Kitabı oku: «Mentone, Cairo, and Corfu»

AT MENTONE

I

 
"Kennst du das Land wo die Citronen blühen?"
 

– GOETHE

It is of no consequence why or how we came to Mentone. The vast subject of health and health resorts, of balancings between Torquay and Madeira, Algeria and Sicily, and, in a smaller sphere, between Cannes, Nice, Mentone, and San Remo, may as well be left at one side while we happily imitate the Happy-thought Man's trains in Bradshaw, which never "start," but "arrive." We therefore arrived. Our party, formed not by selection, or even by the survival of the fittest (after the ocean and Channel), but simply by chance aggregation, was now composed of Mrs. Trescott and her daughter Janet, Professor Mackenzie, Miss Graves, the two youths Inness and Baker, my niece, and myself, myself being Jane Jefferson, aged fifty, and my niece Margaret Severin, aged twenty-eight.

As I said above, we were an aggregation. The Trescotts had started alone, but had "accumulated" (so Mrs. Trescott informed me) the Professor. The Professor had started alone, and had accumulated the Trescotts. Inness and Baker had started singly, but had first accumulated each other, and then ourselves; while Margaret and I, having accumulated Miss Graves, found ourselves, with her, imbedded in the aggregation, partly by chance and partly by that powerful force propinquity. Arriving at Mentone, our aggregation went unbroken to the Hôtel des Anglais, in the East Bay – the East Bay, the Professor said, being warmer than the West: the Professor had been at Mentone before. "The East Bay," he explained, "is warmer because more closely encircled by the mountains, which rise directly behind the house. The West Bay has more level space, and there are several little valleys opening into it, through which currents of air can pass; it is therefore cooler, but only a matter of two or three degrees." It was evening, and our omnibus proceeded at a pace adapted to the "Dead March" from Saul through a street so narrow and walled in that it was like going through catacombs. Only, as Janet remarked, they did not crack whips in the catacombs, and here the atmosphere seemed to be principally cracks. But the Professor brought up the flagellants who might have been there, and they remained up until we reached our destination. We decided that the cracking of whips and the wash of the sea were the especial sounds of Mentone; but the whips ceased at nightfall, and the waves kept on, making a soft murmurous sound which lulled us all to restful slumber. We learned later that all vehicles are obliged, by orders from the town authorities, to proceed at a snail's pace through the narrow street of the "old town," the city treasury not being rich enough to pay for the number of wooden legs and arms which would be required were this rule disregarded.

The next morning when we opened our windows there entered the Mediterranean Sea. It is the bluest water in the world; not a clear cold blue like that of the Swiss lakes, but a soft warm tint like that of June sky, shading off on the horizon, not into darker blue or gray, but into the white of opal and mother-of-pearl. With the sea came in also the sunshine. The sunshine of Mentone is its glory, its riches, its especial endowment. Day follows day, month follows month, without a cloud; the air is pure and dry, fog is unknown. "The sun never stops shining;" and to show that this idea, which soon takes possession of one there, is not without some foundation, it can be stated that the average number of days upon which the sun does shine, as the phrase is, all day long is two hundred and fifty-nine; that is, almost nine months out of the twelve. "All the world is cheered by the sun," writes Shakespeare; and certainly "cheer" is the word that best expresses the effect of the constant sunshine of Mentone.

We all came to breakfast with unclouded foreheads; even the three fixed wrinkles which crossed Mrs. Trescott's brow (she always alluded to them as "midnight oil") were not so deep as usual, and her little countenance looked as though it had been, if not ironed, at least smoothed out by the long sleep in the soft air. She floated into the sunny breakfast-room in an aureola of white lace, with Janet beside her, and followed by Inness and Baker. Margaret and I had entered a moment before with Miss Graves, and presently Professor Mackenzie joined us, radiating intelligence through his shining spectacles to that extent that I immediately prepared myself for the "Indeeds?" "Is it possibles?" "You surprise me," with which I was accustomed to assist him, when, after going all around the circle in vain for an attentive eye, he came at last to mine, which are not beautiful, but always, I trust, friendly to the friendless. Yet so self-deceived is man that I have no doubt but that if at this moment interrogated as to his best listener during that journey and sojourn at Mentone, he would immediately reply, "Miss Trescott."

People were coming in and out of the room while we were there, the light Continental "first breakfast" of rolls and coffee or tea not detaining them long. Two, however, were evidently loitering, under a flimsy pretext of reading the unflimsy London Times, in order to have a longer look at Janet; these two were Englishmen. Was Janet, then, beautiful? That is a question hard to answer. She was a slender, graceful girl with a delicate American face, small, well-poised head, sweet voice, quiet manner, and eyes – well, yes, the expression in Janet's eyes was certainly a remarkable endowment. It could never be fixed in colors; it cannot be described in ink; it may perhaps be faintly indicated as each gazing man's ideal promised land. And this centre was surrounded by such a blue and childlike unconsciousness that every new-comer tumbled in immediately, as into a blue lake, and never emerged.

"You have been roaming, Professor," said Mrs. Trescott, as he took his seat; "you have a fine breezy look of the sea. I heard the wa-ash, wa-ash, upon the beach all night. But you have been out early, communing with Aurora. Do not deny it."

The Professor had no idea of denying it. "I have been as far as the West Bay," he said, taking a roll. "Mentone has two bays, the East, where we are, and the West, the two being separated by the port and the 'old town.' Behind us, on the north, extends the double chain of mountains, the first rising almost directly from the sea, the second and higher chain behind, so that the two together form a screen, which completely protects this coast. Thus sheltered, and opening only towards the south, the bays of Mentone are like a conservatory, and we like the plants growing within." (This, for the Professor, was quite poetical.)

"I have often thought that to be a flower in a conservatory would be a happy lot," observed Janet. "One could have of the perfumes, sit still all the time, and never be out in the rain."

"I trust, Miss Trescott, you have not often been exposed to inclement weather?" said the Professor, looking up.

He meant rain; but Mrs. Trescott, who took it upon herself to answer him, always meant metaphor. "Not yet," she answered; "no inclement weather yet for my child, because I have stood between. But the time may come when, that barrier removed – " Here she waved her little claw-like hand, heavy with gems, in a sort of sepulchral suggestiveness, and took refuge in coffee.

The Professor, who supposed the conversation still concerned the weather, said a word or two about the excellent English umbrella he had purchased in London, and then returned to his discourse. "The first mountains behind us," he remarked, "are between three and four thousand feet high; the second chain attains a height of eight and nine thousand feet, and, stretching back, mingles with the Swiss Alps. Our name is Alpes Maritimes; we run along the coast in this direction" (indicating it on the table-cloth with his spoon), "and at Genoa we become the Apennines. The winter climate of Mentone is due, therefore, to its protected situation; cold winds from the north and northeast, coming over these mountains behind us, pass far above our heads, and advance several miles over the sea before they fall into the water. The mistral, too, that scourge of Southern France, that wind, cold, dry, and sharp, bringing with it a yellow haze, is unknown here, kept off by a fortunately placed shoulder of mountain running down into the sea on the west."

"Indeed?" I said, seeing the search for a listener beginning.

"Yes," he replied, starting on anew, encouraged, but, as usual, not noticing from whom the encouragement came – "yes; and the sirocco is even pleasant here, because it comes to us over a wide expanse of water. The characteristics of a Mentone winter are therefore sunshine, protection from the winds, and dryness. It is, in truth, remarkably dry."

"Very," said Inness.

"I have scarcely ever seen it equalled," remarked Baker.

Margaret smiled, but I looked at the two youths reprovingly. Mrs. Trescott said, "Dry? Do you find it so? But you are young, whereas I have reminiscences. Tears are not dry."

They certainly are not; but why she should have alluded to them at that moment, no one but herself knew. There was a mystery about some of Mrs. Trescott's moods which made her society interesting: no one could ever tell what she would say next.

After breakfast we sat awhile in the garden, where there were palm, lemon, and orange trees, high woody bushes of heliotrope, grotesque growth of cactus, and the great gray-blue swords of the century-plant. Before us stretched the sea. Even if we had not known it, we should have felt sure that its waters laved tropical shores somewhere, and that it was the reflection of those far skies which we caught here.

Miss Graves now joined us, with an acquaintance she had discovered, a Mrs. Clary, who had "spent several winters at Mentone," and who adored "every stone of it." This phrase, which no doubt sounded well coming from Mrs. Clary, who was an impulsive person, with fine dark eyes and expressive mobile face, assumed a comical aspect when repeated by the sober voice of Miss Graves. Mrs. Clary, laughing, hastened to explain; and Miss Graves, noticing Mrs. Trescott on a bench in the shade, where she and her laces had floated down, said, warningly, "I should advise you to rise; I have just learned that the shade of Mentone is of the most deadly nature, and to be avoided like a scorpion."

Mrs. Trescott and her laces floated up. "Is it damp?" she asked, alarmed.

"No," replied Miss Graves, "it is not damp. It does not know how to be damp at Mentone. But the shade is deadly, all the same. Now in Florida it was otherwise." And she went into the house to get a white umbrella.

"Matilda's temperament is really Alpine," said Mrs. Clary, smiling. "I have always felt that she would be cold even in heaven."

"In that case," said Baker, "she might try – " But he had the grace to stop.

"What is it about the shade?" I asked.

"Only this," said Mrs. Clary: "as the warmth is due to the heat of the sun, and not to the air, which is cool, there is more difference between the sunshine and shade here than we are accustomed to elsewhere. But surely it is a small thing to remember. The treasure of Mentone is its sunshine: in it, safety; out of it, danger."

"Like Mr. Micawber's income," said Margaret, smiling. "Amount, twenty shillings; you spend nineteen shillings and sixpence – riches; twenty shillings and sixpence – bankruptcy."

A little later we went down to the "old town," as the closely built village of the Middle Ages, clinging to the side hill, and hardly changed in the long lapse of centuries, is called. The "old town" lies between the East Bay and the West Bay, as the body of a bird lies between the two long, slender wings.

"The West Bay has its Promenade du Midi, and the East Bay has its sea-wall," said Mrs. Clary. "I like a sea-wall."

"This one does not approach that at St. Augustine," said Miss Graves.

"Here is one of the fountains or wells," said Mrs. Clary. "You will soon see that going for water and gossiping at the well are two occupations of the women everywhere in this region. It comes, I suppose, from the scarcity of water, which is brought in pipes from long distances to these wells, to which the women must go for all the water needed by their households. Notice the classic shapes of the jugs and jars they bear on their heads. Those green ones might be majolica."

We now turned up a paved ascent, and passing under a broad stone archway, entered the "old town," through whose narrow, lane-like streets no vehicle could be driven, through some of them hardly a donkey. The principal avenue, the Rue Longue, but a few feet in width, was smoothly paved and clean; but walking there was like being at the bottom of a well, so far above and so narrow was the little ribbon of blue sky at the top. Unbroken stone walls rose on each side, directly upon the street, five and six stories in height, shutting out the sunshine; and these tall gray walls were often joined above our heads also by arches, "like uncelebrated bridges of sighs," Janet said. These closely built continuous blocks were the homes of the native population, "old Mentone," unspoiled by progress and strangers. The low doorways showed stone steps ascending somewhere in the darkness, showed low-ceilinged rooms, whose only light was from the door, where were mothers and babies, men mending shoes, women sewing and occupied with household tasks, as calmly as though daylight was not the natural atmosphere of mankind, but rather their own dusky gloom. Outside the doors little black-eyed children sat on the pavement, eating the dark sour bread of the country, and here and there old women in circular white hats like large dinner plates were spinning thread with distaff and spindle. Above were some bits of color: pots of flowers on high window-sills, bright-hued rags hung out to dry, or a dark-eyed girl, with red kerchief tied over her black braids, looking down.

"It is all like a scene from an opera," said Janet.

"Oh no," said Mrs. Clary; "say rather that it is like a scene from the Middle Ages."

"That is what I mean," said Janet. "The scenes in the operas are generally from the Middle Ages."

"The chorus always," said Baker.

"It is a pity you cannot see the old mansion of the Princes," said Mrs. Clary. "But I see the street is blockaded just now by the artist."

"By the artist?" said Janet.

"Yes; this one, a Frenchman, is rather broad-shouldered, and when he is at work he blockades the street. However, the mansion is not especially interesting; it was built by one of the later Princes with the stones of the ruined castle above, and has, I believe, only a vaulted hallway and one or two marble pillars. It is now a lodging-house. I saw dancing-dogs going up the stairway yesterday."

From the Rue Longue we had turned into a labyrinth of crooked, staircase-like lanes, winding here and there from side to side, but constantly ascending, the whole net-work, owing to the number of arches thrown across above, seeming to be half underground, but in reality a honey-combed erection clinging to the steep hill-side.

"Dancing-dogs!" said Janet, pausing in the darkest of these turnings. "Let us go back and see them."

But we all exclaimed against this; Mrs. Trescott's little old feet were wearied with curling over the round stones, and Margaret was tired. Inness and Baker offered to make dancing-dogs of themselves for the remainder of the morning, and dogs, too, of a very superior quality, if she would only go on.

The Professor, who, in his "winnowing progress," as Mrs. Trescott called it, had fallen behind, now joined us, followed by Miss Graves.

"I have just witnessed a remarkably interesting little ceremony," he began, "quite mediæval – a herald, with his trumpet, making an announcement through the streets. I could not comprehend all he said, but no doubt it was something of importance to the community."

"It was," said Miss Graves's monotonous voice. "He was telling them that excellent sausage-meat was now to be obtained at a certain shop for a price much lower than before."

"Ah," said the Professor. Then, rallying, he added, "But the ceremony was the same."

"Certainly," I said, with my usual unappreciated benevolence.

"I wonder what induced these people to build their houses upon such a crag as this, when they had the whole sunny coast to choose from?" said Janet.

The Professor, charmed with this idle little speech (which he took for a thirst for knowledge), hastened by several of us as we walked in single file, in order to be nearer to the questioner.

"You may not be aware, Miss Trescott," he began (she was still in advance, but he hoped to make up the distance), "that this whole shore, called the Riviera – "

"Let us begin fairly," I said. "What is the Riviera?"

"It is heaven," said Mrs. Clary.

"It is the coast of the Gulf of Genoa," said the Professor, "extending both eastward and westward from the city of that name. On the west it extends geographically to Nice; but Cannes and Antibes are generally included. This shore-line, then, has been subject from a very early date to attacks from the pirates of the Mediterranean, who swept down upon the coast and carried off as slaves all who came in their way. To escape the horrors of this slavery the inhabitants chose situations like this steep hill-side, and crowded their stone dwellings closely together so that they formed continuous walls, which were often joined also by arched bridges, like these above us now, and connected by dark and winding passageways below, so that escape was easy and pursuit impossible. It was a veritable – "

"Rabbit-warren," suggested Baker.

Inness made no suggestions; he was next to the Professor, and fully occupied in blocking, with apparent entire unconsciousness, all his efforts to pass and join Janet.

The Professor, not accepting, however, the rabbit-warren, continued: "As recently as 1830, Miss Trescott, when the French took possession of Algiers, they found there thousands of miserable Christian slaves, natives of this northern shore, who had been seized on the coast or taken from their fishing-boats at sea. There are men now living in Mentone who in their youth spent years as slaves in Tunis and Algiers. These pirates, these scourges of the Mediterranean, were Saracens, and – "

"Saracens!" said Janet, with an accent of admiration; "what a lovely word it is! What visions of romance and adventure it brings up, especially when spelled with two r's, so as to be Sarrasins! It is even better than Paynim."

