Chapter XXXII: The Exile's Return (1)

Perhaps you have been away in distant parts of the earth, each day crowded with new experiences and slowly obscuring the clear pictures of England with which you left: perhaps you have only been hidden away in London, amid its ceaseless noise, its strange faces, its monotonous recurrence of duties. Let us say, in any case, that you are returning home for a space to the quiet of Northern Cornwall.

You look out of the high window of a Plymouth hotel early in the morning. There is a promise of a beautiful autumn day--a ring of pink mist lies around the horizon; overhead the sky is clear and blue; the white sickle of the moon still lingers visible. The new warmth of the day begins to melt the hoarfrost in the meadows, and you know that out beyond the town the sun is shining brilliantly on the wet grass, with the brown cattle gleaming red in the light.

You leave the great world behind, with all its bustle, crowds and express engines, when you get into the quiet little train that takes you leisurely up to Launceston, through woods, by the sides of rivers, over great valleys. There is a sense of repose about this railway journey. The train stops at any number of small stations--apparently to let the guard have a chat with the station-master--and then jogs on in a quiet, contented fashion. And on such an autumn day as this, that is a beautiful, still, rich-colored and English-looking country through which it passes. Here is a deep valley, all glittering with the dew and the sunlight. Down in the hollow a farmyard is half hidden behind the yellowing elms; a boy is driving a flock of white geese along the twisting road; the hedges are red with the withering briers. Up here, along the hillsides, the woods of scrub-oak are glowing with every imaginable hue of gold, crimson and bronze, except where a few dark firs appear, or where a tuft of broom, pure and bright in its green, stands out among the faded brackens. The gorse is profusely in bloom: it always is in Cornwall. Still farther over there are sheep visible on the uplands; beyond these, again, the bleak brown moors rise into peaks of hills; overhead the silent blue, and all around the sweet, fresh country air.

With a sharp whistle the small train darts into an opening in the hills: here we are in the twilight of a great wood. The tall trees are becoming bare; the ground is red with the fallen leaves; through the branches the blue-winged jay flies, screaming harshly; you can smell the damp and resinous odors of the ferns. Out again we get into the sunlight! and lo! a rushing, brawling, narrow stream, its clear flood swaying this way and that by the big stones; a wall of rock overhead crowned by glowing furze; a herd of red cattle sent scampering through the bright-green grass. Now we get slowly into a small white station, and catch a glimpse of a tiny town over in the valley: again we go on by wood and valley, by rocks and streams and farms. It is a pleasant drive on such a morning.

In one of the carriages in this train Master Harry Trelyon and his grandmother were seated. How he had ever persuaded her to go with him to Cornwall by train was mysterious enough, for the old lady thoroughly hated all such modern devices. It was her custom to go traveling all over the country with a big, old-fashioned phaeton and a pair of horses; and her chief amusement during these long excursions was driving up to any big house she took a fancy to, in order to see if there was a chance of its being let to her. The faithful old servant who attended her, and who was about as old as the coachman, had a great respect for his mistress, but sometimes he swore--inaudibly--when she ordered him to make the usual inquiry at the front-door of some noble lord's country residence, which he would as soon have thought of letting as of forfeiting his seat in the House of Peers or his hopes of heaven. But the carriage and horses were coming down, all the same, to Eglosilyan, to take her back again.

"Harry," she was saying at this moment, "the longer I look at you, the more positive I am that you are ill. I don't like your color: you are thin and careworn and anxious. What is the matter with you?"

"Going to school again at twenty-one is hard work, grandmother," he said. "Don't you try it. But I don't think I'm particularly ill: few folks can keep a complexion like yours, grandmother."

"Yes," said the old lady, rather pleased, "many's the time they said that about me, that there wasn't much to complain of in my looks; and that's what a girl thinks of then, and sweethearts and balls, and all the other men looking savage when she's dancing with any one of them. Well, well, Harry; and what is all this about you and the young lady your mother has made such a pet of? Oh yes, I have my suspicions; and she's engaged to another man, isn't she? Your grandfather would have fought him, I'll be bound; but we live in a peaceable way now. Well, well, no matter; but hasn't that got something to do with your glum looks, Harry?"

"I tell you, grandmother, I have been hard at work in London. You can't look very brilliant after a few months in London."

"And what keeps you in London at this time of the year?" said this plain-spoken old lady. "Your fancy about getting into the army? Nonsense, man! don't tell me such a tale as that. There's a woman in the case: a Trelyon never puts himself so much about from any other cause. To stop in town at this time of the year! Why, your grandfather, and your father too, would have laughed to hear of it. I haven't had a brace of birds or a pheasant sent me since last autumn--not one. Come, sir, be frank with me. I'm an old woman, but I can hold my tongue."

