CHAPTER XII.

EZE AND LA TURBIE

The ancient Saracen fortress of Eze lies midway between Beaulieu and Monte Carlo, somewhat back from the coast, and crowns a pinnacle such as is usually devoted to the glory of St. Michel.

As one climbs the steep sides of the hill, the fantastic outlines of the roof-tops silhouette themselves against the sky quite like a scene from Dante’s masterpiece, or, if not that, like the fabled spectral Brocken. The road twists and turns, and the sea and shore blend themselves into one of those incomparable glories of the Riviera, until actually one stands on the little plateau which moors the tiny church and its surrounding dwellings.

The Eza of yesterday has become the Eze of to-day, but the former spelling was vastly more euphonic, and it is a pity that it was ever changed. Eze is ruinous to-day, as it has been for ages, and pagan and Christian monuments are cheek by jowl.

Rising abruptly three hundred metres from the sea-level, the mountain offered a stronghold well-nigh unassailable. First the Phœnicians occupied it, then the Phoceans, followed by the Romans, the Saracens, and all the warring factions and powers of mediæval times. No wonder it is reminiscent of all, with memorials ranging all the way from the temple dedicated to the Egyptian cult of Isis to the Christian church seen to-day.

Centuries passed but slowly here, and the Moorish hordes, seeking for a vantage-ground on the Ligurian coast, took the peak for their own. The early founders did not need to go afield for the material for the building of houses and their military constructions. It was all close at hand. The rocky base sufficed for all.

What is left to-day of the old bourg, remodelled and rebuilt in many cases, but still the original structures to no small extent, is a veritable museum of architectural curiosities.

What an accented note it is in the whole vast expanse of green and blue! It is literally worth coming miles to see, even if one makes the wearisome journey on foot.

Eze is sequestered from all the world, and, like Normandy’s Mont St. Michel, would be an ideal place in which to shut oneself up if one wanted to escape from his enemies (and friends).

The shrine of Notre Dame de Laghet lies in the country back of Eze, but rather nearer to La Turbie. The whole south venerated Our Lady of Laghet in days gone by, and came to worship at her shrine. The neighbouring country is severe and less gracious than that of most of the flowering Riviera; but, in the early days of spring, with the hardier blossoms well forward, it is as delightful an environment for a shrine as one can well expect to find.

Historic souvenirs in connection with Notre Dame de Laghet are many. The Duc de Savoie, Victor Amédée, came here to worship in 1689, and a century and a half later, his descendant, Charles Albert, shorn of his crown, and a fugitive, sought shelter here from the dangers which beset him. Here he knelt devoutly before the Madonna, and prayed that his enemies might be forgiven. A tablet to-day memorializes the event.

The little church of the establishment contains hundreds of votive offerings left by pious pilgrims, and, though architecturally the edifice is a poor, humble thing, it ranks high among the places of modern pilgrimage.

A kilometre beyond the gardens which face the Casino at Monte Carlo is a little winding road leading blindly up the hillside. “_Où conduit-il?_” you ask of a straggler; “_A La Turbie, m’sieu_;” and forthwith you mount, spurning the aid of the _funiculaire_ farther down the road. When one has progressed a hundred metres along this serpentine roadway, the whole ensemble of beauties with which one has become familiar at the coast are magnified and enhanced beyond belief. Nowhere is there a gayer, livelier colouring to be seen on the Riviera; this in spite of the conventionality of the glistening walls of the great hotels and the artificial gardens with which the vicinity of the paradise of Monte Carlo abounds.

As one turns another hairpin corner, another plane of the horizon opens out until, after passing various isolated small houses, and zigzagging upward another couple of kilometres, he enters upon the “Route d’Italie,” and thence either turns to the left to La Turbie, or to the right to Roquebrune, a half-dozen kilometres farther on.

La Turbie is quite as much of an exotic as Eze. It is as vivid a reminder of a glory that is past as any monumental town still extant, and its noble Augustan Trophy, as a memorial of a historical past, is far greater than anything of its kind out of Rome itself. There is something almost sublime about this great sky-piercing tower, a monument to the vanquishing of the peoples of Gaul by the Roman legions.