I could not see how the Professor took this, because we were now all entirely in the dark, groping our way along a passage which apparently led through cellars.

"We are in an impasse, or blind passage," called Mrs. Clary from behind; "we had better go back."

Hearing this, we all retraced our steps – at least, we supposed we did. But when we reached comparative daylight again we found that Janet, Inness, and Baker were not with us; they had found a way through that impasse, although we could not, and were sitting high above us on a white wall in the sunshine, when, breathless, we at last emerged from the labyrinth and discovered them.

"That looks like a cemetery," said Mrs. Trescott, disapprovingly, disentangling her lace shawl from a bush. "You said it was a castle." She addressed the Professor, and with some asperity; she did not like cemeteries.

"It was the castle," explained our learned guide; "the castle erected in 1502, by one of the Princes, upon the site of a still earlier one, built in 1250."

"That Prince used the ruins of his ancestors as his descendants afterwards used his," observed Margaret, referring to the mansion in the street below.

"Possibly," said the Professor. He never gave Margaret more than a possibility; although a man of hyphens and semicolons, he generally dismissed her with an early period. "These old arches and buttresses," he continued, turning to Mrs. Trescott, "were once part of the castle. Turreted walls extended from here down to the sea."

"What they did once, of course I do not know," said Mrs. Trescott, implacably, "but now they plainly enclose a cemetery. Janet! Janet! come down! we are going back." And she turned to descend.

"The cemetery is a lovely spot," said Mrs. Clary, as we lingered a moment looking at the white marble crosses gleaming above us, outlined against the blue sky.

"Some other time," I answered, following Mrs. Trescott. For the quiet, lovely gardens where we lay our dead had too strong an attraction for Margaret already. She was fond of lingering amid their perfume and their silence, and she sought this one the next day, and afterwards often went there. It was a peculiar little cemetery, alone on the height, and walled like a fortress; but it was beautiful in its way, lifted up against the sky and overlooking the sea. On the eastern edge was a monument, the seated figure of a woman with her hands gently clasped, her eyes gazing over the water; the face was lovely, and not idealized – the face of a woman, not an angel. Margaret took a fancy to this white watcher on the height, and often stole away to look at the sunset, seated near it. I think she identified its loneliness somewhat with herself.

We went through the labyrinth again, but by another route, not quite so dark and piratical, although equally narrow. Miss Graves liked nothing she saw, but walked on unmoved, save that at intervals she observed that it was "deathly cold" in these "stony lanes," and "must be unhealthy." Mrs. Clary's assertion that the people looked remarkably vigorous only called out a shake of the head; Miss Graves was set upon "fever." It was amusing to see how carefully all the houses were numbered, up and down these break-neck little streets, through the narrowest burrows, and under the darkest arches. Here and there some citizen wealthier than his neighbors had painted his section of front in bright pink or yellow, and perhaps adorned his Madonna in her little shrine over the door with new robes, those broadly contrasted blues and reds of Italy, which American eyes must learn by gradual education to admire; or, if not by education, then by residence; for he will find himself liking them naturally after a while, as a relief from the unchanging white light of the Italian day. We came down by way of the square or piazza on the hill-side, to and from which broad flights of steps ascend and descend. Here are the two churches of St. Michael and the White Penitents, whose campaniles, with that of the Black Penitents beyond, make the "three spires of Mentone," which stand out so picturesquely one above the other, visible in profile far to the east and the west on the sharp angle of the hill.

"The different use of the same word in different languages is droll," said Margaret. "French writers almost always speak of these little country church-spires as 'coquettes.'"

"There is a Turkish lance here somewhere," said Inness, emerging unexpectedly from what I had thought was a cellar. "It is in one of these churches. It was taken at the battle of Lepanto, and is a 'glorious relic.' We must see it."

"No," said Janet, appearing with Baker at the top of a flight of steps which I had supposed was the back entrance of a private house, "we will not see it, but imagine it. I want to go homeward by the Rue Longue."

"Now, Janet, if you mean those dancing-dogs – " began Mrs. Trescott.

"I had forgotten their very existence, mamma. I was thinking of something quite different." Here she turned towards the Professor. "I was hoping that Professor Mackenzie would feel like telling me something of Mentone in the past, as we walk through that quaint old street."

"He feels like it – feels like it day and night," said Baker to Inness, behind me. "He's a perfect statistics Niagara."

"Look at him now, gorged with joy!" said Inness, indignantly. "But I'll floor him yet, and on his own ground, too. I'll study up, and then we'll see!"

But the Professor, not hearing this threat, had already begun, and begun (for him) quite gayly. "The origin of Mentone, Miss Trescott, has been attributed to the pirates, and also to Hercules."

"I have always been so interested in Hercules," replied that young person.

"Mythical – mythical," said the Professor. "I merely mentioned it as one of the legends. To come down to facts – always much more impressive to a rightly disposed mind – the first mention of Mentone, per se, on the authentic page of history, occurs in the eighth century. In A.D. 975 it belonged to the Lascaris, Counts of Ventimiglia, a family of royal origin and Greek descent."

"Are there any of them left?" inquired Janet.

"I really do not know," replied the Professor, who was not interested in that branch of the subject. "In the fourteenth century the village passed into the possession of the Grimaldi family, Princes of Monaco, and they held it, legally at least, until 1860, when it was attached to France."

"He is really quite Cyclopean in his information," murmured Mrs. Trescott.

But the Professor had now discovered Inness, who, with an expression of deepest interest on his face, was walking close at his heels, and writing as he walked in a note-book.

"What are you doing, sir?" said the Professor, in his college tone.

"Taking notes," replied Inness, respectfully. "Miss Trescott may feel willing to trust her memory, but I wish to preserve your remarks for future reference," and he went on with his writing.

The Professor looked at him sharply, but the youth's face remained immovable, and he went on.

"These three little towns, then, Mentone, Roccabruna, and Monaco, have belonged to the Princes of Monaco since the early Middle Ages."

"Those dear Middle Ages!" said Mrs. Clary.

The Professor gravely looked at her, and then repeated his phrase, as if linking together his remarks over her unimportant head. "As I observed – the early Middle Ages. But in 1848 Mentone and Roccabruna, unable longer to endure the tyranny of their rulers, revolted and declared their independence. The Prince at that time lived in Paris, knew little of his subjects, and apparently cared less, save to get from them through agents as much income as possible for his Parisian luxuries." (Impossible to describe the accent which our Puritan Professor gave to those two words.) "His little territory produced only olives, oranges, and lemons. By his order the oranges and lemons were taxed so heavily that the poor peasant owner made nothing from his toil; his olives, also, must be ground at the 'Prince's mill,' where a higher price was demanded than elsewhere. Finally an even more odious monopoly was established: all subjects were compelled to purchase the 'Prince's bread,' which, made from cheap grain bought on the docks of Marseilles and Genoa, was often unfit to eat. So severe were the laws that any traveller entering the principality must throw away at the boundary line all bread he might have with him, and the captain of a vessel having on board a single slice upon arrival in port was heavily fined. This state of things lasted twenty-five years, during which period the Prince in Paris spent annually his eighty thousand dollars, gained from this poor little domain of eight or nine thousand souls." The Professor in his heat stood still, and we all stood still with him. The Mentonnais, looking down from their high windows and up from their dark little doors, no doubt wondered what we were talking about; they little knew it was their own story.

"A revolution made by bread. And ours was made by tea," observed Janet, thoughtfully.

"We need now only one made by butter, to be complete," said Inness.

Again the Professor scrutinized him, but discovered nothing.

I, however, discovered something, although not from Inness; I discovered why Janet had wished to pass a second time through that Rue Longue. For here was the French artist sketching the old mansion, and with him (she could not have known this, of course; but chance always favored Janet) were the two Englishmen, the respectful gazers of the breakfast-table, sketching also. There were therefore six artistic eyes instead of two to dwell upon her as she approached, passed, and went onward, her slender figure outlined against the light coming through the archway beyond, old St. Julian's Gate, a remnant of feudal fortification. Artists are not slack in the use of their eyes; an "artistic gaze" is not considered a stare. I was obliged to repeat this axiom to Baker, who did not appreciate it, but looked as though he would like to go back and artistically demolish those gazers. He contented himself, however, with the remark that water-color sketches were "weak, puling daubs," and then he went on through the old archway as majestically as he could.

"One of the features of Mentone seems to be the number of false windows carefully painted on the outside of the houses, windows adorned with blinds, muslin curtains, pots of flowers, and even gay rugs hanging over the sill," said Margaret.

"And then the frescos," I added – "landscapes, trees, gods and goddesses, in the most brilliant colors, on the side of the house."

"I like it," said Mrs. Clary; "it is so tropical."

"You commend falsity, then," said Miss Graves. "What can be more false than a false rug?"

We went homeward by the sea-wall, and saw some boys coming up from the beach with a basket of sea-urchins. "They eat them, you know," said Mrs. Clary.

"Is that tropical too?" said Janet, shuddering.

"It is, after all, but a difference in custom," observed the Professor. "I myself have eaten puppies in China, and found them not unpalatable."

Janet surveyed him; then fell behind and joined Inness and Baker.

Some fishermen on the beach were talking to two women with red handkerchiefs on their heads, who were leaning over the sea-wall. "Their language is a strange patois," said the Professor; "it is composed of a mixture of Italian, French, Spanish, and even Arabic."

II

 
"Thy skies are blue, thy crags as wild,
Thine olive ripe, as when Minerva smiled."
 

– Byron.

"So having rung that bell once too often, they were all carried off," concluded Inness, as we came up.

"Who?" I asked.

"Look around you, and divine."

We were on Capo San Martino. This, being interpreted, is only Cape Martin; but as we had agreed to use the "dear old names," we could not leave out that of the poor cape only because it happened to have six syllables. We looked around. Before us were ruins – walls built of that unintelligible broken stone mixed at random with mortar, which confounds time, and may be, as a construction, five or five hundred years old.

"They – whoever they were – lived here?" I said.

"Yes."

"And it was from here that they were carried off?"

"It was."

"Were they those interesting Greek Lascaris?" said Mrs. Trescott.

"No."

"The Troglodytes?" suggested Mrs. Clary.

"No."

"The poor old ancient gods and goddesses of the coast?" said Margaret.

"No."

"But who carried them off?" I said. "That is the point. It makes all the difference in the world."

"I know it does," replied Inness; "especially in the case of an elopement. In this case it happened to be Miss Trescott's friends (always with two r's), the Sarrasins. The story is but a Mediterranean version of the boy and the wolf. These ruins are the remains of an ancient convent built in – in the remote Past. The good nuns, after taking possession (perhaps they were inland nuns, and did not know what they were coming to when they came to a shore), began to be in great fear of the sea and Sarrasin sails. They therefore besought the men of Mentone and Roccabruna to fly to their aid if at any time they heard the bell of the chapel ringing rapidly. The men promised, and held themselves in readiness to fly. One night they heard the bell. Then westward ran the men of Mentone, and down the hill came those of Roccabruna, and together they flew out on Capo San Martino to this convent – only to find no Sarrasins at all, but only the nuns in a row upon their knees entreating pardon: they had rung the bell as a test. Not long afterwards the bell rang again, but no one went. This time it really was the Sarrasins, and the nuns were all carried off."

"Very dramatic. The slight discrepancy that this happened to be a monastery for monks makes no difference: who cares for details!" said Verney, who, under the pretence of sketching the ruins, was making his eighth portrait of Janet. He said of these little pencil portraits that he "threw them in." Janet was therefore thrown into the Red Rocks, the "old town," the Bone Caverns, the Pont St. Louis, Dr. Bennet's garden, the cemetery, Capo San Martino, and before we finished into Roccabruna, Castellare, Monaco, Dolce Acqua, Sant' Agnese, and the old Roman Trophy at Turbia.

Leaving the ruins, we went down to the point, where the cape juts out sharply into the sea, forming the western boundary of the Mentone bay. Opposite, on the eastern point, lay blanche Bordighera, fair and silvery as ever in the sunshine. We found the Professor on the point examining the rocks.

"This is a formation similar to that which we may see in process of construction at the present moment off the coast of Florida," he explained.

"Not coquina?" cried Miss Graves, instantly going down and selecting a large fragment.

"It is conglomerate," replied the Professor, disappearing around the cliff corner, walking on little knobs of rock, and almost into the Mediterranean in his eagerness.

"That word conglomerate is one of the most useful terms I know," said Inness. "It covers everything: like Renaissance."

"The rock is also called pudding-stone," said Verney.

"Away with pudding-stone! we will have none of it. We are nothing if not dignified, are we, Miss Elaine?" said Inness, turning to that young lady, who was bestowing upon him the boon of her society for the happy afternoon.

"I am sure I have always thought you had a great deal of dignity, Mr. Inness," replied Miss Elaine, with her sweetest smile.

We sat down on the rocks and looked at the blue sea. "It is commonplace to be continually calling it blue," I said; "but it is inevitable, for no one can look at it without thinking of its color."

"It has seen so much," said Mrs. Clary, in her earnest way; "it has carried the fleets of all antiquity. The Egyptians, the Greeks, the Phœnicians, the Carthaginians, and the Romans passed to and fro across it; the Apostles sailed over it; yet it looks as fresh and young and untraversed as though created yesterday."

"It certainly is the fairest water in the world," said Janet. "It must be the reflection of heaven."

"It is the proportion of salt," said the Professor, who had come back around the rock corner on the knobs. "A larger amount of salt is held in solution in the Mediterranean than in the Atlantic. It is a very deep body of water, too, along this coast: at Nice it was found to be three thousand feet deep only a few yards from the shore."

"These Mediterranean sailors are such cowards," said Inness. "At the first sign of a storm they all come scudding in. If the Phœnicians were like them, another boyhood illusion is gone! However, since they demolished William Tell, I have not much cared."

"The Mediterranean sailors of the past were probably, like those of the present, obliged to come scudding in," said Verney, "because the winds were so uncertain and variable. They use lateen-sails for the same reason, because they can be let down by the run; all the coasting xebecs and feluccas use them."

"Xebecs and feluccas – delicious words!" said Janet.

"I still maintain that they are cowards," resumed Inness. "The other day, when there was that capful of wind, you know, twenty of these delicious xebecs came hurrying into our little port, running into each other in their haste, and crowding together in the little pool like frightened chickens under a hen's wings. And they were not all delicious xebecs, either; there were some good-sized sea-going vessels among them, brig-rigged in front with the seven or eight small square sails they string up one above the other, and a towel out to windward."

"The winds of Mentone are wizards," said Margaret; "they never come from the point they seem to come from. If they blow full in your face from the east, make up your mind that they come directly from the west. They are enchanted."

"They are turned aside by the slopes of the mountains," said Baker, practically.

"But the Mediterranean has not lived up to its reputation, after all," said Janet. "I expected to see fleets of nautilus, and I have not seen one. And not a porpoise!"

"For porpoises," said Miss Graves, who had knotted a handkerchief around her conglomerate, and was carrying it tied to a scarf like a shawl-strap – "for porpoises you must go to Florida."

We left the cape and went inland through the woods, looking for the old Roman tomb. We found it at last, appropriately placed in a gray old olive grove, some of whose trees, no doubt, saw its foundations laid. The fragment of old roadway near it was introduced by Inness as "the Julia Augusta, lifting up its head again." It had laid it down last at the Red Rocks. The tomb originally was as large as a small chapel; one of the side walls was gone, but the front remained almost perfect. This front was in three arches; traces of fresco decoration were still visible under the curves. Below were lines of stone in black and white alternately, and the same mosaic was repeated above, where there was also a cornice stretching from the sides to a central empty space, once filled by the square marble slab bearing the inscription. We found Lloyd here, sketching; but as we came up he closed his sketch-book, joined Margaret, and the two strolled off through the old wood, which had, as Inness remarked, "as many moving associations" as we chose to recall, "from the feet of the Roman legions to those of the armies of Napoleon."