"There's nothing to tell, grandmother," he said. "You just about hit it in that guess of yours: I suppose Juliott told you. Well, the girl is engaged to another man: what more is to be said?"

"The man's in Jamaica?"

"Yes."

"Why are you going down to-day?"

"Only for a brief visit: I've been a long time away."

The old lady sat silent for some time. She had heard of the whole affair before, but she wished to have the rumor confirmed. And at first she was sorely troubled that her grandson should contemplate marrying the daughter of an innkeeper, however intelligent, amiable and well-educated the young lady might be; but she knew the Trelyons pretty well, and knew that if he had made up his mind to it, argument and remonstrance would be useless. Moreover, she had a great affection for this young man, and was strongly disposed to sympathize with any wish of his. She grew in time to have a great interest in Miss Wenna Rosewarne: at this moment the chief object of her visit was to make her acquaintance. She grew to pity young Trelyon in his disappointment, and was inclined to believe that the person in Jamaica was something of a public enemy. The fact was, her mere sympathy for her grandson would have converted her to a sympathy with the wildest project he could have formed.

"Dear! dear!" she said, "what awkward things engagements are when they stand in your way! Shall I tell you the truth? I was just about as good as engaged to John Cholmondeley when I gave myself up to your grandfather. But there! when a girl's heart pulls her one way, and her promise pulls her another way, she needs to be a very firm-minded young woman if she means to hold fast. John Cholmondeley was as good-hearted a young fellow as ever lived--yes, I will say that for him--and I was mightily sorry for him; but--but you see, that's how things come about. Dear! dear! that evening at Bath--I remember it as well as if it was yesterday; and it was only two months after I had run away with your grandfather. Yes, there was a ball that night; and we had kept very quiet, you know, after coming back; but this time your grandfather had set his heart on taking me out before everybody, and you know he had to have his way. As sure as I live, Harry, the first man I saw was John Cholmondeley--just as white as a ghost: they said he had been drinking hard and gambling pretty nearly the whole of these two months. He wouldn't come near me: he wouldn't take the least notice of me. The whole night he pretended to be vastly gay and merry: he danced with everybody, but his eyes never came near me. Well--you know what a girl is--that vexed me a little bit; for there never was a man such a slave to a woman as he was to me. Dear! dear! the way my father used to laugh at him, until he got wild with anger! Well, I went up to him at last, when he was by himself, and I said to him, just in a careless way, you know, 'John, aren't you going to dance with me to-night?' Well, do you know, his face got quite white again; and he said--I remember the very words, all as cold as ice--'Madam,' says he, 'I am glad to find that your hurried trip to Scotland has impaired neither your good looks nor your self-command.' Wasn't it cruel of him?--but then, poor fellow! he had been badly used, I admit that. Poor young fellow! he never did marry; and I don't believe he ever forgot me to his dying day. Many a time I'd like to have told him all about it, and how there was no use in my marrying him if I liked another man better; but though we met sometimes, and especially when he came down about the Reform Bill time--and I do believe I made a red-hot radical of him--he was always very proud, and I hadn't the heart to go back on the old story. But I'll tell you what your grandfather did for him: he got him returned at the very next election, and he on the other side, too; and after a bit a man begins to think more about getting a seat in Parliament than about courting an empty-headed girl. I have met this Mr. Roscorla, haven't I?"

"Of course you have."

"A good-looking man rather, with a fresh complexion and gray hair?"

"I don't know what you mean by good looks," said Trelyon shortly. "I shouldn't think people would call him an Adonis. But there's no accounting for tastes."

"Perhaps I may have been mistaken," the old lady said, "but there was a gentleman at Plymouth Station who seemed to be something like what I can recall of Mr. Roscorla: you didn't see him, I suppose?"

"At Plymouth Station, grandmother?" the young man said, becoming rather uneasy.

"Yes. He got into the train just as we came up. A neatly-dressed man, gray hair and a healthy-looking face. I must have seen him somewhere about here before."

"Roscorla is in Jamaica," said Trelyon positively.

Just at this moment the train slowed into Launceston Station, and the people began to get out on the platform.

"That is the man I mean," said the old lady.

Trelyon turned and stared. There, sure enough, was Mr. Roscorla, looking not one whit different from the precise, elderly, fresh-colored gentleman who had left Cornwall some seven months before.

"Good Lord, Harry!" said the old lady nervously, looking at her grandson's face, "don't have a fight here."

The next second Mr. Roscorla wheeled round, anxious about some luggage, and now it was his turn to stare in astonishment and anger--anger, because he had been told that Harry Trelyon never came near Cornwall, and his first sudden suspicion was that he had been deceived. All this had happened in a minute. Trelyon was the first to regain his self-command. He walked deliberately forward, held out his hand, and said, "Hillo, Roscorla! back in England again? I didn't know you were coming."

