CHAPTER X.

NICE AND CIMIEZ

When one crosses the Var he crosses the ancient frontier between France and the Comté de Nice. The old-time French inhabitants of the Comté ever considered it an alien land, and invariably expressed the wish to be buried in the Cemetery of St. Laurent du Var, just over the border in the royal domain.

The present Pont du Var, which one crosses as he comes from the westward, from Cagnes or Antibes, is the successor of another flung across the same stream by Vauban, much against his will, it would seem, for he said boldly that it was so foolish a project as never to be worth a hundredth part of its cost. How poorly he reckoned can be judged by the hundreds of thousands of travellers--millions doubtless--who, in later years, have made use of it. He evidently did not foresee the tide of tourist travel, whatever may have been his genius as a military engineer.

The Var is not a very formidable-looking river at first glance, and has not the tempestuous flood of the Rhône and the Durance in actual volume, but the excess of water which it carries to the sea, at certain seasons, is proportionately very much greater. The Rhône increases its bulk but thirty times, the Durance a hundred times, but the Var throws into the Mediterranean, in time of flood, a hundred and forty times its usual flow, a fact which ranks it as one of the most fickle waterways of Europe, if not of the world.

So important a place as Nice of course has a legendary account of the origin of its name. It is claimed by some historians, and disputed by others, that it was a colony founded by the Massaliotes three hundred years before the beginning of the Christian era, and, in consequence of a signal success against the Ligurians, the place received the glorious name of Victory,--_Nicæa_, a name which with but little alteration has come down to to-day.

Long before the French came into possession of the Comté de Nice and its capital there was a friendship, and a sort of union, between the two peoples. When the little state became a part of modern France, it became simply more French than it was before. This was the only change to be remarked until the era of its great prosperity as a winter resort, for the world’s idlers made it what it is,--the best-known winter station in all the world.

Nice used to be called “Nizza la Bella,” but, since the arrival of the French (1860), and the English, and the Americans, and the Germans (the Russian grand dukes, be it recalled, have made Cannes their own), “Nizza la Bella” has become “Nice la Belle,” for it is beautiful in spite of its drawbacks for the lover of sylvan and unartificial charms.

There is not in Africa a spot more African in appearance than the railway station at Nice; such at all events is the impression that it makes upon one when he views the enormous palms that surround the station.

Up to this time the traveller from the north, by rail, has got some glimpses of the southland from the windows of his railway car; has seen some palms, perhaps, and other specimens of a subtropical flora; but, since the railway does not make its way through the palm avenues of Hyères or Cannes, the sudden apparition of Nice is as of something new.

Many have sung the praises of “Nice la Belle” in prose and verse; in times past, Dupatay, Lalande, and Delille; and, in our own day, Alphonse Karr, Dumas père, De Banville, Mistral, Jacques Normand, Bourget, Nadaud, and a host of others too numerous to mention.

Nice is a marvellous blend of the old and the new; the old quarter of the Niçois, with narrow streets of stairs, overhanging balconies, and all the accessories of the life of the Latins as they have been pictured for ages past; the new, with broad boulevards, straight tree-bordered avenues flanked with gay shops, hotels, kiosks, automobile cabs, and all the rest of what we have come unwisely to regard as the necessities of the age. The curtain of trees flanking these great modern thoroughfares is the only thing that saves them from becoming monotonous; as it is, they are as attractive as any of their kind in Paris, Lyons, or Marseilles.

The Promenade des Anglais is the finest of these thoroughfares. With its yuccas, and its garden, and its sea-wall, and its fringe of white-crested, lapping waves, it is all very entrancing,--all except the inartistic thing of glass roofs and iron struts, known the world over as a pier, and which, in spite of its utility,--if it really is useful,--is an abomination. Artificiality is all very well in its place, but out of place it is as indigestible as the _nougat_ of Montélimar.

The Nice of to-day bears little resemblance to the Nice of half a century ago, as one learns from recorded history and a gossip with an old inhabitant. Then it was simply a collection of _maisons groupées_, with narrow, crooked streets between, huddled around the flanks of the old château.

In those days the railway ended at Genoa on the east and at Toulon on the west, and the space between was only covered by diligence, horse or donkey back, or by boat. The “high life,” as the French have come themselves to term listlessness and indolence, had not yet arrived, in spite of the fact that its outpost had already been planted at Cannes by England’s chancellor.

Those were parlous times for Monte Carlo. There was but one table for “_trente et quarante_” and one for “_roulette_,” and the opening of the game waited upon the arrival of a score of persons who came from Nice daily by _voiture publique_, via La Turbie, or by the cranky little steamer which took an hour and forty minutes in good weather, and which in bad did not start out at all. On these occasions there was little or nothing “doing” at Monte Carlo, but the new régime saw to it that transportation facilities were increased and improved, and immediately everything prospered.

