

century to the fifteenth that we forgot we were climbing. Effort is a
matter of mental attitude. Nothing in the world is hard when you are
interested in doing it.
Half way and half an hour up, we paused to take our bearings. The line
of houses, each leaning on its next lower neighbor, was broken here by
a high garden wall, from which creepers were overhanging the street,
with their fresh spring tendrils waving and curling above our heads.
There was an odor of honeysuckle and orange-blossoms, and the
blood-red branch of a judas-tree pushed its way through the green and
yellow. The canyon of the street, widening below us, ended in a rich
meadowland, dotted with villas and trees. Beyond, the Mediterranean
rose to the horizon. While the Artist was "taking it," the usual crowd
gathered around: children whose lack of bashfulness indicated that
many city people were here for the season or that tourists did find their
way up to Cagnes; women always eager to gossip with strangers,
especially with those from lands across the sea; old men proud to tell
you that their city was the most interesting, because the most ancient,
on the Riviera.
When we resumed our climb, the whole town seemed to be going our
way. Sunday-best and prayer-books gave the reason. Just as we were
coming to the top, our street made its first turn, a sharp one, and in the
bend was a church tower with a wee door under it. Houses crowded
closely around it. The tower was the only indication of the church. An
abbé was standing by the door, calling in the acolytes and choir boys
who were playing tag in the street. The Artist stopped, short. I went up
to the abbé, who by features and accent was evidently a Breton far
from home.
"Do any fat men live up here?" I asked.
"Only one," he answered promptly, with a hearty laugh. "The curé has
gone to the war, and last month the bishop sent a man to help me who
weighs over a hundred kilos. We have another church below in the new
town, and there are services in both, morning and afternoon. Low mass
here at six, and high masses there at eight and here at ten. Vespers here
at three and there at four-thirty. On the second Sunday my coadjutor

said he was going to leave at the end of the month. So, after next week,
there will be no fat man. Unless you have come to Cagnes to stay?"
The abbé twinkled and chuckled.
"It is not to laugh at," broke in an oldest inhabitant who had overheard.
"We live from ten to twenty years longer than the people of the plain,
who have railways and tramways and carriages and autos right to their
very doors. We get the mountain air from the Alps and the sea air from
the Mediterranean uncontaminated. It blows into every house without
passing through as much as a single neighbor's courtyard. But our long
lease on life is due principally to having to climb this hill. Stiffness,
rheumatism--we don't know what it means, and we stay fit right to the
very end. Look at me. I was a grown man when people first began to
know who Garibaldi was in Nice. We formed a corps of volunteers
right here in this town when Mazzini's republic was proclaimed to go to
defend Rome from the worst enemies of Italian unity, those
Vatican--But I beg M. le Curé's pardon! In those days of hot youth the
church, you know, did not mean--"
The abbé twinkled and chuckled again, and patted the old man's
shoulder affectionately. "When you did not follow Briand ten years ago,
it proved that half a century had wrought a happy change. I understand
anyway. I am a Breton that has taken root, as everyone here does, in
this