"No," said Mr. Roscorla, with his face grown just a trifle grayer--"no, I suppose not."

In point of fact, he had not informed any one of his coming. He had prepared a little surprise. The chief motive of his return was to get Wenna to cancel for ever that unlucky letter of release he had sent her, which he had done more or less successfully in subsequent correspondence; but he had also hoped to introduce a little romanticism into his meeting with her. He would enter Eglosilyan on foot. He would wander down to the rocks at the mouth of the harbor on the chance of finding Wenna there. Might he not hear her humming to herself, as she sat and sewed, some snatch of "Your Polly has never been false, she declares"? or was that the very last ballad in the world she would now think of singing? Then the delight of regarding again the placid, bright face and earnest eyes, of securing once more a perfect understanding between them, and their glad return to the inn!

All this had been spoiled by the appearance of this young man: he loved him none the more for that.

"I suppose you haven't got a trap waiting for you?" said Trelyon with cold politeness. "I can drive you over if you like."

He could do no less than make the offer: the other had no alternative but to accept. Old Mrs. Trelyon heard this compact made with considerable dread.

Indeed, it was a dismal drive over to Eglosilyan, bright as the forenoon was. The old lady did her best to be courteous to Mr. Roscorla and cheerful with her grandson, but she was oppressed by the belief that it was only her presence that had so far restrained the two men from giving vent to the rage and jealousy that filled their hearts.

The conversation kept up was singular.

"Are you going to remain in England long, Roscorla?" said the younger of the two men, making an unnecessary cut at one of the two horses he was driving.

"Don't know yet. Perhaps I may."

"Because," said Trelyon with angry impertinence, "I suppose if you do, you'll have to look round for a housekeeper."

The insinuation was felt; and Roscorla's eyes looked anything but pleasant as he answered, "You forget I've got Mrs. Cornish to look after my house."

"Oh, Mrs. Cornish is not much of a companion for you."

"Men seldom want to make companions of their housekeepers," was the retort, uttered rather hotly.

"But sometimes they wish to have the two offices combined, for economy's sake."

At this juncture Mrs. Trelyon struck in, somewhat wildly, with a remark about an old ruined house which seemed to have had at one time a private still inside: the danger was staved off for the moment. "Harry," she said, "mind what you are about: the horses seem very fresh."

"Yes, they like a good run: I suspect they've had precious little to do since I left Cornwall."

Did she fear that the young man was determined to throw them into a ditch or down a precipice, with the wild desire of killing his rival at any cost? If she had known the whole state of affairs between them--the story of the emerald ring, for example--she would have understood at least the difficulty experienced by these two men in remaining decently civil toward each other.

So they passed over the high and wide moors until far ahead they caught a glimpse of the blue plain of the sea. Mr. Roscorla relapsed into silence: he was becoming a trifle nervous. He was probably so occupied with anticipations of his meeting with Wenna that he failed to notice the objects around him; and one of these, now become visible, was a very handsome young lady, who was coming smartly along a wooded lane, carrying a basket of bright-colored flowers.

"Why, here's Mabyn Rosewarne! I must wait for her."

Mabyn had seen at a distance Mrs. Trelyon's gray horses: she guessed that the young master had come back, and that he had brought some strangers with him. She did not like to be stared at by strangers. She came along the path with her eyes fixed on the ground: she thought it impertinent of Harry Trelyon to wait to speak to her.

"Oh, Mabyn," he cried, "you must let me drive you home. And let me introduce you to my grandmother. There is some one else whom you know."

The young lady bowed to Mrs. Trelyon; then she stared and changed color somewhat when she saw Mr. Roscorla; then she was helped up into a seat.

"How do you do, Mr. Trelyon?" she said. "I am very glad to see you have come back.--How do you do, Mr. Roscorla?"

She shook hands with them both, but not quite in the same fashion.

"And you have sent no message that you were coming?" she said, looking her companion straight in the face.

"No--no, I did not," he said, angry and embarrassed by the open enmity of the girl. "I thought I should surprise you all."

"You have surprised me, any way," said Mabyn, "for how can you be so thoughtless? Wenna has been very ill--I tell you she has been very ill indeed, though she has said little about it--and the least thing upsets her. How can you think of frightening her so? Do you know what you are doing? I wish you would go away back to Launceston or London, and write her a note there, if you are coming, instead of trying to frighten her."

This was the language, it appeared to Mr. Roscorla, of a virago; only, viragoes do not ordinarily have tears in their eyes, as was the case with Mabyn when she finished her indignant appeal.

"Mr. Trelyon, do you think it is fair to go and frighten Wenna so?" she demanded.

"It is none of my business," Trelyon answered with an air as if he had said to his rival, "Yes, go and kill the girl. You are a nice sort of gentleman, to come down from London to kill the girl!"