However much one may deplore the advent of the railway along picturesque travel routes, and it certainly does detract not a little from several charming Riviera panoramas, there is no question but that it is a necessary evil. Perhaps after all it isn’t an evil, for one can be very comfortable in any of the great and luxurious expresses which deposit their hordes all along the Riviera during the winter season. The new thirteen-hour train from Paris, the “_Côte d’Azur Rapide_,” has already become one of the world’s wonders for speed, taking less than three-quarters of an hour in making the nine stops between Paris and Nice. Then there are the “London-Riviera Express,” the “Vienne-Cannes Express,” the “Calais-Nice Express,” and the Nord-Sud-Brenner (Cannes, Nice, Vintimille to Berlin), with sleeping-cars and dining-cars, but not yet with bathrooms, barber-shops, or stenographers and typewriters, which have already arrived in America, where business is combined with the joy of living.

From the very fact of its past history and of its geographical location, Nice is the most cosmopolitan of all the cities of the Riviera, if we except Monte Carlo.

To the stranger, English, French, and Italians seem to be about on a par at Nice, with a liberal addition of Germans and Russians, though naturally French are really in the majority. There are many Italian-speaking people in the old town of Nice, away from the frankly tourist quarters, but it is a strange Italian that one hears, and in many cases is not Italian at all, but the Niçois patois, which sounds quite as much like the real Provençal tongue as it does Italian, though in reality it is not a very near approach to either.

Nice is the true centre of the catalogued beauties of the Riviera, and in consequence it has become the truly popular resort of the region. In spite of this it is not the most lovable, for garish hotels,--no matter how fine their “_rosbif_” may be,--_chalets coquets_, and sky-scraping apartment houses have a way of intruding themselves on one’s view in a most distressing manner until one is well out into the foot-hills of the Alpes-Maritimes and away from the tooting, humming electric trams.

The port of Nice is not a great one, as those of the maritime world go, but it is sufficient to the needs of the city, and there is a considerable coastwise traffic going on. The basin is purely artificial and was cut practically from the solid rock. With its sheltering mountain background it is exceedingly picturesque and well disposed. The tiny river Paillon runs into it from the north, a rivulet which in its own small way apes the torrents of the Var in times of flood. At other seasons it runs drily through the town and bares its pebbles to the blazing southern sun. It serves its purpose well though, in that its thin stream of water forms the washing-place of the washerwomen of Nice, and, from their numbers, one might think of the whole Riviera. The process of pounding and strangling one’s linen into a semblance of whiteness does not differ greatly here from that of other parts of France. There are the same energetic swoops of the paddle, the thrashings on a flat stone, the swishings and swashings in the running water of the stream, and finally the spreading on the ground to dry. Here, though, the linen is spread on the smooth, clean pebbles of the river-bed and the southern sun speedily dries it to a stiffness (and yellowness) which grass-spread linen does not acquire. In other respects the washing process seems quite as efficacious as elsewhere, and there are quite as many small round holes (in the most impossible places), which will give one hours of speculation as to how they were made. It’s all very simple, when you come to think of it. Things are simply rolled or twisted into a wad and pounded on the flat stone. Where nothing but linen intervenes between the paddle and the stone, a certain flatness is produced in the mass, and the dirt meanwhile is supposed to have sifted, or to have been driven, through and out. Where there are buttons--well, that is where the little round holes come from, and meanwhile the buttons have been broken and have disappeared. The process has its disadvantages--decidedly.

The old château of Nice and its immediate confines sound the most dominant old-time note of the entire city, for, in spite of the old streets and houses of the older part of the city, the quarters of the Niçois and the Italians, there is over all a certain reflex of the modernity which radiates from the great hotels, cafés, and shops of the newer boulevards and avenues.

To be sure, the “château,” so called to-day, is no château at all, and is in fact nothing more than a sort of garden, or park, wherein are some scanty remains of the château which existed in the time of Louis XIV. The hill on which it sat is still the dominant feature of the place, although, according to the exaggerated draughtsmanship of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the château and its dependencies must have been a marvellous array of spectacular architecture. The summit of this eminence, hanging high above the port on one side and the Quai du Midi and the valley of the Paillon on the other, is reached by a winding road, doubling back and forth up its flank, but the only thing that would prompt one to make the ascent would be the exercise or the altogether surprising view which one has of the city and its immediate surroundings.

The sea mirrors the sails of the shipping (mostly to-day it is funnels and masts, however) and the distant promontories of Cap d’Antibes on the one side and Cap Ferrat on the other. Beyond the former the sun sets gloriously at night, amidst a ravishing burst of red, gold, and purple, quite unequalled elsewhere along the Riviera. Of course it _is_ as glorious elsewhere, but the combination of scenic effects is not quite the same, and here, at least, Nice leads all the other Riviera tourist points.