"I wish we knew what the inscription was," said Janet, who was sitting on the grass in front of the old tomb. "I should like to know who it was who was laid here so long, long ago."

"Some old Roman," said Baker.

"He might not have been old," said Verney, who was now sketching in his turn. "There is another Roman tomb, or fragment of one, above us on the side of the mountain, and the inscription on that one gives the name of a youth who died, 'aged eighteen years and ten months,' two thousand years ago, 'much sorrowed for by his father and his mother.'"

"Love then was the same as now, and will be the same after we are gone, I suppose," said Janet, thoughtfully, leaning her pretty head back against an old olive-tree.

"A reason why we should take it while we can," observed Inness.

The Professor and Miss Graves now appeared in sight, for we had come across from the cape in accidental little groups, and these two had found themselves one of them. As the Professor had his sack of specimens and Miss Graves her conglomerate, we thought they looked well together; but the Professor evidently did not think so, for he immediately joined Janet.

"I do not know that there is any surer sign of advancing age in a man than a growing preference for the society of very young girls – mere youth per se, as the Professor himself would say," said Mrs. Clary to me in an undertone.

Meanwhile the Professor, unconscious of this judgment, was telling Janet that she was standing upon the site of the old Roman station "Lumone," mentioned in Antony's Itinerary, and that the tomb was that of a patrician family.

Mrs. Trescott was impressed by this. She said it was "a pæan moment" for us all, if we would but realize it; and she plucked a fern in remembrance.

One bright day not long after this we went to Mentone's sister city, Roccabruna, a little town looking as if it were hooked on to the side of the mountain. As we passed through the "old town" on our donkeys we met a wedding-party, walking homeward from the church, in the middle of the street. The robust bride, calm and majestic, moved at the head of the procession with her father, her white muslin gown sweeping the pavement behind her. Probably it would have been considered undignified to lift it. The father, a small, wizened old man, looked timorous, and the bridegroom, next behind with the bride's mother, still more so, even the quantity of brave red satin cravat he wore failing to give him a martial air. Next came the relatives and friends, two and two, all the gowns of the women sweeping out with dignity. In truth this seemed to be the feature of the occasion, since at all other times their gowns were either short or carefully held above the dust. There was no music, no talking, hardly a smile. A christening party we had met the day before was much more joyous, for then the smiling father and mother threw from the carriage at intervals handfuls of sugar-plums and small copper coins, which were scrambled for by a crowd of children, while the gorgeously dressed baby was held up proudly at the window.

We were going first to Gorbio. The Gorbio Valley is charming. Of all the valleys, the narrow Val de Menton is the loveliest for an afternoon walk; but for longer excursions, and compared with the valleys of Carrei and Borrigo, that of Gorbio is the most beautiful, principally because there is more water in the stream, which comes sweeping and tumbling over its bed of flat rock like the streams of the White Mountains, whereas the so-called "torrents" of Carrei and Borrigo are generally but wide, arid torrents of stone. We passed olive and lemon groves, mills, vineyards, and millions upon millions of violets. Then the path, which constantly ascended, grew wilder, but not so wild as Inness. I could not imagine what possessed him. He sang, told stories, vaulted over Baker, and laughed until the valley rang again; but as his voice was good and his stories amusing, we enjoyed his merriment. Miss Elaine looked on, I thought, with an air of pity; but then Miss Elaine pitied everybody. She would have pitied Jenny Lind at the height of her fame, and no doubt when she was in Florence she pitied the Venus de' Medici.

We found Gorbio a little village of six hundred inhabitants, perched on the point of a rock, with the ground sloping away on all sides; the remains of its old wall and fortified gates were still to be seen. We entered and explored its two streets – narrow passageways between the old stone houses, whose one idea seemed to be to crowd as closely together and occupy as little of the ground space as possible. Above the clustered roofs towered the ruined walls of what was once the castle, the tower only remaining distinct. This tower bore armorial bearings, which I was trying to decipher, when Verney came up with Janet. "Nothing but those same arms of the Lascaris," he said.

"Why do you say 'nothing but'?" said Janet. "To be royal, and Greek, and have three castles – for this is the third we have seen – is not nothing, but something, and a great deal of something. How I wish I had lived in those days!"

As the Professor was not with us, we knew nothing of the story of Gorbio, and walked about rather uncomfortable and ill-informed in consequence. But it turned out that Gorbio, like the knife-grinder, had no story. "Story? Lord bless you! I have none to tell, sir." Inness, however, had reserved one fact, which he finally delivered to us under the great elm in the centre of the little plaza, where we had assembled to rest. "This peaceful village," he began, "whose idyllic children now form a gazing circle around us, was the scene of a sanguinary combat between the French and Spanish-Austrian armies in 1746."

"Oh, modern! modern!" said Verney from behind (where he was throwing Janet into Gorbio).

"Your pardon," said Inness, with majesty; "not modern at all. In 1746, as I beg to remind you, even the foundation-stones of our great republic were not laid, yet the man who ventures to say that it is not, as a construction, absolutely venerable, from exceeding merit, will be a rash one. In America, Time is not old or slow; he has given up his hour-glass, and travels by express. Each month of ours equals one of your years, each year a century. Therefore have we all a singularly mature air – as exemplified in myself. But to return. Upon this spot, then, my friends, there was once – carnage! The only positive and historical carnage in the neighborhood of Mentone. Therefore all warlike spirits should come to Gorbio, and breathe the inspiring air."

We did not stay long enough in the inspiring air to become belligerent, however, but, on the contrary, went peacefully past a quiet old shrine, and took the path to Roccabruna – one of the most beautiful paths in the neighborhood of Mentone. By-and-by we came to a tall cross on the top of a high ridge. We had seen it outlined against the sky while still in the streets of Gorbio. These mountain-side crosses were not uncommon. They are not locally commemorative, as we first supposed, but seem to be placed here and there, where there is a beautiful view, to remind the gazer of the hand that created it all. Some distance farther we found a still wider prospect; and then we came down into Roccabruna, and spread out our lunch on the battlements of the old castle. From this point our eyes rested on the coast-line stretching east and west, the frowning Dog's Head at Monaco, and the white winding course of the Cornice Road. The castle was on the side of the mountain, eight hundred feet above the sea. Although forming part of the village, it was completely isolated by its position on a high pinnacle of rock, which rose far above the roofs on all sides.

"How these poor timid little towns clung close to and under their lords' walls!" said Baker, with the fine contempt of a young American. "They are all alike: the castle towering above; next the church and the priest; and the people – nowhere!"

"The people were happy enough, living in this air," said Mrs. Clary. "How does it strike you? To me it seems delicious; but many persons find it too exciting."

"It certainly gives me an appetite," I said, taking another sandwich.

Miss Elaine found it "too warm." Miss Graves found it "too cold." Mrs. Trescott, having been made herself again by a glass of the "good little white wine" of Gorbio, said that it was "almost too idealizing." Lloyd remarked that it was not "too anything unless too delightful," and that, for his part, he wished that, with the present surroundings, he might "breathe it forever!" This was gallant. Janet looked at him: he was the only one who had not bowed at her shrine, and it made her pensive. Meanwhile Inness's gayety continued; he made a voyage of discovery through the narrow streets below, coming back with the legend that he had met the prettiest girl he had seen since his "pretty girl of Arles," whose eyes, "enshrined beside those of Miss Trescott" (with a grand bow), had remained ever since in his "heart's inmost treasury." This, like Baker's L' Annunziata speech, was both un-American and unnecessary in the presence of a second young lady, and I looked at Inness, surprised. But Miss Elaine only smiled on.

The Professor now appeared, having come out from Mentone on a donkey. We immediately became historical. It appeared that the castle upon whose old battlements we were idly loitering was one of the "homes" of the Lascaris, Counts of Ventimiglia, who in 1358 transferred it with its domains to the Grimaldis, Princes of Monaco.

"These Lascaris and Grimaldis seem to have played at seesaw for the possession of this coast," said Baker. "Now one is up, and now the other, but never any one else."

But Janet was impressed. "Again the Lascaris!" she murmured.

"What is your idea of them?" said Verney.

"I hardly know; but of course they were knights in armor; and of course, being Greeks, they had classic profiles. They were impulsive, and they were generous; but if any one seriously displeased them, they immediately ordered him cast into that terrible oubliette we saw below."

"That," said the Professor, mildly, "is only the well." Then, as if to strengthen her with something authentic, he added, "The village was sacked by the Duke of Guise towards the end of the sixteenth century, when this castle was reduced to the ruined condition in which we find it now."

"Happily it is not altogether ruined," said Mrs. Trescott, putting up her eye-glass; "one of the – the apartments seems to be roofed, and to possess doors."

"That," said the Professor, "is a donkey-stable, erected – or rather adapted – later."

"Do the donkeys come up all these stairs?" I said, amused.

"I believe they do," replied the Professor. "Indeed, I have seen them coming up after the day's work is over."

"I am sorry, Janet, but I shall never be able to think of this home of your Lascaris after this without seeing a procession of donkeys coming up-stairs on their way to their high apartments," I said, laughing.

"The procession might have been the same in the days of the Lascaris," suggested Baker.

Roccabruna – brown rock – is an appropriate name for the village, which is so brown and so mixed with and built into the cliff to which it clings that it is difficult to tell where man's work ends and that of nature begins.

"The town was the companion of Mentone in its rebellion against the Princes of Monaco," said the Professor. "Mentone and Roccabruna freed themselves, but Monaco remained enslaved."

"They are all now in France," said Baker.

"Sir!" replied the Professor, with heat, "it is in a much worse place than France that wretched Monaco now finds herself!"

We went homeward down the mountain-side, passing the little chapel of the Madonna della Pausa – a pause being indeed necessary when one is ascending. Here, where the view was finest, there was another way-side cross. Farther on, as we entered the old olive wood below, Margaret dismounted; she always liked to walk through the silver-gray shade; and Lloyd seemed to have adopted an equal fondness for the same tint.

That evening, when we were alone, Margaret explained the secret of Inness's remarkable and unflagging gayety. It seemed that Miss Elaine had, during the day before, confided to Verney – as a fellow-countryman, I suppose – her self-reproach concerning "that poor young American gentleman, Mr. Inness." What should she do? Would he advise her? She must go to some one, and she did not feel like troubling her dear mamma. It was true that Mr. Inness had been with her a good deal, had helped her wind her worsteds in the evening, but she never meant anything – never dreamed of anything. And now, she could not but feel – there was something in his manner that forced her to see – In short, had not Mr. Verney noticed it?

Now I have no doubt but that Verney told her he had "seen" and had "noticed" everything she desired. But in the meanwhile he could not resist confiding the story to Baker, who having been already a victim, was overcome with glee, and in his turn hastened to repeat the tale to Inness.

Inness raged, but hardly knew what to do. He finally decided to become a perfect Catharine-wheel of gayety, shooting off laughter and jokes in all directions to convince the world that he remained heart-whole.

"But it will be of no avail," I said to Margaret, laughing, as I recalled the look of soft pity on Miss Elaine's face all day; "she will think it but the gayety of desperation." Then, more soberly, I added: "Mr. Lloyd told you this, I suppose? You are with him a great deal, are you not?"

"You see that I am, aunt. But it is only because she has not come yet."

"Who?"

"The brighter and younger woman who will take my place." But I did not think she believed it.

On another day we went to Castellare, a little stone village much like Gorbio, perched on its ridge, and rejoicing in an especial resemblance to one of Cæsar's fortified camps. The castle here was not so much a castle as a château; its principal apartment was adorned with frescos representing the history of Adam and Eve. We should not have seen these frescos if it had not been for Miss Graves: I am afraid we should have (there is no other word) shirked them. But Miss Graves had heard of the presence of ancient works of art, and was bent upon finding them. In vain Lloyd conducted her in and out of half a dozen old houses, suggesting that each one was "probably" all that was left of the "château." Miss Graves remained inflexibly unconvinced, and in the end gained her point. We all saw Adam and Eve.

"Why did they want frescos away out here in this primitive little village to which no road led, hardly even a donkey path?" I said.

"That is the very reason," replied Margaret. "They had no society, nothing to do; so they looked at their frescos exhaustively."

"What do those eagles at the corners represent?" said Janet.

"They are the device of the Lascaris," replied the Professor.

"Do you mean to tell me that this was one of their homes also?" she exclaimed. "Let a chair be brought, and all of you leave me. I wish to remain here alone, and imagine that I am one of them."

"Couldn't you imagine two?" said Inness. And he gained his point.

On our way home we found another block in the main street, and paused. We were near what we called the umbrella place – an archway opening down towards the old port; here against the stone wall an umbrella-maker had established his open-air shop, and his scarlet and blue lined parasols and white umbrellas, hung up at the entrance, made a picturesque spot of color we had all admired. This afternoon we were late; it was nearly twilight, and, in this narrow, high-walled street, almost night. As we waited we heard chanting, and through the dusky archway came a procession. First a tall white crucifix borne between two swinging lamps; then the surpliced choir-boys, chanting; then the incense and the priests; then a coffin, draped, and carried in the old way on the shoulders of the bearers, who were men robed in long-hooded black gowns reaching to the feet, their faces covered, with only two holes for the eyes. These were members of the Society of Black Penitents, who, with the White Penitents, attend funerals by turn, and care for the sick and poor, from charitable motives alone, and without reward. Behind the Penitents walked the relatives and friends, each with a little lighted taper. As the procession came through the dark archway, crossed the street, and wound up the hill into the "old town," its effect, with the glancing lights and chanting voices, was weirdly picturesque. It was on its way to the cemetery above.

"Did you ever read this, Mr. Lloyd?" I heard Margaret say behind me, as we went onward towards home:

 
"'One day, in desolate wind-swept space,
In twilight-land, in no-man's-land,
Two hurrying Shapes met face to face,
And bade each other stand.
"And who art thou?" cried one, agape,
Shuddering in the gloaming light.
"I do not know," said the second Shape:
"I only died last night."'"
 

I turned. Lloyd was looking at her curiously, or rather with wonder.

"Come, Margaret," I said, falling behind so as to join them, "the English are not mystical, as some of us are. They are content with what they can definitely know, and they leave the rest."

During the next week, after a long discussion, we decided to go up the valley of the Nervia. The discussion was not inharmonious: we liked discussions.

"This is by no means one of the ordinary Mentone excursions," said Mrs. Clary, as our three carriages ascended the Cornice Road towards the east, on a beautiful morning after one of the rare showers. "Many explore all of the other valleys, and visit Monaco and Monte Carlo; but comparatively few go up the Nervia."

The scene of the instalment of our twelve selves in these three carriages, by-the-way, was amusing. Between the inward determination of Inness, Verney, Baker, and the Professor to be in the carriage which held Janet, and the equally firm determination of Miss Elaine to be in the carriage which held them, it seemed as if we should never be placed. But no one said what he or she wished; far from it. Everybody was very polite, wonderfully polite; everybody offered his or her place to everybody else. Lloyd, after waiting a few moments, calmly helped Margaret into one of the carriages, handed in her shawl, and then took a seat himself opposite. But the rest of us surged helplessly to and fro among the wheels, not quite knowing what to do, until the arrival of the hotel omnibus hurried us, when we took our places hastily, without any arrangement at all, and drove off as follows: in the first carriage, Mrs. Trescott, Janet, Miss Elaine, and myself; in the second, Miss Graves, Inness, Verney, and Baker; in the third, Mrs. Clary, Margaret, Lloyd, and the Professor. This assortment was so comical that I laughed inwardly all the way up the first hill. Miss Elaine looked as if she was on the point of shedding tears; and the Professor, who did not enjoy the conversation of either Margaret or Mrs. Clary, was equally discomfited. As for the faces of the three young men shut in with Miss Graves, they were a study. However, it did not last long. The young men soon preferred "to walk uphill." Then we stopped at Mortola to see the Hanbury garden, and took good care not to arrange ourselves in the same manner a second time. Still, as four persons cannot, at least in the present state of natural science, occupy at the same moment the space only large enough for one, there was all day more or less manœuvring. From Mortola to Ventimiglia I was in the carriage with Janet, Inness, and Verney.