"This is absurd," said Mr. Roscorla contemptuously, for he was stung into reprisal by the persecution of these two: "a girl isn't so easily frightened out of her wits. Why, she must have known that my coming home was at any time probable."

"I have no doubt she feared that it was," said Mabyn, partly to herself: for once she was afraid of speaking out. Presently, however, a brighter light came over the girl's face. "Why, I quite forgot," she said, addressing Harry Trelyon--"I quite forgot that Wenna was just going up to Trelyon Hall when I left. Of course she will be up there. You will be able to tell her that Mr. Roscorla has arrived, won't you?"

The malice of this suggestion was so apparent that the young gentleman in front could not help grinning at it: fortunately, his face could not be seen by his rival. What _he_ thought of the whole arrangement can only be imagined. And so, as it happened, Mr. Roscorla and his friend Mabyn were dropped at the inn, while Harry Trelyon drove his grandmother up and on to the Hall.

"Well, Harry," the old lady said, "I am glad to be able to breathe at last: I thought you two were going to kill each other."

"There is no fear of that," the young man said: "that is not the way in which this affair has to be settled. It is entirely a matter for her decision; and look how everything is in his favor. I am not even allowed to say a word to her; and even if I could, he is a deal cleverer than me in argument. He would argue my head off in half an hour."

"But you don't turn a girl's heart round by argument, Harry. When a girl has to choose between a young lover and an elderly one, it isn't always good sense that directs her choice. Is Miss Wenna Rosewarne at all like her sister?"

"She's not such a tomboy," he said, "but she is quite as straightforward and proud, and quick to tell you what is the right thing to do. There's no sort of shamming tolerated by these two girls. But then Wenna is gentler and quieter, and more soft and lovable, than Mabyn--in my fancy, you know; and she is more humorous and clever, so that she never gets into those school-girl rages. But it is really a shame to compare them like that; and, indeed, if any one said the least thing against one of these girls, the other would precious soon make him regret the day he was born. You don't catch me doing that with either of them. I've had a warning already when I hinted that Mabyn might probably manage to keep her husband in good order. And so she would, I believe, if the husband were not of the right sort; but when she is really fond of anybody, she becomes their slave out and out. There is nothing she wouldn't do for her sister; and her sister thinks there's nobody in the world like Mabyn. So you see--"

He stopped in the middle of this sentence.

"Grandmother," he said, almost in a whisper, "here she is coming along the road."

"Miss Rosewarne?"

"Yes: shall I introduce you?"

"If you like."

Wenna was coming down the steep road between the high hedges with a small girl on each side of her, whom she was leading by the hand. She was gayly talking to them: you could hear the children laughing at what she said. Old Mrs. Trelyon came to the conclusion that this merry young lady, with the light and free step, the careless talk and fresh color in her face, was certainly not dying of any love-affair.

"Take the reins, grandmother, for a minute."

He had leapt down into the road, and was standing before her almost ere she had time to recognize him. For a moment a quick gleam of gladness shone on her face: then, almost instinctively, she seemed to shrink from him, and she was reserved, distant, and formal.

He introduced her to the old lady, who said something nice to her about her sister. The young man was looking wistfully at her, troubled at heart that she treated him so coldly.

"I have got to break some news to you," he said: "perhaps you will consider it good news."

She looked up quickly.

"Nothing has happened to anybody--only some one has arrived. Mr. Roscorla is at the inn."

She did not flinch. He was vexed with her that she showed no sign of fear or dislike. On the contrary, she quickly said that she must then go down to the inn; and she bade them both good-bye in a placid and ordinary way, while he drove off with dark thoughts crowding into his imagination of what might happen down at the inn during the next few days. He was angry with her, he scarcely knew why.

Meanwhile Wenna, apparently quite calm, went on down the road, but there was no more laughing in her voice, no more light in her face.

"Miss Wenna," said the smaller of the two children, who could not understand this change, and who looked up with big, wondering eyes, "why does oo tremble so?"

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

SONNET.

The curious eye may watch her lovely face,
Whereon such rare and roseate tinctures glow,
And cry, How fair the rose and lily show
Mid all the glories of a maiden grace!
If this sweet show, this bloom and tender glance,
Would so attract a stranger's unskilled eyes,
Until he sees the light of Paradise
Dawn in the garden of that countenance--
I, to whom love hath given finer powers,
See there the emblems of a flowering soul
That hath its root in other world than ours,
And which doth ever seek its native goal;
Meanwhile decks life with love and grace and flowers,
And in one beauteous garland binds the whole.

F.A. HILLARD.

NICE.

