I might have done it again had not the Artist come to the Riviera.
We were afoot (the best way to travel and see things) on an April Sunday, and stopped for lunch at the restaurant opposite the Cagnes railway station. The Artist was not hungry. While I ate he went out "to find what sort of a subject the ensemble of the city on the hill over there makes." He returned in time for cheese and fruit, with a sketch of Cagnes that made the waitress run inside to get better apples and bananas. She insisted that we would be rewarded for a climb up to the old town, and offered to keep our coats and kits.
Along the railway and tramway and motor-road a modern Cagnes of villas and hotels and pensions, with their accompaniment of shops and humbler habitations, has grown for a mile or more, and stretched out across the railway to the sea. Two famous French artists live here, and many Parisians and foreigners. There is also a wireless station. All this shuts off from the road the town on the hill. Unless you had seen it from the open country, before coming into the modern Cagnes, you would not have known that there was a hill and an old city. It was not easy for us to find the way.
Built for legs and nothing else, the thoroughfare up through Cagnes is a street that can be called straight and steep and stiff, the adjectives coming to you without your seeking for alliteration, just as instinctively as you take off your hat and out your handkerchief.
"No livery stable in this town—come five francs on it," said the Artist.
"Against five francs that there are no men with a waistline exceeding forty-five inches!" I answered, feelingly and knowingly.
But we soon became so fascinated by our transition from the twentieth century to the fifteenth that we forgot we were climbing. Effort is a matter of mental attitude. Nothing in the world is hard when you are interested in doing it.
Half way and half an hour up, we paused to take our bearings. The line of houses, each leaning on its next lower neighbor, was broken here by a high garden wall, from which creepers were overhanging the street, with their fresh spring tendrils waving and curling above our heads. There was an odor of honeysuckle and orange-blossoms, and the blood-red branch of a judas-tree pushed its way through the green and yellow. The canyon of the street, widening below us, ended in a rich meadowland, dotted with villas and trees. Beyond, the Mediterranean rose to the horizon. While the Artist was "taking it," the usual crowd gathered around: children whose lack of bashfulness indicated that many city people were here for the season or that tourists did find their way up to Cagnes; women always eager to gossip with strangers, especially with those from lands across the sea; old men proud to tell you that their city was the most interesting, because the most ancient, on the Riviera.
When we resumed our climb, the whole town seemed to be going our way. Sunday-best and prayer-books gave the reason. Just as we were coming to the top, our street made its first turn, a sharp one, and in the bend was a church tower with a wee door under it. Houses crowded closely around it. The tower was the only indication of the church. An abbé was standing by the door, calling in the acolytes and choir boys who were playing tag in the street. The Artist stopped, short. I went up to the abbé, who by features and accent was evidently a Breton far from home.
"Do any fat men live up here?" I asked.
"Only one," he answered promptly, with a hearty laugh. "The curé has gone to the war, and last month the bishop sent a man to help me who weighs over a hundred kilos. We have another church below in the new town, and there are services in both, morning and afternoon. Low mass here at six, and high masses there at eight and here at ten. Vespers here at three and there at four-thirty. On the second Sunday my coadjutor said he was going to leave at the end of the month. So, after next week, there will be no fat man. Unless you have come to Cagnes to stay?" The abbé twinkled and chuckled.
"It is not to laugh at," broke in an oldest inhabitant who had overheard. "We live from ten to twenty years longer than the people of the plain, who have railways and tramways and carriages and autos right to their very doors. We get the mountain air from the Alps and the sea air from the Mediterranean uncontaminated. It blows into every house without passing through as much as a single neighbor's courtyard. But our long lease on life is due principally to having to climb this hill. Stiffness, rheumatism—we don't know what it means, and we stay fit right to the very end. Look at me. I was a grown man when people first began to know who Garibaldi was in Nice. We formed a corps of volunteers right here in this town when Mazzini's republic was proclaimed to go to defend Rome from the worst enemies of Italian unity, those Vatican—But I beg M. le Curé's pardon! In those days of hot youth the church, you know, did not mean—"
The abbé twinkled and chuckled again, and patted the old man's shoulder affectionately. "When you did not follow Briand ten years ago, it proved that half a century had wrought a happy change. I understand anyway. I am a Breton that has taken root, as everyone here does, in this land of lofty mountains and deep valleys, of wind and sun, of sea and snow. Mental as well as physical acclimatization comes. The spirit, the life, the very soul of the Risorgimento had nothing Italian in it. It was of Piedmont and Savoy and the Riviera—a product of the Alpes Maritimes."
I would have listened longer. But the bell above us began to ring, several peals first, and then single strokes, each more insistent than the last. The abbé was still in the Garibaldi mood, and the volunteer of '49 and I were in sympathy. He knew it, and refused to hear the summons to vespers. But out of the door came a girl who could break a spell of the past, because she was able to weave one of the present. She dominated us immediately. She would not have had to say a word. A hymn book was in her hand, opened at the page where she intended it to stay open. "This afternoon, M. l'Abbé, we shall sing this," she stated.
"No, we cannot do it!" he protested rather feebly. "You see, the encyclical of the Holy Father enjoins the Gregorian, and I think the boys can sing it—"
The organist interrupted: "You certainly know, M. l'Abbé, that we cannot have decent singing for the visits to the stations, unless the big girls, whom I have been training now for two months—"
"But we must obey the Papal injunction, Mademoiselle Simone," put in the priest still more mildly.
Mademoiselle Simone's eyes danced mockingly, and her mow confirmed beyond a doubt the revelation of clothes and accent. Here was a twentieth-century Parisienne in conflict with a reactionary rule of the church in a setting where turning back the hands of the clock would have seemed the natural thing to do.
"Pure nonsense!" was her disrespectful answer. "With all the young men away, the one thing to do is to make the music go."
I had to speak in order to be noticed. "So even in Cagnes the young girls know how to give orders to M. le Curé? The Holy Father's encyclical—" I could stop without finishing the sentence, for I had succeeded. The dancing eyes and the moue now included me.
"M. l'Abbé, it is time for the service," she said firmly. "If this Anglais comes in, he will see that I have reason."
She disappeared. The abbé looked after her indulgently, shrugged his shoulders, with the palms of his hands spread heavenward, and followed her.
In the meantime the worshipers, practically all of them women and children, had been turning corners above and below. I made the round of the group of buildings, and saw only little doors here and there at different levels. There was no portal, no large main entrance. When I came back to the bend of the road, the music had started. I was about to enter the tower door—Mademoiselle Simone's!—when I saw the Artist put up his pencil. The service would last for some time, so I joined him, and we continued to mount.
Above the church tower, steps led to the very top of the hill, which