Fragments of this great “trophy” have been carted away, and are to be found all over the neighbouring country. Barbarians and Saracens, one and all, pillaged the noble tower (“the magnificent witness to the powers of the divine Augustus,” as the French historians call it), using it as a quarry from which was drawn the building material for many of their later works. Without scruple it has been shorn of its attributes until to-day it is only a bare, gaunt skeleton of its former proud self. Its marbles have been dispersed, some are in Nice, some in Monaco, and some in Genoa, but the greatest of all the indignities which the edifice underwent was that thrust upon it by Berwick, in 1706, when attempts were actually made to pull it to the ground.

What its splendours must once have been may best be imagined from the following description:

“_A massive quadrangular tower surrounded with columns of the Doric order and ornamented with statues of the lieutenants of Augustus, and personifications of the vanquished peoples. Surmounting all was a colossal statue of the emperor himself._”

La Turbie has a most interesting “_porte_,” once fortified, but now a mere gateway. It dates from the sixteenth century, and is an exceedingly satisfying example of what a mediæval gateway was in feudal times.

The church of the town is of great size and well kept, but otherwise is in no way remarkable.

As with the founders of Eze, the builders of La Turbie and its great Augustan Trophy had their material close at hand, and there was no need for the laborious carrying of material from a distance which accompanied the building of many mediæval monuments and fortifications.

A quarry was to be made anywhere that one chose to dig in the hillside, and, though no traces of the exact location whence the material was dug is to be seen to-day, there is no question but that it was a home product. The marbles and statues alone were brought from afar.

Roquebrune, onward toward Menton, is more individual in the character of its people and their manners and customs than any of the other towns and villages near the great Riviera pleasure resorts. The ground is cultivated in small plots, and olive and fruit trees abound, and occasionally, sheltered on a little terrace, is a tiny vineyard struggling to make its way. The vine, curiously enough, does not prosper well here, at least not the extent that it formerly did, and accordingly it is a good deal of a struggle to get a satisfactory crop, no matter how favourable the season.

Here in the vicinity of Roquebrune one sees the little donkeys so well known throughout the mountainous parts of Italy and France. They are sure-footed little beasts, like their brother burros of the Sierras and the Rockies, and appear not to differ from them in the least, unless they are smaller. All through the region to the northward of the coast they file in cavalcades, bearing their burdens in panniers and saddle-bags in quite century-old fashion, and as if automobiles and railways had never been heard of. An automobile would have a hard time of it on some of the by-roads accessible only to these tiny beasts of burden, which often weigh but eighty kilos and cost little or nothing for provender.

These little Savoian donkeys are gentle and good-natured, but obstinate when it comes to pushing on at a gait which the driver may wish, but which has not yet dawned upon the donkey as being desirable. This, apparently, is the national trait of the whole donkey kingdom, so there is nothing remarkable about it. He will go,--when you twist his tail,--and if you twist it to the right he will turn to the left, and vice versa. A sailor would be quite at home with a donkey of Roquebrune.

Roquebrune is tranquil enough to-day, though there have been times when the rocky giant on whose bosom it sleeps awakened with a roar which shook the very foundations of its houses. These earthquakes have not been frequent; the last was in 1887; but the memory of it is enough to give fear to the timid whenever a summer thunder-storm breaks forth.

Roquebrune occupies a height very much inferior to that on which sits La Turbie; but the panorama from the town is in no way less marvellous, nor is it greatly different, hence it is not necessary to recount its beauties here. There is considerably more vegetation in the neighbourhood, and there are many lemon-trees, with rich ripening fruit, instead of the dwarfed unripe oranges which one finds at many other places along the Riviera.

The lemon-tree is the real thermometer of the region, and the inhabitant has no need of the appliances of Réaumur or Fahrenheit, or the more facile Centigrade, for when three degrees of frost strikes in through the skin of the lemon, it withers up and dies. The orange, curiously enough, resists this first attack of cold.

Roquebrune, like La Turbie, abounds in vaulted streets and terraced hillsides, allowing one to step from the roofs of one line of houses to the dooryards of another in most quaint and picturesque fashion. The people of Roquebrune are a prosperous and contented lot, and have the reputation of being “as laborious as the bee and as economical as the ant.”

At the highest point, above most of the roof-tops of Roquebrune, are found the ruins of its château, in turn a one-time possession of the Lascaris and the Grimaldi, and belonging to the latter family when the town and Menton were ceded to France. From the platform of the ancient citadel one readily enough sees the point of the legend which describes Roquebrune as once having occupied the very summit of the height, and, in the course of ages, slipping down to its present position.