Twenty-Two centuries ago--eighteen hundred years before Columbus sailed in quest of the New World--a Phocean colony from Marseilles founded this celebrated city, calling it Nichê (Nice or Victory), in honor of a signal triumph obtained by their arms over their enemies, the Ligurians, or inhabitants of the northern coast of Italy. For ages it flourished, being almost as famous with the ancients as a health-resort as it is to-day; but its evil hour came when the Goths, Lombards and Franks in A.D. 405, pouring through the defiles and gorges of the Maritime Alps, laid Nice and almost all the other cities of Italy, even beyond Rome, in ashes. A hundred years later it was rebuilt, but its beautiful forum, its classical temples, its mosaic-paved villas and marble theatres had disappeared utterly, and the new city was but a shadow of the old. In the tenth century the Saracens conquered Nice, and remained in quiet possession for seventy years, and during their stay introduced much of the tropical vegetation which we still admire. They were finally driven away by the insurgent natives in A.D. 975, but they left the impress of their occupation in many Arabic words which still mark the local _patois_; and as a number of the fugitives were captured and reduced to slavery, intermarrying in the course of time with the native population, the Moorish type is still very noticeable amongst the peasantry. Freed from the Saracenic yoke, the Niçois lived in peace for nearly two centuries, being only disturbed from time to time by the unwelcome visitations of pirates. Later on, toward the middle of the thirteenth century, like most other Southern and Italian cities, Nice fell a victim to the constant quarrels of the powerful families allied respectively to the Ghibelline and Guelphic factions. Thus, the incessant broils between the Lascaris of Tenda, the Grimaldis of Monaco and the Dorias of Dolceacqua desolated the surrounding country, and often reduced the city to a state of siege. The Niçois were compelled to keep up a perpetual guerilla, which, however inspiriting, was by no means conducive to their material prosperity. In 1364 an invasion of locusts from Africa led to a famine, and ultimately a plague which destroyed two-thirds of the population. The people, attributing their misfortunes to the intercession of the Jews with the powers below, rose up and massacred them: only five Israelites out of over two thousand are said to have escaped their blind fury. When order was at last re-established, and the Niçois began to settle down again, they perceived their impoverished and subordinate position to be so alarming that their only chance of safety was immediately to place themselves under the protection of the dukes of Savoy, who for a century and a half defended them from the attacks of their numerous enemies in a most valiant manner. But in 1521, Francis I. of France wrenched the city and province from the beneficent rule of the Savoyards and proclaimed himself count of Nice. In 1524 war broke out between Francis and the emperor Charles V., and the contending armies alternately devastated and pillaged Nice and its environs. The pest reappeared, and with it a drought and famine of so fearful a character that many thousand persons perished, and others in their despair slew themselves. Pope Paul III. undertook the difficult task of reconciling the belligerents, and even went so far as to travel to Nice for the purpose. A marble cross which gives its name to a suburb of the town ("La Croix de Marbre") still marks the spot where the conference took place in which Francis and Charles swore a peace in the presence of His Holiness which they took the first opportunity to violate. In 1540 the war recommenced, and a number of dissolute young men of good family formed themselves into organized companies of bandits and overran the country, to the terror of the wretched peasantry and the utter ruin of many hundreds of honest families. But in 1543 a second Joan of Arc was raised up by Providence to deliver the Niçois in the person of the still popular heroine, Catterina Segurana. Francis I. had recently scandalized Christendom by allying himself with the famous Mohammedan corsair, Barbarossa of Algiers with a view of reconquering Nice, which he considered the key of Italy. Accordingly, one fine morning three hundred vessels belonging to the Algerine pirate entered the neighboring port of Villefranche, and presently the whole country was filled with a horde of turbaned freebooters. Cimiez, Montboron, Mont Gros and a hundred other villages and hamlets were soon alive with French marauders and Turkish pirates, who presently proceeded to bombard the city itself. The siege was short, but terrible, and the inhabitants were at the last gasp when the energetic Catterina Segurana, a washer-woman by trade, and surnamed _Mao faccia_ ("Ugly face"), on account of the homeliness of her countenance, seized a hatchet, and, after a vigorous address to her fellow-citizens, placed herself at their head and led them against the enemy. The same result attended her efforts as did those of her immediate prototype, the glorious Maid of Orleans. She so animated the people, so roused their patriotism, that before the day was over the French and infidels were conquered, and the bold and generous Catterina. stood surrounded by her enthusiastic fellow-citizens, waving the conquered Algerine flag, in token of victory, from the summit of the castle hill, on the spot where formerly stood her statue.[001]