"What ruin is that on the top of the hill?" said Janet. "It looks like a castle."

"It is a castle – Castel d'Appio," said Verney; "a position taken by the Genoese in 1221 from the Lascaris, who – "

"Stop the carriage! – I must go up," said Janet.

"I assure you, Miss Trescott, that, Lascaris or no Lascaris, you will find yourself mummied in mud after this rain," said Inness. "I went up there in a dry time, and even then had to wade."

Now if there is anything which Janet especially cherishes, it is her pretty boots; so Castel d'Appio remained unvisited upon its height, in lonely majesty against the sky. The next object of interest was a square tower, standing on the side-hill not far above the road; it was not large on the ground, rather was it narrow, but it rose in the air to an imposing height. I could not imagine what its use had been: it stood too far from the sea for a lookout, and, from its shape, could hardly have been a residence; in its isolation, not a fortress. Inness said it looked like a steeple with the church blown away; and then, inspired by his own comparison, he began to chant an ancient ditty about

 
"'The next thing they saw was a barn on a hill:
One said 'twas a barn;
The other said "Na-ay;"
And t'other 'twas a church with its steeple blown away:
Look – a – there!'"
 

This extremely venerable ballad delighted Miss Graves in the carriage behind so that she waved her black parasol in applause. She asked if Inness could not sing "Springfield Mountain."

"There is nothing left now," I said, laughing, "but the 'Battle of the Nile.'"

Verney, who had sketched the tower early in the winter, explained that the old road to Ventimiglia passed directly through the lower story, which was built in the shape of an arch. All the carriages were now together, as we gazed at the relic.

"The road goes through?" said Miss Graves. "Probably, then, it was a toll-gate."

This was so probable, although unromantic, that thereafter the venerable structure was called by that name, or, as Inness suggested, "not to be too disrespectful, the mediæval T.G."

Ventimiglia, seven miles from Mentone, was "one of the most ancient towns in Liguria," the Professor remarked. Mrs. Trescott, Mrs. Clary, and I looked much wiser after this information, but carefully abstained from saying anything to each other of the cloudy nature of our ideas respecting the geographical word. However, we noticed, unaided, that its fortifications were extensive, for we rolled over a drawbridge to enter it, passing high stone-walls, bastions, and port-holes, while on the summit of the hill above us frowned a large Italian fort. The Roya, a broad river which divides the town into two parts, is crossed by a long bridge; and we were over this bridge and some distance beyond before we discovered that we had left the old quarter on the other side, its closely clustering roofs and spires having risen so directly over our heads on the steep side-hill that we had not observed them. Should we go back? The carriages drew up to consider. We had still "a long drive before us;" these "old Riviera villages" were "all alike;" the hill seemed "very steep;" and "we can come here, you know, at any time" – were some of the opinions given. The Professor, who really wished to stop, gallantly yielded. Miss Graves, alone in the opposition, was obliged to yield also; but she was deeply disappointed. The cathedral, formerly dedicated to Jupiter, "'possesses a white marble pulpit incrusted with mosaics, and an octagon font, very ancient,'" she read, mournfully, aloud, from her manuscript note-book. "'The Church of St. Michael, also, guards Roman antiquities of surpassing interest.'" This word "guards" had a fine effect.

"To me, they seemed all mad," I said, with a shudder, looking up at the calm mountains with a sense of relief.

"It is a species of madness," said Verney. Miss Elaine was with him; she had taken his arm while in the gambling-room; she said she felt "so timid." Margaret and Lloyd meanwhile had only looked on for a moment or two, and had then disappeared; we learned afterwards that they had gone to the concert-room, where music beautiful enough for paradise was filling the perfumed air.

"For those who care nothing for gambling, that music is one of the baits," said Lloyd. "When you really love music, it is very hard to keep away from it; and here, where there is no other music to compete with it, it is offered to you in its divinest perfection, at an agreeable distance from Nice and Mentone, along one of the most beautiful driveways in the world, with a Parisian hotel at its best to give you, besides, what other refreshment you need. Hundreds of persons come here sincerely 'only to hear the music.' But few go away without 'one look' at the gambling tables; and it is upon that 'one look' that the proprietors of the Casino, knowing human nature, quietly and securely rely."

The Professor, having seen it all, had no words to express his feeling, but walked across to call the carriages with the air of a man who shook off perdition from every finger. And yet I felt sure, from what I knew of him, that he had appreciated the attractions of the place less than any one of us – had not, in fact, been reached by them at all. Those who do not feel the allurements of a temptation are not tempted. Not a grain in the Professor's composition responded to the invitation of the siren Chance; they were not allurements to him; they were but the fantastic phantasmagoria of a dream. The lovely garden he appreciated only botanically; the view he could not see; abstemious by nature, he cared nothing for the choice rarities of the hotel; while the music, the heavenly music, was to him no more than the housewife's clatter of tin pans. Yet I might have explained this to him all the way home, he would never have comprehended it, but would have gone on thinking that it was simply, on his part, superior virtue and self-control.

But I had no opportunity to explain, since I was not in the carriage with him, but with Janet, Inness, and Baker. Margaret and Lloyd drove homewards together in the phaeton; and as they did not reach the hotel until dusk – long after our own arrival – I asked Margaret where they had been.

"We stopped at the cemetery to watch the sunset beside my statue, aunt."

"Why do you care so much for that marble figure?"

"I do not think she is quite marble," answered Margaret, smiling. "When I look at her, after a while she becomes, in a certain sense, responsive. To me she is like a dear friend."

Another week passed, and another. And now the blossoms of the fruit-trees – a cloud of pink and snowy white – were gone, and the winter loiterers on the sunny shore began to talk of home; or, if they were travellers who had but stopped awhile on the way to Italy, they knew now that the winds of the Apennines no longer chilled the beautiful streets of Florence, and that all the lilies were out.

"Why could it not go on and on forever? Why must there always come that last good-bye?" quoted Mrs. Clary.

"Because life is so sad," said Margaret.

"But I like to look forward," said Janet.

"We shall meet again," said Lloyd.

"The world," I remarked, sagely, "is composed of three classes of persons – those who live in the present, those who live in the past, and those who live in the future. The first class is the wisest."

Our last excursion was to Sant' Agnese. This little mountain village was the highest point we attained on our donkeys, being two thousand two hundred feet above the sea. Its one rugged little street, cut in the side of the cliff, had an ancient weather-beaten little church at one end and a lonely chapel at the other, with the village green in the centre – a "green" which was but a smooth rock amphitheatre, with a parapet protecting it from the precipice below. From this "green" there was a grand view of the mountains, with the sharp point of the Aiguille towering above them all. It was a village fête day, and we met the little procession at the church door. First came the priests and choir-boys, chanting; then the village girls, dressed in white, and bearing upon a little platform an image of Saint Agnes; then youths with streamers of colored ribbons on their arms; and, last, all the villagers, two and two, dressed in their best, and carrying bunches of flowers. Through the winding rocky street they marched, singing as they went. When they arrived at the lonely chapel, Saint Agnes was borne in, and prayers were offered, in which the village people joined, kneeling on the ground outside, since there was not place for them within. Then forth came Saint Agnes again, a hymn was started, in which all took part, the little church bell pealed, and an old man touched off small heaps of gunpowder placed at equal distances along the parapet, their nearest approach, I suppose, to cannon. When the saint had reached her shrine again in safety, her journeyings over until the next year, the procession dissolved, and feasting began, the simple feasting of Italy, in which we joined so far as to partake of a lunch in the little inn, which had a green bush as a sign over the narrow door – the "wine of the country" proving very good, however, in spite of the old proverb. Then, refreshed, we climbed up the steep path leading to the peak where was perched the ruin of the old castle which is so conspicuous from Mentone, high in the air. This castle, the so-called "Saracen stronghold" of Sant' Agnese, pronounced, as Baker said, "either Frenchy to rhyme with lace, or Italianly to rhyme with lazy," seemed to me higher up in the sky than I had ever expected to be in the flesh.

"As our interesting friend" (she meant the Professor) "is not here," said Mrs. Trescott, sinking in a breathless condition upon a Saracen block, "there is no one to tell us its history."

"There is no history," said Verney, "or, rather, no one knows it; and to me that is its chief attraction. There are, of course, legends in stacks, but nothing authentic. The Saracens undoubtedly occupied it for a time, and kept the whole coast below cowering under their cruel sway. But it is hardly probable that they built it; they did not build so far inland; they preferred the shore."

Our specified object, of course, in climbing that breathless path was "the view."

Now there are various ways of seeing views. I have known "views" which required long gazing at points where there was nothing earthly to be seen: in such cases there was probably something heavenly. Other "views" reveal themselves only to two persons at a time; if a third appears, immediately there is nothing to be seen. As to our own manner of looking at the Sant' Agnese view, I will mention that Mrs. Trescott looked at it from a snug corner, on a soft shawl, with her eyes closed. Mrs. Clary looked at it retrospectively, as it were; she began phrases like these: "When I was here three years ago – " pause, sigh, full stop. "Once I was here at sunset – " ditto. Janet, on a remote rock, looked at it, I think, amid a little tragedy from Inness, interrupted and made more tragic by the incursions of Baker, who would not be frowned away. Verney looked at it from a high niche in which he had incautiously seated himself for a moment, and now remained imprisoned, because Miss Elaine had placed herself across the entrance so that he could not emerge without asking her to rise; from this niche, like the tenor of Trovatore in his tower, he occasionally sent across a Miserere to Janet in the distance, like this: "Do you ob – serve, Miss Trescott, the col – ors of the lem – ons below?" And Janet would gesture an assent. Lloyd and Margaret had found a place on a little projecting plateau, where, with the warm sunshine flooding over them, they sat contentedly talking. Meanwhile having neither sleep, retrospect, tragedy, Miserere, nor conversation with which to entertain myself, I really looked at the view, and probably was the only person who did. I had time enough for it. We remained there nearly two hours.

At last our donkey-driver came up to tell us that dancing was going on below, and that there was not much time if we wished to see it, since the long homeward journey still lay before us. So we elders began to call: "Janet!" "Janet!" "Margaret!" "Mr. Verney!" And presently from the rock, the niche, and the plateau they came slowly in, Janet flushed, and Inness very pale, Baker like a thunder-cloud, Miss Elaine smiling and conscious, Verney annoyed, Lloyd just as usual, and Margaret with a younger look in her face than I had seen there for months. In the little rock amphitheatre below we found the villagers merrily dancing; and some strangers like ourselves, who had come out from Mentone later, were amusing themselves by dancing also. Janet joined the circle with Baker, and Inness, after leaning on the parapet awhile, with his back to the dancers, gazing into space, disappeared. I think he went homeward by another path across the mountains. Miss Elaine admired "so much" Miss Trescott's courage in dancing before "so many strangers." She (Miss Elaine) was far "too shy to attempt it." But I did not notice that she was violently urged to the attempt. In the meantime Lloyd was looking at an English girl belonging to the other party, who was dancing near us. She was tall and shapely, with the beautiful English rose-pink complexion, and abundant light hair which had the glint of bronze where the sun shone across it. After a while, as the others came near, he recognized in one of them an acquaintance, who turned out to be the brother of the young lady who had been dancing.

When, as we returned, we reached the main street of Mentone, Margaret and I, who were behind, stopped a moment and looked back. The far peak of Sant' Agnese was flushed with rose-light, although where we were it was already night.

"It does not seem as if we could have been there," I said. "It looks so far away."

"Yes, we have been there," said Margaret; "we have been there. But already it is far, far away."

Mrs. Trescott found a letter awaiting her which made her decide to go forward to Florence on the following day. A great deal can happen in a short time when there is the pressure of a near departure. That evening Janet, who was dressed in white, had a great bunch of the sweet wild narcissus at her belt. I do not know anything certainly, of course, but I did meet Inness in the hall, about eleven o'clock, with a radiant, happy face, and some of that same narcissus in his button-hole. He went with the Trescott's to Florence the next day. And Baker, with disgust, went to Nice. Soon afterwards Verney said that he felt that he required "a closer acquaintance with early art," and departed without saying exactly whither. "Etruscan art, I believe, is considered extremely 'early,'" remarked Mrs. Clary.

The Professor was to join the Trescotts later; at present he was much engaged with some cinerary urns. Miss Elaine, who was to remain a month longer with her mother, remarked to me, on one of the last mornings, that "really, for his age," he was a "very well preserved man."

Margaret and I remained for two weeks after Mrs. Trescott's departure. We saw Mr. Lloyd now and then; but he was more frequently off with the English party.

One afternoon I went with Margaret to watch the sunset from her favorite post beside the statue. She sought the place almost every evening now, and occasionally I went with her. We had never found any one there at that hour; but this evening we heard voices, and came upon Lloyd and the English girl of Sant' Agnese, strolling to and fro.

"I have brought Miss Read to see the view here, Miss Severin," he said; and then introductions followed, and we stood there together watching the beautiful tints of sky and sea. The English girl talked in her English voice with its little rising and falling inflections, so different from our monotonous American key. Margaret answered pleasantly, and, indeed, talked more than usual; I was glad to see her interested.

After a while Lloyd happened to stroll forward where he could see the face of the statue. Then, suddenly, "Wonderful!" he exclaimed. "Strange that I never thought of it before! Do come here, please, and see for yourselves. There is the most extraordinary resemblance between this statue and Miss Read."

Then, as we all went forward, "Wonderful!" he repeated.

Margaret said not a word. The English girl only laughed. "Surely you see it?" he said.

"There may be a little something about the mouth – " I began.

But he interrupted me. "Why, it is perfect! The statue is her portrait in marble. Miss Read, will you not let me place you in the same position, just for an instant?" And, leading her to a little mound, he placed her in the required pose; she had thrown off her hat to oblige him, and now clasped her hands and turned her eyes over the sea towards the eastern horizon. What was the result?

The only resemblance, as I had said, was about the mouth; for the beautifully cut lips of the statue turned downward at the corners, and the curve of Miss Read's sweet baby-like mouth was the same. But that was all. Above was the woman's face in marble, beautiful, sad, full of the knowledge and the grief of life; below was the face of a young girl, lovely, fresh, and bright, and knowing no more of sorrow than a blush-rose upon its stem.

"Exact!" said Lloyd.

Miss Read laughed, rose, and resumed her straw hat; presently they went away.

"There was not the slightest resemblance," I said, almost with indignation.

"People see resemblances differently," answered Margaret. Then, after a pause, she added, "She is, at least, much more like the statue than I am."

"Not in the spirit, dear," I said, much touched; for I saw that as she spoke the rare tears had filled her eyes. But they did not fall; Margaret had a great deal of self-control; perhaps too much.

Then there was a silence. "Shall we go now, aunt?" she said, after a time. And we never spoke of the subject again.

"Look, look, Margaret! the palms of Bordighera!" I said, as our train rushed past. It was our last of Mentone.