To the north are the lacelike snowy peaks of the Alps, cutting the horizon with that far-away brilliance and crispness which only a snow-capped mountain possesses. The contrast is to be remarked in other lands quite as emphatically, at Riverside, in California, for instance, where you may have orange-blossoms one hour and deep snow in the next, if you will only climb the mountain to get it; but there is a historic atmosphere and local colour here on the Riviera whose places are not adequately filled by anything which ever existed in California.

Nice is surrounded by a triple defence of mountains which, supporting one another, have all but closed the route to Italy from the north. This mountain barrier serves another purpose, and that is as a sort of shelter from the rigours of the Alps in winter. The wind-shield is not wholly effectual, for there is one break through which it howls in most distressing fashion most of the time. This is at the extremity of the port, where the wall is broken between the hill of the château and Mont Boron. Formerly this gap bore the old Provençal nomenclature of “_Raoubo Capeou_,” which, literally translated, may be called the “hat-lifter,” and which the French themselves call “_Dérobe Chapeau_.”

Above all, one should see Nice in the height of the flower season, when the stalls of the flower merchants are literally buried under a harvest of flowers and perfumed fruits.

Nice’s distractions are too numerous to be mentioned in detail. The Mi-Carême and Mardi Gras festivals are nowhere on the Riviera more brilliant than here, and now that in these progressive days they have added “Batailles de Fleurs” and “Courses d’Automobiles,” and “Horse-Races” and “Tennis” and “Golf Tournaments,” the significance of the merry-making is quite different from the original interpretation given it by the Latins. Sooner or later “Baseball” and “Shoe-blacking Contests” may be expected to be introduced, and then what will be one’s recollections of “Nizza la Bella?”

The business of Nice consists almost entirely of the catering to her almost inexhaustible stream of winter visitors. This, and the traffic in garden vegetables and fruits, a trade of some proportions in olive-oil, and the manufacture and sale of crystallized fruit, make up the chief industrial life of the town.

One other industry may be mentioned, though it is of little real worth, in spite of the business having reached large figures,--the trade in olive-wood souvenirs. Every one knows the sort of thing: penholders, napkin-rings, and card-cases. They are found at resorts all over the world, and the manufacturers of Nice have spread their product, throughout Europe, before the eyes of the tourists who like to buy such “souvenirs,” whether they are at Brighton, Mont St. Michel, or Vichy.

The region between Nice and Menton seems particularly favourable to the growth of a much grander species of olive-tree than is to be seen in the other _départements_ of the south, and the olive-oil of Nice, because of its peculiar perfume, is greatly in demand among those who think they have an exquisite taste in this sort of thing. As most of this aromatic oil is exported, the statement need be no reflection on the product of other parts. One hundred establishments, of all ranks, are engaged in this traffic at Nice.

The horticultural trade plays its part, and the roses and violets of Nice are found throughout the flower-markets of Europe. There are three great rose-growing centres in western Europe, Lyons, Paris, and Ghent (Belgium), and mostly their flowers are grown from plants obtained at Nice.

The cut-flower traffic is also considerable locally, and Nice, Beaulieu, Monaco, and Monte Carlo are themselves large consumers.

Four kilometres only separate Nice from Cimiez, the latter comparatively as flourishing and important a town in the days of the Romans as Nice is to-day.

For long it played a preëminent rôle in the history of these parts. To-day one makes his way by one of the ever-pushing electric trams which, in France, are threading every suburban byway in the vicinities of the cities and large towns. In other days this was the ancient Roman way which bound Cimiez and Vence, the Via Augusta, the most ancient communication between Italy and Gaul. Evidences of its old foundations are not deeply hidden, and this stretch of roadway must ever remain one of the most vivid examples of the utilitarian industry of the colonizing Romans in Gaul.

At Cimiez there are many evidences of the old Roman builders and their unequalled art, fragments of temples, aqueducts, baths, and amphitheatres. Everything is very fragmentary, often but a bit of a column, a sculptured leg or arm, or a morsel of a plate; but there is everything to prove that Cimiez was a most important place in its time. The most notable of these ruins is the amphitheatre, built after the conventional manner of theatre-building invented by the Greeks before the Romans, and which has, in truth, not been greatly changed up to to-day, except that it has been roofed over. The theatre at Cimiez in no way suggests those other Provençal examples at Orange or Arles, the peers of their class in western Europe, and the stone-cutting was of a very rude quality or has greatly crumbled in the ages. Such of the walls and arches as are visible to-day show a hardiness and correctness of design which, however, is not lived up to in the evidences of actual workmanship.

There are no grandiose structures anywhere in the vicinity; everything is fragmentary, but Cimiez was evidently an important city in embryo, which some untoward influence prevented ever coming to its full-blown glory.