From the time of the brave Catterina to our own, Nice has sustained at least a dozen sieges of more or less severity. That of 1706 was perhaps one of the most shocking on record. The city, by the treaty of Turin of 1696, had once more passed under the protectorate of the dukes of Savoy, but the French, who have always had a longing eye for the "Department of the Maritime Alps," as they even then called it, broke the treaty they had themselves framed, and sent the duc de la Feuillade over the frontier with twenty thousand men to conquer the country. Nice was then governed by the marquis de Caraglio, who, although entreated by the enemy to allow the women and children to leave the city's gates, positively refused to do so. The consequence was that during the siege, which lasted six months, more than a third of the inhabitants perished from starvation. Men are said to have killed their wives for food, and women their children. Sixty thousand shells fell in various parts of the town, and the castle, cathedral and many churches were entirely destroyed.[002]

In 1792, under the First Republic, Nice was again occupied by the French, and declared a _chef-lieu de département_. By the treaty of 1814 the place was handed over to the Piedmontese, and stayed contentedly beneath the rule of the Sardinian kings until 1860, when, by the treaty of March 24, Napoleon III. annexed the county of Nice and the duchy of Savoy to his imperial possessions, in exchange for the services his army had rendered Italy at Magenta and Solferino. How long Nice will continue French is a question somewhat difficult to answer just now. There exists in the city and province a very strong Italian party, and during the war of 1870, Nice was declared in a state of siege, owing to the constant and very serious demonstrations of a certain part of the population. One of the leading inhabitants, a noted banker, even went so far as to travel to Florence with the intention of proving to the Italian government that whilst the French troops were concentrated in the north those of Victor Emmanuel would find no difficulty in crossing the frontier and uniting Nice to Italy. To the honor of the Italian government, this treacherous suggestion was rejected, but in those days the feeling between France and Italy was more cordial than it has since been. The Italian party is so active in the city and the department that the government has difficulty in keeping note of its proceedings. Thousands of pamphlets are secretly circulated amongst the lower orders, in which the advantages of the city's return to Italy are vividly contrasted with the disadvantages it suffers from by remaining French. The clergy, however, who are both numerous and influential, are French to a man, and dread the hour which will see them governed by the "jailer of Pius IX.," and consequently prove a very great assistance to the authorities in counteracting the intrigues of the Italians. But should ever, in future years, a war break out between either France and Italy, or between France and Italy's new ally, Prussia, the _question de Nice_ will be once more on the _tapis_, and victory alone will preserve this magnificent possession to its present owners.

Nice may well boast herself a rival in point of splendor of natural position of the most famous cities of the South--of Lisbon, Genoa, Naples and Constantinople--and she eclipses them in point of climate. Built at the eastern extremity of a fine gulf--that of Les Anges--and backed by an amphitheatre of hills and lofty mountains, she is sheltered from cold winds in winter, and in summer the Alpine breezes temper an atmosphere which would else be unendurably sultry, owing to the prevalence of the sirocco, a hot wind which passes directly hither over the Mediterranean from the burning shores of Africa. One can scarcely imagine a more glorious panorama than that of this city and its environs as seen from the sea or from any neighboring elevation. Let us suppose it a fine morning late in spring, and that we stand upon the deck of a yacht about a mile and a half distant from the shore. Nice, we see, surrounds a steep and rugged rock which rises almost perpendicularly from the Mediterranean to the height of about six hundred feet, and is crested by the ruins of the ancient castle, and covered with terraced gardens forming a delicious promenade. Groves of cypresses and sycamores hang on the declivities of this rock, which in places is rough with cactuses and aloes and with the Indian fig, whose bright orange flowers, when the sun's rays fall on them, have a magic splendor of color. A group of palm trees at the extremest elevation, standing out on a high crag, add not a little to the picturesque appearance of this singular urban hill. On one side of this rock the rapid torrent Paillon, traversed by several handsome bridges, some of them adorned with statues, separates the "old" from the "new" town. On the other is the port, filled with steamers and innumerable fishing-craft. Beyond the port stretches the Boulevard de l'Impératrice, inaugurated a few years since by the late empress of Russia, with its fine villas, notably the splendid Venetian Palace, an exact reproduction of the celebrated Moncenigo Palace at Venice, belonging to Viscount Vigier, whose wife was once a popular idol of the musical world of Paris and London--Sophie Cruvelli--and the extraordinary Moresque-looking castle of Mr. Smith, which is well called the _Folie d'un Anglais_--the "craze of an Englishman." The latter stands on the end of a promontory, and with its lofty towers and domes closes in the view. It is perhaps the most curious residence in the world, being built on a barren rock, and its apartments literally hewn out of the marble of which it is composed. On the top of the hill is a long building, with two curious twin towers and a dome, built of red brick faced with white marble. Here is situated the chief entrance. You descend from the spacious entry-hall a long well staircase cut in the rock and lighted from above, until you reach a superb octagonal chamber of white marble ornamented with statues and Oriental divans covered with Persian silk. This is the great saloon, and leading out of it are other fine chambers, all of them lined with polished marble and furnished with Eastern magnificence. Externally, there is no trace of these chambers visible. They are, as I have said, excavated, like Egyptian tombs, in the heart of the mountain. The proprietor, an eccentric English bachelor, never inhabits this fantastic mansion, but lives in a second-rate hotel, spending thousands annually in adding embellishments to his astonishing castle, where, notwithstanding its magnificent suites of apartments, no human being has ever slept a night or eaten a meal.