CAIRO IN 1890

I

HE way to Egypt is long and vexatious" – so Homer sings; and so also have sung other persons more modern. A chopping sea prevails off Crete, and whether one leaves Europe at Naples, Brindisi, or Athens, one's steamer soon reaches that beautiful island, and consumes in passing it an amount of time which is an ever-fresh surprise. Crete, with its long coast-line and soaring mountain-tops, appears to fill all that part of the sea. However, as the island is the half-way point between Europe and Africa, one can at least feel, after finally leaving it behind, that the Egyptian coast is not far distant. This coast is as indolent as that of Crete is aggressive; it does not raise its head. You are there before you see it or know it; and then, if you like, in something over three hours more you can be in Cairo.

The Cairo street of the last Paris Exhibition, familiar to many Americans, was a clever imitation. But imitations of the Orient are melancholy; you cannot transplant the sky and the light.

The real Cairo has been sacrificed to the Nile. Comparatively few among travellers in the East see the place under the best conditions; for upon their arrival they are preoccupied with the magical river voyage which beckons them southward, with the dahabeeyah or the steamer which is to carry them; and upon their return from that wonderful journey they are planning for the more difficult expedition to the Holy Land. It is safe to say that to many Americans Cairo is only a confused memory of donkeys and dragomans, mosquitoes and dervishes, and mosques, mosques, mosques! This hard season probably must be gone through by all. The wise are those who stay on after it is over, or who return; for the true impression of a place does not come when the mind is overcrowded and confused; it does not come when the body is wearied; for the descent of the vision, serenity of soul is necessary – one might even call it idleness. It is during those days when one does nothing that the reality steals noiselessly into one's comprehension, to remain there forever.

But is Cairo worth this? is asked. That depends upon the temperament. If one must have in his nature somewhere a trace of the poet to love Venice, so one must be at heart something of a painter to love Cairo. Her colors are so softly rich, the Saracenic part of her architecture is so fantastically beautiful, the figures in her streets are so picturesque, that one who has an eye for such effects seems to himself to be living in a gallery of paintings without frames, which stretch off in vistas, melting into each other as they go. If, therefore, one loves color, if pictures are precious to him, are important, let him go to Cairo; he will find pleasure awaiting him. Flaubert said that one could imagine the pyramids, and perhaps the Sphinx, without an actual sight of them, but that what one could not in the least imagine was the expression on the face of an Oriental barber as he sits cross-legged before his door. That is Cairo exactly. You must see her with the actual eyes, and you must see her without haste. She does not reveal herself to the Cook tourist nor even to Gaze's, nor to the man who is hurrying off to Athens on a fixed day which nothing can alter.

THE NEW QUARTER

(One must begin with this, and have it over.) Cairo has a population of four hundred thousand souls. The new part of the town, called Ismaïlia, has been persistently abused by almost all writers, who describe it as dusty, as shadeless, as dreary, as glaring, as hideous, as blankly and broadly empty, as adorned with half-built houses which are falling into ruin – one has read all this before arriving. But what does one find in the year of grace 1890? Streets shaded by innumerable trees; streets broad indeed, but which, instead of being dusty, are wet (and over-wet) with the constant watering; well-kept, bright-faced houses, many of them having beautiful gardens, which in January are glowing with giant poinsettas, crimson hibiscus, and purple bougainvillea – flowers which give place to richer blooms, to an almost over-luxuriance of color and perfumes, as the early spring comes on. If the streets were paved, it would be like the outlying quarters of Paris, for most of the houses are French as regards their architecture. Shadeless? It is nothing but shade. And the principal drives, too, beyond the town – the Ghezireh road, the Choubra and Gizeh roads, and the long avenue which leads to the pyramids – are deeply embowered, the great arms of the trees which border them meeting and interlacing overhead. Consider the stony streets of Italian cities (which no one abuses), and then talk of "shadeless Cairo"!

THE CLIMATE

If one wishes to spend a part of each day in the house, engaged in reading, writing, or resting; if the comfortable feeling produced by a brightly burning little fire in the cool of the evening is necessary to him for his health or his pleasure – then he should not attempt to spend the entire winter in the city of the Khedive. The mean temperature there during the cold season – that is, six weeks in January and February – is said to be 58° Fahrenheit. But this is in the open air; in the houses the temperature is not more than 54° or 52°, and often in the evening lower. The absence of fires makes all the difficulty; for out-of-doors the air may be and often is charming; but upon coming in from the bright sunshine the atmosphere of one's sitting-room and bedroom seems chilly and prison-like. There are, generally speaking, no chimneys in Cairo, even in the modern quarter. Each of the hotels has one or two open grates, but only one or two. Southern countries, however, are banded together – so it seems to the shivering Northerner – to keep up the delusion that they have no cold weather; as they have it not, why provide for it? In Italy in the winter the Italians spread rugs over their floors, hang tapestries upon their walls, pile cushions everywhere, and carpet their sofas with long-haired skins; this they call warmth. But a fireless room, with the thermometer on its walls standing at 35°, is not warm, no matter how many cushions you may put into it; and one hates to believe, too, that necessary accompaniments of health are roughened faces and frost-bitten noses, and the extreme ugliness of hands swollen and red. "Perhaps if one could have in Cairo an open hearth and three sticks, it would, with all the other pleasures which one finds here, be too much – would reach wickedness!" was a remark we heard last winter. A still more forcible exclamation issued from the lips of a pilgrim from New York one evening in January. Looking round her sitting-room upon the roses gathered that day in the open air, upon the fly-brushes and fans and Oriental decorations, this misguided person moaned, in an almost tearful voice: "Oh, for a blizzard and a fire!" The reasonable traveller, of course, ought to remember that with a climate which has seven months of debilitating heat, and three and a half additional months of summer weather, the attention of the natives is not strongly turned towards devices for warmth. This consideration, however, does not make the fireless rooms agreeable during the few weeks that remain.

Another surprise is the rain. "In our time it rained in Egypt," writes Strabo, as though chronicling a miracle. Either the climate has changed, or Strabo was not a disciple of the realistic school, for in the January of this truthful record the rain descended in such a deluge in Cairo that the water came above the knees of the horses, and a ferry-boat was established for two days in one of the principal streets. Later the rain descended a second time with almost equal violence, and showers were by no means infrequent. (It may be mentioned in parenthesis that there was heavy rain at Luxor, four hundred and fifty miles south of Cairo, on the 19th of February.) One does not object to these rains; they are in themselves agreeable; one wishes simply to note the impudence of the widely diffused statement that Egypt is a rainless land. So far nothing has been said against the winter climate of Cairo; objection has been made merely to the fireless condition of the houses – a fault which can be remedied. But now a real enemy must be mentioned – namely, the kamsin. This is a hot wind from the south, which parches the skin and takes the life out of one; it fills the air with a thick grayness, which you cannot call mist, because it is perfectly dry, and through which the sun goes on steadily shining, with a light so weird that one can think of nothing but the feelings of the last man, or the opening of the sixth seal. The regular kamsin season does not begin before May; the occasional days of it that bring suffering to travellers occur in February, March, and April. But what are five or six days of kamsin amid four winter months whose average temperature is 58° Fahrenheit? It is human nature to detect faults in climates which have been greatly praised, just as one counts every freckle on a fair face that is celebrated for its beauty. Give Cairo a few hearth fires, and its winter climate will seem delightful; although not so perfect as that of Florida, in our country, because in Florida there are no January mosquitoes.

MOSQUES

It must be remembered that Cairo is Arabian. "The Nile is Egypt," says a proverb. The Nile is mythical, Pharaonic, Ptolemaic; but Cairo owes its existence solely to the Arabian conquerors of the country, who built a fortress and palace here in A.D. 969.

Very Arabian is still the call to prayer which is chanted by the muezzins from the minarets of the mosques several times during the day. We were passing through a crowded quarter near the Mooski one afternoon in January, when there was wafted across the consciousness a faint, sweet sound. It was far away, and one heard it half impatiently at first, unwilling to lift one's attention even for an instant from the motley scenes nearer at hand. But at length, teased into it by the very sweetness, we raised our eyes, and then it was seen that it came from a half-ruined minaret far above us. Round the narrow outer gallery of this slender tower a man in dark robes was pacing slowly, his arms outstretched, his face upturned to heaven. Not once did he look below as he continued his aerial round, his voice giving forth the chant which we had heard – "Allah akbar; Allah akbar; la Allah ill' Allah. Heyya alas-salah!" (God is great; God is great; there is no God but God, and Mohammed is his prophet. Come to prayer.) Again, another day, in the old Touloun quarter, we heard the sound, but it was much nearer. It came from a window but little above our heads, the small mosque within the quadrangle having no minaret. This time I could note the muezzin himself. As he could not see the sky from where he stood, his eyes were closed. I have never beheld a more concentrated expression of devotion than his quiet face expressed; he might have been miles away from the throng below, instead of three feet, as his voice gave forth the same strange, sweet chant. The muezzins are often selected from the ranks of the blind, as the duties of the office are within their powers; but this singer at the low window had closed his eyes voluntarily. The last time I saw the muezzin was towards the end of the season, when the spring was far advanced. Cairo gayety was at its height, the streets were crowded with Europeans returning from the races, the new quarter was as modern as Paris. But there are minarets even in the new quarter, or near it; and on one of the highest of these turrets, outlined against the glow of the sunset, I saw the slowly pacing figure, with its arms outstretched over the city – "Allah akbar; Allah akbar; come, come to prayer."

There are over four hundred mosques in Cairo, and many of them are in a dilapidated condition. Some of these were erected by private means to perpetuate the name and good deeds of the founder and his family; then, in the course of time, owing to the extinction or to the poverty of the descendants, the endowment fund has been absorbed or turned into another channel, and the ensuing neglect has ended in ruin. When a pious Muslim of to-day wishes to perform a good work, he builds a new mosque. It would never occur to him to repair the old one near at hand, which commemorates the generosity of another man. It must be remembered that a mosque has no established congregation, whose duty it is to take care of it. A mosque, in fact, to Muslims has not an exclusively religious character. It is a place prepared for prayer, with the fountain which is necessary for the preceding ablutions required by Mohammed, and the niche towards Mecca which indicates the position which the suppliant must take; but it is also a place for meditation and repose. The poorest and most ragged Muslim has the right to enter whenever he pleases; he can say his prayers, or he can simply rest; he can quench his thirst; he can eat the food which he has brought with him; if he is tired, he can sleep. In mosques not often visited by travellers I have seen men engaged in mending their clothes, and others cooking food with a portable furnace. In the church-yard of Charlton Kings, England, there is a tombstone of the last century with an inscription which concludes as follows: "And his dieing request to his Sons and Daughters was, Never forsake the Charitys until the Poor had got their Rites." In the Cairo mosques the poor have their rites – both with the gh and without. The sacred character of a mosque is, in truth, only made conspicuous when unbelievers wish to enter. Then the big shuffling slippers are brought out to cover the shoes of the Christian infidels, so that they may not touch and defile the mattings reserved for the faithful.

After long neglect, something is being done at last to arrest the ruin of the more ancient of these temples. A commission has been appointed by the present government whose duty is the preservation of the monuments of Arabian art; occasionally, therefore, in a mosque one finds scaffolding in place and a general dismantlement. One can only hope for the best – in much the same spirit in which one hopes when one sees the beautiful old front of St. Mark's, Venice, gradually encroached upon by the new raw timbers.

But in Cairo, at least, the work of repairing goes on very slowly; three hundred mosques, probably, out of the four hundred still remain untouched, and many of these are adorned with a delicate beauty which is unrivalled. I know no quest so enchanting as a search through the winding lanes of the old quarters for these gems of Saracenic taste, which no guide-book has as yet chronicled, no dragoman discovered. The street is so narrow that your donkey fills almost all the space; passers-by are obliged to flatten themselves against the walls in response to the Oriental adjurations of your donkey-boy behind: "Take heed, O maid!" "Your foot, O chief!" Presently you see a minaret – there is always a minaret somewhere; but it is not always easy to find the mosque to which it belongs, hidden, perhaps, as it is, behind other buildings in the crowded labyrinth. At length you observe a door with a dab or two of the well-known Saracenic honeycomb-work above it; instantly you dismount, climb the steps, and look in. You are almost sure to find treasures, either fragments of the pearly Cairo mosaic, or a wonderful ceiling, or gilded Kufic (old Arabian text) inscriptions and arabesques, or remains of the ancient colored glass which changes its tint hour by hour. Best of all, sometimes you find a space open to the sky, with a fountain in the centre, the whole surrounded by arcades of marble columns adorned with hanging lamps (or, rather, with the bronze chains which once carried the lamps), and with suspended ostrich eggs – the emblems of good-luck. One day, when my donkey was making his way through a dilapidated region, I came upon a mosque so small that it seemed hardly more than a base for its exquisite minaret, which towered to an unusual height above it. Of course I dismounted. The little mosque was open; but as it was never visited by strangers, it possessed no slippers, and without coverings of some kind it was impossible that unsanctified shoes, such as mine, should touch its matted floor; the bent, ancient guardian glared at me fiercely for the mere suggestion. One sees sometimes (even in 1890) in the eyes of old men sitting in the mosques the original spirit of Islam shining still. Once their religion commanded the sword; they would like to grasp it again, if they could. It was suggested that the matting might, for a backsheesh, be rolled up and put away, as the place was small. But the stern old keeper remained inflexible. Then the offer was made that so many piasters – ten (that is, fifty cents) – would be given to the blind. Now the blind are sacred in Cairo; this offer, therefore, was successful; all the matting was carefully rolled and stacked in a corner, the three or four Muslims present withdrew to the door, and the unbeliever was allowed to enter. She found herself in a temple of color which was incredibly rich. The floor was of delicate marble, and every inch of the walls was covered with a mosaic of porphyry and jasper, adorned with gilded inscriptions and bands of Kufic text; the tall pulpit, made of mahogany-colored wood, was carved from top to bottom in intricate designs, and ornamented with odd little plaques of fretted bronze; the sacred niche was lined with alabaster, turquoise, and gleaming mother-of-pearl; the only light came through the thick glass of the small windows far above, in downward-falling rays of crimson, violet, and gold. The old mosaic-work of the Cairo mosques is composed of small plates of marble and of mother-of-pearl arranged in geometrical designs; the delicacy of the minute cubes employed, and the intricacy of the patterns, are marvellous; the color is faint, unless turquoise has been added; but the glitter of the mother-of-pearl gives the whole an appearance like that of jewelry. Upon our departure five blind men were found drawn up in a line at the door. It would not have been difficult to collect fifty.