"Smith's Craze," as I have said, closes in the view to our right. To the left, beyond the torrent Paillon, is situated modern Nice, with its quays, leviathan hotels, and an almost interminable line of villas marking the celebrated Promenade des Anglais. The background of the scene is filled up by a semicircle of well-wooded hills, verdant with vines, fig, orange, olive and pomegranate trees, and sparkling with white country-seats, convents, and campanili. Towering over these hills appears another range, of rocky and bold outlines, and then another, of lofty mountains whose peaks lose themselves in clouds, and by their fantastic figures form as delightful an horizon as the eye can behold. In the centre rises the conical peak of Monte Cao, an extinct volcano, exactly resembling Vesuvius in conformation, and only wanting a curl of smoke issuing from its crater to make the illusion perfect. Alongside of Monte Cao is another extinct volcano, on which are seen the ruins of the ancient and deserted village of Châteauneuf, while between the two summits (thirty-five hundred feet high) are distinctly visible the peaks of some of the ever-snowy Alps. The foreground of the picture is formed by the deep indigo waters of the Mediterranean, diversified by a hundred sunny sails, and overhead hangs the cloudless Italian sky.

Let us now put back to port and walk through the city, visiting first Old Nice, then the modern Pompeii, as Alphonse Karr pleasantly calls the new town. Old Nice resembles Genoa on a small scale, and has very narrow streets of lofty (and in some cases really fine) houses, no end of churches, gloomy-looking convents, and one or two palaces. In the narrow streets surrounding the cathedral--a large and showy building, formerly a parish church--is a market supplied with native fruits--oranges, lemons, grapes, figs, and many varieties of melons and nuts. The streets, which are in places so narrow that you can almost stretch your arms across them, are full of bright-looking shops, with all their varied goods displayed at the open, unglazed windows. Here and there one comes across remains of ancient times of considerable interest. Thus, in the Rue Droite is an old house, with a series of quaint little arches and a curious Gothic gateway, which was formerly part of the palace inhabited by Joanna II. of Naples. Near the church of St. Jacques is another old residence, with an odd decoration on its front in the shape of colossal figures of Adam and Eve, executed in alto-rilievo, which have their feet on either side of the doorway and their heads above the fifth story. The tree of knowledge, over-laden with its dangerous fruit, flourishes between the windows of what was once the saloon, and is now a manufactory of maccaroni. In the Rue du Centre is the quondam palace of the Lascaris family, an old Italian mansion, with marble balconies, wide, majestic staircases adorned with Corinthian columns, and vast apartments frescoed by Carlone, a reputable Genoese painter of mythological subjects. Carlone's gods and goddesses look down no longer on the members of the House of Lascaris, who once ruled over Tenda, and were the lineal descendants of the imperial Byzantine house of Del Comneno, but on those of an amiable Niçois family, who most willingly show the old palace to any stranger who may choose to knock at their door.

Some years ago a Turinese lawyer, looking over his father's private papers, discovered that he was the legitimate heir to the Lascaris titles and estates, which had been left unreclaimed for many centuries. This gentleman, on proving his claim, assumed the grandiose title of Prince Lascaris del Comneno, grand duke of Macedonia. His glory was short-lived. His wife went to Rome and obtained a full recognition of her rights from the Holy Father and admission into the first circles of Roman society, but was subsequently expelled from the city for plotting against the papal government; but she returned with the Piedmontese occupation in 1870, only, however, to get into a still worse pickle by exposing herself to the charge of defrauding Flaminio Spada's bank of a large sum of money. During the trial she _mizzled_, and has not, I believe, been heard of since. This lady is the famous "Princess Mopsa" about whose adventures the Roman papers have entertained their readers considerably during the last year or so.

The churches are usually in the Italian style, having heavy façades, plain brick sides and queer but rather picturesque bell-towers. Internally, they are gaudy and tasteless, the altars ornamented on high days and holidays with innumerable wax candles, festoons of red, white and blue drapery, and huge pyramids of paper roses with gold foliage. Ecclesiastical affairs are presided over by Monsignor Pietro Sola, a charming old bishop, who is the essence of kindliness and charity. He was formerly one of the spiritual directors of Queen Adelaide of Austria, the late wife of Victor Emmanuel. The number of priests, monks and nuns is very considerable. There is a very large Franciscan monastery up at Cimiez on the hill, and a rambling old Capuchin convent at St. Bartolomé. The Nice Capuchins are a splendid body of men, and a goodly sight to see marching in a procession with their chocolate-colored hooded robes and long, flowing beards. Their present prior is a marquis Raggi of Genoa, a man of high family and rank, who some years since abandoned a world he had known only too well, gave all his fortune to the poor, and turned monk.

There is a street in the old part of Nice which is perfectly unique. It is nearly a mile and a half long, runs parallel with the sea, and consists of a double row of low, one-storied houses having a paved terrace on their roofs, to which you ascend by several handsome staircases. The terrace forms a very popular promenade of an evening, and from it are enjoyed lovely views of the bay and mountains. Between these two rows of houses is the fish-market, where are frequently seen displayed monsters like Victor Hugo's famous _pieuve_ sprawling out their dozen glutinous legs fringed with eyes and deadly weapons in almost supernatural hideousness, to the admiration of a group of English or American tourists. Hard by the fish-market is the Corso, a shady promenade round which the gala carriages drive in Carnival time, while the masked inmates pelt and get pelted in turn with comfits made of painted clay. The Corso is also the scene of numerous religious processions, some of which are quaint and picturesque. There are a number of ancient confraternities established amongst the trades-people of Nice, who wear costumes of, red, white, black and blue serge, according to the guild they belong to. This sack-like garment covers them from head to foot, face and all, there being only two eyeholes slit in the mask to permit the wearer to see out. These brotherhoods attend the sick, bury the dead and take care of the widows and orphans, and in Holy Week make the narrow streets of the old city delightful to the artistic eye by the bright mass of their vivid-colored raiment, the flickering of their tapers, and the gigantic crucifixes of gold and silver they carry in procession from church to church. Every morning there is a market held on the Corso of fruits, vegetables and flowers. Such magnificent baskets of camellias, japonicas and roses, such nosegays of violets and orange-blossoms, can be seen, I fancy, nowhere but at Nice. Here also the peasant-women sometimes bring immense pots of Peruvian aloes for sale, whose snowy blossoms are scented like those of the magnolia, and rise in gigantic pyramids of magnificent cup-shaped flowers. They are plants to salute respectfully as you pass by them, such is their size and dignity. In Holy Week women are to be seen all over the old town selling plaited palm branches of a pale straw-color, some of which are bedecked with little bows of ribbon or stars of tinsel, used in the ceremonies of Palm Sunday. The peasant-girls who come to market at Nice are rather handsome, but as dark as Nubians, with almond-shaped eyes and long, coarse black hair, which they wear plaited into tails bound round the head with broad velvet ribbons, like a coronet. On the top of this headgear they sport a wide-brimmed straw hat of peculiar shape, ornamented with little black crosses made of narrow velvet. In Princess Marie Lichtenstein's _Holland House_ there is a portrait of Lady Augusta Holland wearing one of these Nice hats.

But it is time for us to cross the bridges and pay our respects to Nice the "new." When I first visited Nice in 1856 at least two-thirds of this part of the city were not in existence. There were no splendid railway-stations then; only one or two, instead of twenty, monster hotels; the Promenade des Anglais only extended about a mile along the shore, instead of four; and there were but one quay and two bridges. Now superb quays line the river on either side, and there are six bridges, and Heaven only knows how many churches for the accommodation of all the denominations imaginable and unimaginable, from Père Lavigne's very beautiful and very orthodox church, in which Monsignor Capel has preached in Lent, down to Léon Pilate's, where collections are made for the evangelical missions presided over by Mrs. Gould and W.C. Van Metre. There is a Greek church of exceeding beauty, the altar-screen of which was sent from Moscow as a present from the czar; and an Episcopal church, surrounded by a beautiful cemetery, where sleeps the philosophic Bussy d'Anglas, with many others whose names are well known. The real Niçois almost all dwell in Old Nice, leaving the new city to the foreign colony. Indeed, the natives are rarely if ever seen, except in the street. They keep to their old quiet way of living, and, beyond letting their houses and selling their goods, appear to be utterly unconscious even of the existence of the strangers on the other side of Paillon. Many of the Nice families are titled and wealthy, but with the exception of that of the count de Cessoles, it is very rare to meet the Niçois in society. Mademoiselle Mathilde de Cessoles is the reigning belle, and deserves the honor. She is a superb-looking woman, with a head and countenance worthy of a regal diadem. Her features resemble those of the House of Bourbon, her complexion is admirable, and she has a certain good-natured, indolent, sultana way of moving which is perfectly charming. Cupid alone knows how many have sighed for her hand since her long reign as a queen of society began, but none have as yet been favored with a kinder glance than that of friendship. Scottish dukes, Roman princes and American officers have wooed, but never won: la belle Mathilde still walks the orange groves of her villa, "in virgin meditation, fancy free."