II

"I love the Arabian language for three reasons: because I am an Arab myself; because the Koran is in Arabic; because Arabic is the language of Paradise." This hadith, or saying, of Mohammed might be put upon the banner of the old university of Cairo, El Azhar; that is, the Splendid. El Azhar was founded in the tenth century, when Cairo itself was hardly more than a name. In its unmoved attachment to the beliefs of its founders, to their old enthusiasms, their methods and hates, El Azhar has opposed an inflexible front to the advance of European ideas, sending out year after year its hundreds of pupils to all parts of Egypt and to Nubia, to the Soudan and to Morocco, to Turkey, Arabia, and Syria, to India and Ceylon, and to the borders of Persia, believing that so long as it could keep the education of the young in its grasp the reign of the Prophet was secure. It is to-day the most important Mohammedan college in the world; for though it has no longer the twenty thousand students who crowded its courts in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, there is still an annual attendance of from seven to ten thousand; by some authorities the number is given as twelve thousand. The twelve thousand have no academic groves; they have not even one tree. There is nothing sequestered about El Azhar; it is near the bazaars in the old part of the town, where the houses are crowded together like wasps' nests. One sees nothing of it as one approaches save the minarets above, and in the narrow, crowded lane an outer portal. Here the visitor must show his permit and put on the mosque-shoes, for El Azhar was once a mosque, and is now mosque and university combined. After the shoes are on he steps over the low bar, and finds himself within the porch, which is a marvel as it stands, with its fretwork, carved stones, faded reds, and those old plaques of inscription which excite one's curiosity so desperately, and which no dragoman can ever translate, no matter in how many languages he can complacently ask, "You satisfi?" One soon learns something of the older tongue; hieroglyphics are not difficult; any one with eyes can discover after a while that the A of the ancient Egyptians is, often, a bird who bears a strong resemblance to a pigeon; that their L is a lion; and that the name of the builder of the Great Pyramid, for instance, is represented by a design which looks like two freshly hatched chickens, a football, and a horned lizard (speaking, of course, respectfully of them all). But one can never find out the meaning of the tantalizing characters, so many thousand years nearer our own day, which confront us, surrounded by arabesques, over old Cairo gateways, across the fronts of the street fountains, or inscribed in faded gilt on the crumbling walls of mosques. It is probable that they are Kufic, and one would hardly demand, I suppose, that an English guide should read black-letter? But who can be reasonable in the land of Aladdin's Lamp?

The porch leads to the large central court, which is open to the sky, the breeze, and the birds; and this last is not merely a possibility, for birds of all kinds are numerous in Egypt, and unmolested. On the pavement of this court, squatting in groups, are hundreds of the turbaned students, some studying aloud, some reading aloud (it is always aloud), some listening to a professor (who also squats), some eating their frugal meals, some mending their clothes, and some merely chatting. These groups are so many and so close together that often the visitor can only make the circuit of the place on its outskirts; he cannot cross. There is generally a carrier of drinking-water making his rounds amid the serried ranks. "For whoever is thirsty, here is water from God," he chants. One is almost afraid to put down the melodious phrase, for the street cries of Cairo have become as trite as the Ranz des Vaches of Switzerland. Still, some of them are so imaginative and quaint that they should be rescued from triteness and made classic. Here is one which is chanted by the seller of vegetables – the best beans, it should be explained, come from Embebeh, beyond Boulak – "Help, O Embebeh, help! The beans of Embebeh are better than almonds. Oh-h, how sweet are the little sons of the river!" (This last phrase makes poetical allusion to the soaking in Nile water, which is required before the beans can be cooked.) Certain famous baked beans nearer home also require preliminary soaking. Let us imagine a huckster calling out in Boston streets, as he pursues his way: "Help, O Beverly, help! The beans of Beverly are better than peaches. Oh-h, how sweet are the little sons of Cochituate!"

The central court of the Splendid is surrounded by colonnades, whose walls are now undergoing repairs; but the propping beams do not appear to disturb either the pupils or teachers. On the east side is the sanctuary, which is also a school-room, but a covered one; it is a large, low-ceilinged hall, covering an area of thirty-six hundred square yards; by day its light is dusky; by night it is illuminated by twelve hundred twinkling little lamps suspended from the ceiling by bronze chains. The roof is supported by three hundred and eighty antique columns of marble and granite placed in irregular ranges; there are so many of these pillars that to be among them is like standing in a grove. The pavement is smoothly covered with straw matting; and here also are assembled throngs of pupils – some studying, some reciting, some asleep. I paid many visits to El Azhar, moving about quietly with my venerable little dragoman, whom I had selected for an unusual accomplishment – silence. One day I came upon an arithmetic class; the professor, a thin, ardent-eyed man of forty, was squatted upon a beautiful Turkish rug at the base of a granite column; his class of boys, numbering thirty, were squatted in a half-circle facing him, their slates on the matting before them. The professor had a small black-board which he had propped up so that all could see it, and there on its surface I saw inscribed that enemy of my own youth, a sum in fractions – three-eighths of seven-ninths of twelve-twentieths of ten-thirty-fifths, and so on; evidently the terrible thing is as savage as ever! The professor grew excited; he harangued his pupils; he did the sum over and over, rubbing out and rewriting his ferocious conundrum with a bit of chalk. Slender Arabian hands tried the sum furtively on the little slates; but no one had accomplished the task when, afraid of being remarked, I at last turned away.

The outfit of a well-provided student at El Azhar consists of a rug, a low desk like a small portfolio-easel, a Koran, a slate, an inkstand, and an earthen dish. Instruction is free, and boys are admitted at the early age of eight years. The majority of the pupils do not remain after their twelfth or fourteenth year; a large number, however, pursue their studies much longer, and old students return from time to time to obtain further instruction, so that it is not uncommon to see a gray-bearded pupil studying by the side of a child who might be his grandson. To me it seemed that two-thirds of the students were men between thirty and forty years of age; but this may have been because one noticed them more, as collegians so mature are an unusual sight for American eyes.

All the pupils bow as they study, with a motion like that of the bowing porcelain mandarins. The custom is attributed to the necessity for bending the head whenever the name of Allah is encountered; as the first text-book is always the Koran, children have found it easier to bow at regular intervals with an even motion than to watch for the numerous repetitions of the name. The habit thus formed in childhood remains, and one often sees old merchants in the bazaars reading for their own entertainment, and bowing to and fro as they read. I have even beheld young men, smartly dressed in full European attire, who, lost in the interest of a newspaper, had forgotten themselves for the moment, and were bending to and fro unconsciously at the door of a French café. A nation that enjoys the rocking-chair ought to understand this. Some of the students of El Azhar have rooms outside, but many of them possess no other shelter than these two courts, where they sleep upon their rugs spread over the matting or pavement. Food can be brought in at pleasure, but those two Oriental time-consumers, pipes and coffee, are not allowed within the precincts. In one of the porches barbers are established; there is generally a row of students undergoing the process of head-shaving. The fierce, fanatical blind pupils, so often described in the past by travellers, are no longer there; the porter can show only their empty school-room. Blindness is prevalent in Egypt; no doubt the sunshine of the long summer has something to do with it, but another cause is the neglected condition of young children. There is no belief so firmly established in the minds of Egyptian mothers as the superstition that the child who is clean and well-dressed will inevitably attract the dreaded evil-eye, and suffer ever afterwards from the effects of the malign glance. I have seen women who evidently belonged to the upper ranks of the middle class – women dressed in silk, with gold ornaments, and a following servant – who were accompanied by a poor baby of two or three years of age, so dirty, so squalid and neglected, that any one unacquainted with the country would have supposed it to be the child of a beggar.

In addition to the bowing motion, instruction at El Azhar is aided by a mnemonic system, the rules of grammar, and other lessons also, being given in rhyme. I suppose our public schools are above devices of this sort; but there are some of us among the elders who still fly mentally, when the subject of English history comes up, to that useful poem beginning "First, William the Norman;" and I have heard of the rules for the use of "shall" and "will" being properly remembered only when set to the tune of "Scotland's burning!" Surely any tune – even "Man the Life-boat" – would become valuable if it could clear up the bogs of the subjunctive.

It must be mentioned that El Azhar did not invent its mnemonics; it has inherited them from the past. All the mediæval universities made use of the system.

The central court is surrounded on three sides by chambers, one of which belongs to each country and to each Egyptian province represented at the college. These sombre apartments are filled with oddly-shaped wardrobes, which are assigned to the students for their clothes. There is a legend connected with these rooms: At dusk a man whose heart is pure is sometimes permitted to see the elves who come at that hour to play games in the inner court under the columns; here they run races, they chase each other over the matting, they climb the pillars, and indulge in a thousand antics. The little creatures are said to live in the wardrobes, and each student occasionally places a few flowers within, to avert from himself the danger that comes from their too great love of tricks. There are other inhabitants of these rooms who also indulge in tricks. These are little animals which I took to be ferrets; twice I had a glimpse of a disappearing tail, like a dark flash, as I passed over a threshold. Probably they are kept as mouse-hunters, for pets are not allowed; if they were, it would be entertaining to note those which would be brought hither by homesick pupils from the Somali coast, or Yemen.

In beginning his education the first task for a boy is to commit the Koran to memory. As he learns a portion he is taught to read and to write those paragraphs; in this way he goes through the entire volume. Grammar comes next; at El Azhar the word includes logic, rhetoric, composition, versification, elocution, and other branches. Then follows law, secular and religious. But the law, like the logic, like all the instruction, is founded exclusively upon the Koran. As there is no inquiry into anything new, the precepts have naturally taken a fixed shape; the rules were long ago established, and they have never been altered; the student of 1890 receives the information given to the student of 1490, and no more. But it is this very fact which makes El Azhar interesting to the looker-on; it is a living relic, a survival in the nineteenth century of the university of the fourteenth and fifteenth. It is true that when we think of those great colleges of the past, the picture which rises in the mind is not one of turbaned, seated figures in flowing robes; it is rather of aggressively agile youths, with small braggadocio caps perched on their long locks, their slender waists outlined in the shortest of jackets, and their long legs incased in the tightest of party-colored hose. But this is because the great painters of the past have given immortality to these astonishing scholars of their own lands by putting them upon their canvases. They confined themselves to their own lands too, unfortunately for us; they did not set sail, with their colors and brushes, upon Homer's "misty deep." It would be interesting to see what Pinturicchio would have made of El Azhar; or how Gentile da Fabriano would have copied the crowded outer court.

The president of El Azhar occupies, in native estimation, a position of the highest authority. Napoleon, recognizing this power, requested the aid of his influence in inducing Cairo to surrender in 1798. The sheykh complied; and a month later the wonderful Frenchman, in full Oriental costume, visited the university in state, and listened to a recitation from the Koran.

Now that modern schools have been established by the government in addition to the excellent and energetic mission seminaries maintained by the English, the Americans, the Germans, and the French, one wonders whether this venerable Arabian college will modify its tenets or shrink to a shadow and disappear. There are hopeful souls who prophesy the former; but I do not agree with them. Let us aid the American schools by all the means in our power. But as for El Azhar, may it fade (as fade it must) with its ancient legends draped untouched about it.

All who visit Cairo see the Assiout ware – pottery made of red and black earth, and turned on a wheel; it comes from Assiout, two hundred and thirty miles up the Nile, and the simple forms of the vases and jugs, the rose-water stoups and narrow-necked perfume-throwers, are often very graceful. Assiout ware is offered for sale in the streets; but the itinerant venders are sent out by a dealer in the bazaars, and the fatality which makes it happen that the vender has two black stoups and one red jug when you wish for one black stoup and two red jugs sent us to headquarters. But the crowded booth did not contain our heart's desire, and as we still lingered, making ourselves, I dare say, too pressing for the Oriental ease of the proprietor, it was at last suggested that Mustapha might perhaps go to the store-room for more – ? (the interrogation-point meaning backsheesh). Seizing the opportunity, we asked permission to accompany the messenger. No one objecting – as the natives consider all strangers more or less mad – we were soon following our guide through a dusky passageway behind the shop, the darkness lit by the gleam of his white teeth as he turned, every now and then, to give us an encouraging smile and a wink of his one eye, over his shoulder. At length – still in the dark – we arrived at a stairway, and, ascending, found ourselves in a second-story court, which was roofed over with matting. This court was surrounded by chambers fitted with rough, sliding fronts: almost all of the fronts were at the moment thrown up, as a window is thrown up and held by its pulleys. In one of these rooms we found Assiout ware in all its varieties; but we made a slow choice. We were evidently in a lodging-house of native Cairo; all the chambers save this one store-room appeared to be occupied as bachelors' apartments. The two rooms nearest us belonged to El Azhar students, so Mustapha said: he could speak no English, but he imparted the information in Arabic to our dragoman. Seeing that we were more interested in the general scene than in his red jugs, Mustapha left the Assiout ware to its fate, and, lighting a cigarette, seated himself on the railing with a disengaged air, as much as to say: "Two more mad women! But it's nothing to me." One of the students was evidently an ascetic; his room contained piles of books and pamphlets, and almost nothing else; his one rug was spread out close to the front in order to get the light, and placed upon it we saw his open inkstand, his pens, and a page of freshly copied manuscript. When we asked where he was, Mustapha replied that he had gone down to the fountain to wash himself, so that he could say his prayers. The second chamber belonged to a student of another disposition; this extravagant young man had three rugs; clothes hung from pegs upon his walls, and he possessed an extra pair of lemon-colored slippers; in addition we saw cups and saucers upon a shelf. Only two books were visible, and these were put away in a corner; instead of books he had flowers; the whole place was adorned with them; pots containing plants in full bloom were standing on the floor round the walls of his largely exposed abode, and were also drawn up in two rows in the passageway outside, where he himself, sitting on a mat, was sewing. His blossoms were so gay that involuntarily we smiled. Whereupon he smiled too, and gave us a salam. Opposite the rooms of the students there was a large chamber, almost entirely filled with white bales, like small cotton bales; in a niche between these high piles, an old man, kneeling at the threshold, was washing something in a large earthen-ware tub of a pink tint. His body was bare from the waist upward, and, as he bent over his task, his short chest, with all the ribs clearly visible, his long brown back with the vertebræ of the spine standing out, and his lean, seesawing arms, looked skeleton-like, while his head, supported on a small wizened throat, was adorned with such an enormous bobbing turban, dark green in hue, that it resembled vegetation of some sort – a colossal cabbage. Directly behind him, also on the threshold, squatted a large gray baboon, whose countenance expressed a fixed misanthropy. Every now and then this creature, who was secured by a long, loose cord, ascended slowly to the top of the bales and came down on the other side, facing his master. He then looked deeply into the tub for several minutes, touched the water carefully with his small black hand, withdrew it, and inspected the palm, and then returned gravely, and by the same roundabout way over the bales, to resume his position at the doorsill, looking as if he could not understand the folly of such unnecessary and silly toil.

In another chamber a large, very black negro, dressed in pure white, was seated upon the floor, with his feet stretched out in front of him, his hands placed stiffly on his knees, his eyes staring straight before him. He was motionless; he seemed hardly to breathe.

"What is he doing?" I said to the dragoman.

"He? Oh, he berry good man; he pray."

In a chamber next to the negro two grave old Arabs were playing chess. They were perched upon one of those Cairo settees which look like square chicken-coops. One often sees these seats in the streets, placed for messengers and porters, and for some time I took them for actual chicken-coops, and wondered why they were always empty. Chickens might well have inhabited the one used by the chess-players, for the central court upon which all these chambers opened was covered with a layer of rubbish and dirt several inches thick, which contained many of their feathers. It was upon this same day that we made our search for the Khan of Kait Bey. No dragoman knows where it is. The best way, indeed, to see the old quarters is to select from a map the name of a street as remote as possible from the usual thoroughfares beloved by these tasselled guides, and then demand to be conducted thither.

We did this in connection with the Khan of Kait Bey. But when we had achieved the distinction of finding it, we discovered that it was impossible to see it. The winding street is so narrow, and so constantly crowded with two opposed streams of traffic, that your donkey cannot pause to give you a chance to inspect the portion which is close to your eyes, and there is no spot where you can get a view in perspective of the whole. So you pass up the lane, turn, and come down again; and, if conscientious, you repeat the process, obtaining for all your pains only a confused impression of horizontal plaques and panels, with ruined walls tottering above them, and squalid shops below. There is a fine arched gateway adorned with pendentives; that, on account of its size, you can see; it leads into the khan proper, where were once the chambers for the travelling merchants and the stalls for their beasts; but all this is now a ruin. One of the best authorities on Saracenic art has announced that this khan is adorned with more varieties of exquisite arabesques than any single building in Cairo. This may be true. But to appreciate the truth of the statement one needs wings or a ladder. The word ladder opens the subject of the two ways of looking at architecture – in detail or as a whole. The natural power of the eye has more to do with this than is acknowledged. If one can distinctly see, without effort and aid, a whole façade at a glance, with the general effect of its proportions, the style of its ornament, the lights and shadows, the outline of the top against the sky, one is more interested in this than in the small traceries, for instance, over one especial window. There are those of us who remember the English cathedrals by their great towers rising in the gray air, with the birds flying about them. There are others who, never having clearly seen this vision – for no opera-glass can give the whole – recall, for their share of the pleasure, the details of the carvings over the porches, or of the old tombs within. It is simply the far-sighted and the near-sighted view. Another authority, a master who has had many disciples, has (of late years, at least) devoted himself principally to the near-sighted view. In his maroon-colored Tracts on Venice he has given us a minute account of the features of the small faces of the capitals of the columns of the Doge's palace (all these ofs express the minuteness of it); but when we stand on the pavement below the palace – and naturally we cannot stand in mid-air – we find that it is impossible to follow him: I speak of the old capitals, some of which are still untouched. The solution lies in the ladder. And Ruskin, as regards his later writings, may be called the ladder critic. The poet Longfellow, arriving in Verona during one of his Italian journeys, learned that Ruskin was also there, and not finding him at the hotel, went out in search of his friend. After a while he came upon him at the Tombs of the Scaligers. Here high in the air, at the top of a long ladder, with a servant keeping watch below, was a small figure. It was Ruskin, who, nose to nose with them, was making a careful drawing of some of the delicate terminal ornaments of those splendid Gothic structures. One does not object to the careful drawings any more than to the descriptions of the little faces at Venice. They are good in their way. But one wishes to put upon record the suggestion that architectural beauty as viewed from a ladder, inch by inch, is not the only aspect of that beauty; nor is it, for a large number of us, the most important aspect. A man who is somewhat deaf, if talking about a symphony, will naturally dwell upon the strains which he has heard – that is, the louder portions; but he ought not therefore to assume that the softer notes are insignificant.

THE DERVISHES

On the 31st of January, 1890, we took part in a horse-race. It was a long race of great violence, and the horses engaged in it were disgracefully thin and weak. "Very Mohammedan – that," some one comments. The race was Mohammedan from one point of view, for it was connected with the dervishes, Mohammedans of fanatical creed. The dervishes, however, remained in their monasteries – with their fanaticism; the race was made by Christians, who, crowded into rattling carriages, flew in a body from the square of Sultan Hassan through the long, winding lanes that lead towards Old Cairo at a speed which endangered everybody's life, with wheels grating against each other, coachmen standing up and yelling like demons, whiplashes curling round the ribs of the wretched, ill-fed, galloping horses, and natives darting into their houses on each side to save themselves from death, as the furious procession, in clouds of dust, rushed by. The cause of this sudden madness is found in the fact that the two best-known orders of these Mohammedan monks (one calls them monks for want of a better name; they have some resemblance to monks, and some to Freemasons) go through their rites once a week only, and upon the same afternoon; by making this desperate haste it is possible to see both services; and as travellers, for the most part, make but a short stay in Cairo, they find themselves taking part, nolens volens, in this frantic progress, led by their ambitious dragomans, who appear to enjoy it. The service of the Dancing Dervishes takes place in their mosque, which is near the square of Sultan Hassan. Here they have a small circular hall; round this arena, and elevated slightly above it, is an aisle where spectators are allowed to stand; over the aisle is the gallery. This January day brought a crowd of visitors who filled the aisle completely. Presently a dervish made the circuit of the empty arena, warning, by a solemn gesture, those who had seated or half-seated themselves upon the balustrade that the attitude was not allowed. As soon as he had passed, some of the warned took their places again. Naturally, these were spectators of the gentler sex. I am even afraid that they were pilgrims from the land where the gentler sex is accustomed from its earliest years to a profound deference. Two of these pretty pilgrims transgressed in this way four times, and at last the dervish came and stood before them. They remained seated, returning his gaze with amiable tranquillity. What he thought I do not know – this lean Egyptian in his old brown cloak and conical hat. I fancied, however, that it had something to do with the great advantages of the Mohammedan system regarding the seclusion of women. He did not conquer.

At length began the music. The band of the dervishes is placed in one of the galleries; we could see the performers squatting on their rugs, the instruments being flutes or long pipes, and small drums like tambourines without the rattles. Egyptian music has a marked time, but no melody; no matter how good an ear one has, it is impossible to catch and resing its notes, even though one hears them daily. Pierre Loti writes: "The strains of the little flutes of Africa charm me more than the most perfect orchestral harmonies of other lands." If by this he means that the flutes recall to his memory the magic scenes of Oriental life, that is one thing; but if he means that he really loves the sounds for themselves, I am afraid we must conclude that this prince of verbal expression has not an ear for music (which is only fair; a man cannot have everything). The band of the dervishes sends forth a high wail, accompanied by a rumble. Neither, however, is distressingly loud.

Meanwhile the dervishes have entered, and, muffled in their cloaks, are standing, a silent band, round the edge of the arena; their sheykh – a very old man, much bent, but with a noble countenance – takes his place upon the sacred rug, and receives with dignity their obeisances. All remain motionless for a while. Then the sheykh rises, heads the procession, and, with a very slow step, they all move round the arena, bowing towards the sacred carpet as they pass it. This opening ceremony concluded, the sheykh again takes his seat, and the dervishes, divesting themselves of their cloaks, step one by one into the open space, where, after a prayer, each begins whirling slowly, with closed eyes. They are all attired in long, full white skirts, whose edges have weights attached to them; as the speed of the music increases, their whirl becomes more rapid, but it remains always even; though their eyes are closed, they never touch each other. From the description alone, it is difficult to imagine that this rite (for such it is) is solemn. But looked at with the actual eyes, it seemed to me an impressive ceremony; the absorbed appearance of the participants, their unconsciousness of all outward things, the earnestness of the aspiration visible on their faces – all these were striking. The zikr, as this species of religious effort is named, is an attempt to reach a state of ecstasy (hallucination, we should call it), during which the human being, having forgotten the existence of its body, becomes for the moment spirit only, and can then mingle with the spirit world. The Dancing Dervishes endeavor to bring on this trance by the physical dizziness which is produced by whirling; the Howling Dervishes try to effect the same by swinging their heads rapidly up and down, and from side to side, with a constant shout of "Allah!" "Allah!". The latter soon reach a state of temporary frenzy. For this reason the dancers are more interesting; their ecstasy, being silent, seems more earnest. The religion of the Hindoos has a similar idea in another form – namely, that the highest happiness is a mingling with God, and an utter unconsciousness of one's humanity. Christian hermits, in retiring from the world, have sought, as far as possible, the same mental condition; but for a lifetime, not, like the dervishes, for an hour. These enthusiasts marry, if they please; many of them are artisans, tradesmen, and farm laborers, and only go at certain times to the monasteries to take part in the zikrs. There are many different orders, and several other kinds of zikr besides the two most commonly seen by travellers.

CORFU AND THE IONIAN SEA

 
Sad eyes! the blue sea laughs, as heretofore.
Ah, singing birds, your happy music pour;
Ah, poets, leave the sordid earth awhile;
Flit to these ancient gods we still adore:
"It may be we shall touch the happy isle!"
 

– Translated by Andrew Lang.

Not long before Christmas, last year, I found myself travelling from Ancona down the Adriatic coast of Italy by the fast train called the Indian Mail. There was excitement in the very name, and more in the conversation of the people who sat beside me at the table of a queer little eating-house on the shore, before whose portal the Indian Mail stopped late in the evening. We all descended and went in. A dusky apartment was our discovery, and a table illuminated by guttering candles that flared in the strong currents of air. Roast chickens were stacked on this table in a high pile, and loaves of dark-colored bread were placed here and there, with portly straw-covered flasks of the wine of the country. No one came to serve us; we were expected to serve ourselves. A landlord who looked like an obese Don Juan was established behind a bench in a distant corner, where he made coffee with amiability and enthusiasm for those who desired it. It was supposed that we were to go to him, before we returned to the train, and pay for what we had consumed; and I hope that his trust in us was not misplaced, for with his objection to exercise, and his dim little lamp which illuminated only his smiles, there was nothing for him but trust. The Indian Mail carries passengers who are outward-bound for Constantinople, Egypt, and India; his confidence rested perhaps in the belief that persons about to embark on such dangerous seas would hardly begin the enterprise by crime. To other minds, however, it might have seemed the very moment to perpetrate enormities. As we attacked the chickens, I perceived in the flickering glare that all my companions were English. Everybody talked, and the thrill of the one American increased as the names of the steamers waiting at Brindisi were mentioned – the Hydaspes, the Coromandel, the Cathay, the Mirzapore: towards what lands of sandal-wood, what pleasure-domes of Kubla-Khan, might not one sail on ships bearing those titles! The present voyagers, however, were all old travellers; they took a purely practical view of the Orient. Nevertheless, their careless "Cairo," "Port Said," "Bombay," "Ceylon," "Java," were as fascinating as the shining balls of a juggler when a dozen are in the air at the same moment. My right-hand neighbor, upon learning that my destination was Corfu, good-naturedly offered the information that the voyage was an easy one. "Corfu, however, is not what it has been!"

"But, Polly, it is looking up a little, now that the Empress of Austria is building a villa there," suggested a sister correctively.

After this outburst of talk, we all climbed back into the waiting train, and went flying on towards the south, following the lonely, wild-looking coast, with the wind from the Adriatic crying over our heads like a banshee. It was midnight when we reached Brindisi. At present this, the ancient Brundusium, is the jumping-off place for the traveller on his way to the East; here he must leave the land and trust himself to an enigmatical deep. But if he wishes to have the sensation in full force, he must not delay his journey; for, presently, the Indian Mail will rush through Greece and meet the steamers at Cape Colonna; and then, before long, there will be another spurt, and Pullman trains will go through to Calcutta, with a ferry over the Bosporus.

At Brindisi I became the prey of five barelegged boatmen, who, owing to the noise of the wind and the water, communicated with each other by yells. The Austrian-Lloyd steamer from Trieste, outward-bound for Constantinople, which carried the friends I was expecting to meet, was said to be lying out in the stream, and I enjoyed the adventure of setting forth alone on the dark sea in search of her, in a small boat rowed by my Otranto crew. During the transit there was not much time to think of Brundusium, with its memories of Horace and Virgil. But there was another opportunity to reflect upon the question, perplexing to the unskilled mind – namely, Why it is that an American abroad is constantly called upon to praise the wharves, piers, and landing-stages, and with the same breath to condemn as disgraces to civilization the like nautical platforms of his own country, when he is so often obliged, on foreign shores, to embark and disembark by means of a tossing small boat or a crowded tender, whereas at home, with the aid of those same makeshift constructions for whose short-comings he is supposed to blush, he walks on board of his steamship with no trouble whatever?

Early the next morning, awakening on a shelf in a red velvet cupboard, I was explaining to myself vaguely that the cupboard was a dream, when there appeared through the port-hole a picture of such fairy-tale beauty that the dream became lyrical – it began to sing:

 
"Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live!"
 

At last those famous lines were actualities, for surely this was the sea of the Jumblies, and those heights without doubt were "the hills of Chankly Bore." (There are people, I believe, who do not care for the Jumblies. There are persons who do not care for Alice in Wonderland, nor for Brer Rabbit, when he played on his triangle down by the brook.)

The sea which I saw was of a miraculously blue tint; in the distance the cliffs of a mountainous island rose boldly from the water, their color that of a violet pansy; a fishing-boat with red sails was crossing the foreground; over all glittered an atmosphere so golden that it was like that of sunset in other lands, though the sky, at the same time, had unmistakably the purity of early morning. Later, on the deck, during the broadly practical time of after breakfast, this view, instead of diminishing in attraction, grew constantly more fair. The French novelist of to-day, Paul Bourget, describes Corfu as "so lovely that one wants to take it in one's arms!" Another Frenchman, who was not given to the making of phrases, no less a personage than Napoleon Bonaparte, has left upon record his belief that Corfu has "the most beautiful situation in the world." What, then, is this beauty? What is this situation?

First, there is the long and charming approach, with the snow-capped mountains of Albania, in European Turkey, looming up against the sky at the end; then comes the landlocked harbor; then the picturesque old town, its high stone houses, all of creamy hue, crowded together on the hill-side above the sea-wall, with here and there a bell-tower shooting into the blue. Below is the busy, many-colored port. Above towers the dark double fortress on its rock. And, finally, the dense, grove-like vegetation of the island encircles all, and its own mountain-peaks rise behind, one of them attaining a height of three thousand feet. There are other islands of which all this, or almost all, can be said – Capri, for instance. But at Corfu there are two attributes peculiar to the region; these are: first, the color; second, the transparency. Although the voyage from Brindisi hardly occupies twelve hours, the atmosphere is utterly unlike that of Italy; there is no haze; all is clear. Some of us love the Italian haze (which is not in the least a mist), that soft veil which makes the mountains look as if they were covered with velvet. But a love of this softness need not, I hope, make us hate everything that is different. Greece (and Corfu is a Greek island) seemed to me all light – the lightest country in the world. In other lands, if we climb a high mountain and stand on its bald summit at noon, we feel as if we were taking a bath in light; in Greece we have this feeling everywhere, even in the valleys. Euripides described his countrymen as "forever delicately tripping through the pellucid air," and so their modern descendants trip to this day. This dry atmosphere has an exciting effect upon the nervous energy, and the faces of the people show it. It has also, I believe, the defect of this good quality – namely, an over-stimulation, which sometimes produces neuralgia. In some respects Americans recognize this clearness of the atmosphere, and its influence, good and bad; the air of northern New England in the summer, and of California at the same season, is not unlike it. But in America the transparency is more white, more blank; we have little of the coloring that exists in Greece, tints whose intensity must be seen to be believed. The mountains, the hills, the fields, are sometimes bathed in lilac. Then comes violet for the plains, while the mountains are rose that deepens into crimson. At other times salmon, pink, and purple tinges are seen, and ochre, saffron, and cinnamon brown. This description applies to the whole of Greece, but among the Ionian Islands the effect of the color is doubled by the wonderful tint of the surrounding sea. I promise not to mention this hue again; hereafter it can be taken for granted, for it is always present; but for this once I must say that you may imagine the bluest blue you know – the sky, lapis lazuli, sapphires, the eyes of some children, the Bay of Naples – and the Ionian Sea is bluer than any of these. And nowhere else have I seen such dear, queer little foam sprays. They are so small and so very white on the blue, and they curl over the surface of the water even when the sea is perfectly calm, which makes me call them queer. You meet them miles from land. And all the shores are whitened with their never-ceasing play. It is a pygmy surf.

It was eleven o'clock in the morning when our steamer reached her anchorage before the island town. Immediately she was surrounded by small boats, whose crews were perfectly lawless, demanding from strangers whatever they thought they could get, and obtaining their demands, because there was no way to escape them except by building a raft. Upon reaching land one forgets the extortion, for the windows of the hotel overlook the esplanade, and this open space amiably offers to persons who are interested in first impressions a panoramic history of two thousand five hundred years in a series of striking mementos. Let me premise that as regards any solid knowledge of these islands, only a contemptible smattering can be obtained in a stay so short as mine. Corfu and her sisters have borne a conspicuous part in what we used to call ancient history. Through the Roman days they appear and reappear. In the times of the Crusaders their position made them extremely important. Years of study could not exhaust their records, nor months of research their antiquities. To comprehend them rightfully one must indeed be an historian, an archæologist, and a painter at one and the same time, and one must also be good-natured. Few of us can hope to unite all these. The next best thing, therefore, is to go and see them with whatever eyes and mind we happen to possess. Good-nature will perhaps return after the opening encounter with the boatmen is over.

From our windows, then, we could note, first, the Citadel, high on its rock, three hundred feet above the town. The oldest part of the present fortress was erected in 1550; but the site has always been the stronghold. Corinthians, Athenians, Spartans, Macedonians, and Romans have in turn held the island, and this rock is the obvious keep. Later came four hundred years of Venetian control, and I am ashamed to add that the tokens of this last-named period were to me more delightful than any of the other memorials. I say "ashamed," for why should one be haunted by Venice in Greece? With the Parthenon to look forward to, why should the lion of St. Mark, sculptured on Corfu façades, be a thing to greet with joy? Many of us are familiar with the disconsolate figures of some of our fellow-countrymen and countrywomen in the galleries of Europe, tired and dejected tourists wandering from picture to picture, but finding nothing half so interesting as the memory of No. 4699 Columbus Avenue at home. I am afraid it is equally narrow to be scanning Corfu, Athens, Cairo, and the sands of the desert itself for something that reminds one of another place, even though that place be the enchanting pageant of a town at the head of the Adriatic. History, however, as related by the esplanade, pays no attention to these aberrations of the looker-on; its story goes steadily forward. The lions of St. Mark on the façades, and another memento of the Doges – namely, the statue of Count von der Schulenburg, who commanded the Venetian forces in the great defence of Corfu in 1716 – these memorials have as companions various tokens of the English occupation, which, following that of Venice, continued through forty-nine years – that is, from 1815 to 1863. Before this there had been a short period of French dominion; but the esplanade, so far as I could discover, contains no memorial of it, unless Napoleon's phrase can stand for one – and I think it can. The souvenirs of the British rule are conspicuous. The first is the palace built for the English Governor, a functionary who bore the sonorous official name of Lord High Commissioner, a title which was soon shortened to the odd abbreviation "the Lord High." This palace is an uninteresting construction stretching stiffly across the water-side of the esplanade, and cutting off the view of the harbor. It is now the property of the King of Greece, but at present it is seldom occupied. While we were at Corfu its ghostliness was enlivened for a while; Prince Henry of Prussia was there with his wife. They had left their yacht (if so large a vessel as the Irene can be called a yacht), and were spending a week at the palace. An hour after their departure entrance was again permitted, and an old man, still trembling from the excitement of the royal sojourn, conducted us from room to room. All was ugly. Fading flowers in the vases showed that an attempt had been made to brighten the place; but the visitors must have been endowed with a strong natural cheerfulness to withstand with success such a mixture of the commonplace and the dreary as the palace presents. They had the magnificent view to look at, and there was always the graceful silhouette of the Irene out on the water. She could come up at any time and take them away; it was this, probably, that kept them alive.

If the palace is ordinary, what shall be said of another memento which adorns the esplanade? This is a high, narrow building, so uncouth that it causes a smile. It looks raw, bare, and so primitive that if it had a pulley at the top it might be taken for a warehouse erected on the bank of a canal in one of our Western towns; one sees in imagination canal-boats lying beneath, and bulging sacks going up or down. Yet this is nothing less than that University of the Ionian Islands which was founded by the Earl of Guildford early in this century, the epoch of English enthusiasm for Greece, the days of the Philhellenes. Lord Guildford, who was one of the distinguished North family, gave largely of his fortune and of his time to establish this university. Contemporary records speak of him as "an amiable nobleman." But after seeing his touchingly ugly academy and his bust (which is not ugly) in the hall of the extinct Ionian Senate at the palace, one feels sure that he was more than amiable – he must have been original also.

The English are called cold; but as individuals they are capable sometimes of extraordinary enthusiasms for distant causes and distant people. Adventurous travellers as they are, does the charm lie in the word "distant"? The defunct academy now shelters a school where vigorous young Greeks sit on benches, opposite each other, in narrow, doorless compartments which resemble the interior of a large omnibus; this, at least, was the arrangement of the ground-floor on the day of our visit. Although it was December, the boys looked heated. The teachers, who walked up and down, had a relentless aspect. Even the porter, white-haired and bent, had a will untouched by the least decay; he would not show us the remains of the university library, nor the Roman antiquities which are said to be stored somewhere in a lumber-room, among them "fifty-nine frames of mosaic representing a bustard in various attitudes." He had not the power, apparently, to exhibit these treasures while the school exercises were going on, and as soon as they were ended – instantly, that very minute – he intended to eat his dinner, and nothing could alter this determination; his face grew ferocious at the mere suggestion. So we were obliged to depart without seeing the souvenirs of Lord Guildford's enthusiasm; and owing to the glamour which always hangs over the place one has failed to see, I have been sure ever since that we should have found them the most fascinating objects in Corfu.

At the present school the teaching is done, no doubt, in a tongue which would have made the old university shudder. In a letter written by Sir George Bowen in 1856, from one of the Ionian Islands, there is the following anecdote: "Bishop Wilberforce told me that he recently had, as a candidate at one of his ordinations, Mr. M., the son of an English merchant settled in Greece. 'I examined him myself,' said the bishop, 'when he gave what was to me an unknown pronunciation.' 'Oh, Mr. M.,' I said, 'where did you learn Greek?' 'In Athens, my lord,' replied the trembling man." Classical scholars who visit Greece to-day are not able to ask the simplest questions; or, rather, they may ask, but no one will understand them. Several of these gentlemen have announced to the world that the modern speech of Athens is a barbarous decadence. It is not for an American, I suppose, to pass judgment upon matters of this sort. But when these authorities continue as follows: "And even in pronunciation modern Greek is hopelessly fallen; the ancients never pronounced in this way," may we not ask how they can be so sure? They are not, I take it, inspired, and the phonograph is a modern invention. The voice of Robert Browning is stored for coming generations; the people A.D. 3000 may hear him recite "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix." Possibly the tones of Lord Salisbury and of Mr. Balfour are already garnered and arranged in cylinders for the future orators of the South Seas. But we cannot know how Pindar spoke any more than we can know the song the Sirens sang; the most learned scholar cannot, alas! summon from the past the articulation of Plato.

In the esplanade the period of English rule is further kept in mind by monuments to the memory of three of the Lords High – a statue, an obelisk, and (of all things in the world) an imitation of a Greek temple. This temple – it is so small that they might call it a templette – was erected in honor of Sir Thomas Maitland, a Governor whose arbitrary rule gained for him the title of King Tom. The three memorials are officially protected, an agreement to that effect having been made between the governments of Great Britain and Greece. They were never in danger, probably, as the English protection was a friendly one. In spite of its friendliness, the Corfiotes voted as follows with enthusiasm when an opportunity was offered to them: "The single and unanimous will of the Ionian people has been and is for their reunion with the Kingdom of Greece." England yielded to this wish and withdrew – a disinterested act which ought to have gained for her universal applause. Since 1864 Corfu and her sister islands, happily freed at last from foreign control, have filled with patriotic pride and contentment their proper place as part of the Hellenic kingdom.

The esplanade also contains the one modern monument erected by the Corfiotes themselves – a statue of Capo d'Istria. John Capo d'Istria, a native of Corfu, was the political leader of Greece when she succeeded in freeing herself from the Turkish yoke. The story of his life is a part of the exciting tale of the Greek revolution. His measures, after he had attained supreme power, were thought to be high-handed, and he was accused also of looking too often towards that great empire in the North whose boundaries are stretching slowly towards Constantinople; he was resisted, disliked; finally he was assassinated. Time has softened the remembrance of his faults, whatever they were, and brought his services to the nation into the proper relief; hence this statue, erected in 1887, fifty-six years after his death, by young Greece. It is a sufficiently imposing figure of white marble, the face turned towards the bay with a musing expression. Capo d'Istria – a name which might have been invented for a Greek patriot! The Eastern question is a complicated one, and I have no knowledge of its intricacies. But a personal observation of the hatred of Turkey which exists in every Greek heart, and a glance at the map of Europe, lead an American mind towards one general idea or fancy – namely, that Capo d'Istria was merely in advance of his time, and that an alliance between Russia and Greece is now one of the probabilities of the near future. It is unexpected – at least, to the non-political observer – that Hellas should be left to turn for help and comfort to the Muscovites, a race to whom, probably, her ancient art and literature appeal less strongly than they do to any other European people. But she has so turned. "Wait till Russia comes down here!" she appears to be saying, with deferred menace, to Turkey to-day.

These various monuments of the esplanade do not, however, make Corfu in the least modern. They are unimportant, they are inconspicuous, when compared with the old streets which meander over the slopes behind them, fringed with a net-work of stone lanes that lead down to the water's edge. It has been said that the general aspect of the place is Italian. It is true that there are arcades like those of Bologna and Padua; that some of the byways have the look of a Venetian calle, without its canal; and that the neighborhood of the gay little port resembles, on a small scale, the streets which border the harbor of Genoa. In spite of this, we have only to look up and see the sky, we have only to breathe and note the quality of the air, to perceive that we are not in Italy. Corfu is Greek, with a coating of Italian manners. And it has also caught a strong tinge from Asia. Many of the houses have the low door and masked entrance which are so characteristic of the East; at the top of the neglected stairway, as far as possible from public view, there may be handsome, richly furnished apartments; but if such rooms exist, the jealous love of privacy keeps them hidden. This inconspicuous entrance is as universal in the Orient as the high wall, shutting off all view of the garden or park, is universal in England.

The town of Corfu has 26,000 inhabitants. Among the population are Dalmatians, Maltese, Levantines, and others; but the Greeks are the dominant race. There is a Jews' quarter, and Jews abound, or did abound at the time of my visit. Since then fanaticism has raised its head again, and there have been wild scenes at Corfu. Face to face with the revival of persecution for religious opinions which is now visible in Russia, and not in Russia alone, are we forced to acknowledge that our century is not so enlightened as we have hoped that it was. I remember when I believed that in no civilized country to-day could there be found, among the educated, a single person who would wish to persecute or coerce his fellow-beings solely on account of their religious opinions; but I am obliged to confess that, without going to Russia or Corfu, I have encountered within the last dozen years individuals not a few whose flashing eyes and crimson cheeks, when they spoke of a mental attitude in such matters which differed from their own, made me realize with a thrill that if it were still the day of the stake and the torch they would come bringing fagots to the pile with their own hands.

In spite of these survivals, ceremonial martyrdom for so-called religion's sake is, we may hope, at an end among the civilized nations; we have only its relics left. Corfu has one of these relics, a martyr who is sincerely honored – St. Spiridion, or, as he is called in loving diminutive, Spiro. Spiro, who died fifteen hundred years ago, was bishop of a see in Cyprus, I believe. He was tortured during the persecution of the Christians under Diocletian. His embalmed body was taken to Constantinople, and afterwards, in 1489, it was brought to Corfu by a man named George Colochieretry. Some authorities say that Colochieretry was a monk; in any case, what is certain is that the heirs of this man still own the saint – surely a strange piece of property – and derive large revenues from him. St. Spiro reposes in a small dim chapel of the church which is called by his name; his superb silver coffin is lighted by the rays from a hanging lamp which is suspended above it. When we paid our visit, people in an unbroken stream were pressing into this chapel, and kissing the sarcophagus repeatedly with passionate fervor. The nave, too, was thronged; families were seated on the pavement in groups, with an air of having been there all day: probably Christmas is one of the seasons set apart for an especial pilgrimage to the martyr. Three times a year the body is taken from its coffin and borne round the esplanade, followed by a long train of Greek clergy, and by the public officers of the town; upon these occasions the sick are brought forth and laid where the shadow of the saint can pass over them. "Yes, he's out to-day, I believe," said a resident, to whom we had mentioned this procession. He spoke in a matter-of-fact tone. After seeing it three times a year for twenty years, the issuing forth of the old bishop into the brilliant sunshine to make a solemn circuit round the esplanade did not, I suppose, seem so remarkable to him as it seemed to us. There is another saint, a woman (her name I have forgotten), who also reposes in a silver coffin in one of the Corfu churches. At first we supposed that this was Spiro. But the absence of worshippers showed us our mistake. This lonely witness to the faith was also a martyr; she suffered decapitation. "They don't think much of her," said the same resident. Then, explanatorily, "You see – she has no head." This practically minded critic, however, was not a native of Corfu. The true Corfiotes are very reverent, and no doubt they honor their second martyr upon her appointed day. But Spiro is the one they love. The country people believe that he visits their fields once a year to bless their olives and grain, and the Corfu sailors are sure that he comes to them, walking on the water in the darkness, when a storm is approaching. Mr. Tuckerman, in his delightful volume, The Greeks of To-Day, says, in connection with this last legend, that it is believed by the devout that seaweed is often found about the legs of the good bishop in his silver coffin, after his return from these marine promenades. There is something charming in this story, and I shall have to hold back my hand to keep myself from alluding (and yet I do allude) to a shrine I know at Venice; it is far out on the lagoon, and its name is Our Lady of the Seaweed. The last time my gondola passed it I saw that by a happy chance the high tide had left seaweed twined about it in long, floating wreaths, like an offering.

The name of the national religion of Greece is the Orthodox Church of the East, or, more briefly, the Orthodox Church. Western nations call it the Greek Church, but they have invented that name themselves. The Orthodox Church has rites and ceremonies which are striking and sometimes magnificent. I have many memories of the churches of Corfu. The temples are so numerous that they seem innumerable; one was always coming upon a fresh one; sometimes there is only a façade visible, and occasionally nothing but a door, the church being behind, masked by other buildings. My impressions are of a series of magnified jewel-boxes. There was not much daylight; no matter how radiant the sunshine outside, within all was richly dim, owing to the dark tints of the stained glass. The ornamentation was never paltry or tawdry. The soft light from the wax candles drew dull gleams from the singular metal-incrusted pictures. These pictures, or icons, are placed in large numbers along the walls and upon the screen which divides the nave from the apse. They are generally representations of the Madonna and Child in repoussé-work of silver, silvered copper, or gilt. Often the face and hands of the Madonna are painted on panel; in that case the portrait rises from metal shoulders, and the head is surrounded by metal hair. The painting is always of the stiff Byzantine school, following an ancient model, for any other style would be considered irreverent, and nothing can exceed the strange effect produced by these long-eyed, small-mouthed, rigid, sourly sweet virgin faces coming out from their silver-gilt necks, while below, painted taper fingers of unearthly length encircle a silver Child, who in His turn has a countenance of panel, often all out of drawing, but hauntingly sweet. These curious pictures have great dignity. The churches have no seats. I generally took my stand in one of the pew-like stalls which project from the wall, and here, unobserved, I could watch the people coming in and kissing the icons. This adoration, commemoration, reverence, or whatever the proper word for it may be, is much more conspicuous in the Greek places of worship than it is in Roman Catholic churches. Those who come in make the round of the walls, kissing every picture, and they do it fervently, not formally. The service is chanted by the priests very rapidly in a peculiar kind of intoning. The Corfu priests did not look as if they were learned men, but their faces have a natural and humane expression which is agreeable. In the street, with their flowing robes, long hair and beards, and high black caps, they are striking figures. The parish priest must be a married man, and he does not live apart from his people, but closely mingles with them upon all occasions. He is the papas, or pope, as it is translated, and a lover of Tourguenieff who meets a pope for the first time at Corfu is haunted anew by those masterpieces of the great Russian – the village tales across whose pages the pope and the popess come and go, and seem, to American readers, such strange figures.