SAINT-PAUL DU VAR. A MONG the hill-towns of the Riviera, none
is more curious in itself, and beautiful in its surroundings, than Saint- Paul du Var. It stands very high up, very near the mountains, between the valleys of the Loup and the -Par, but can be easily approached by road either from Cannes, Antibes, or Nice. Driving from Antibes, we cross the flat country, the plain of the Brague, with that unmatched view of sea and snow- mountains, which almost, to my mind, makes Antibes the most beautiful spot on the Riviera. Then, not long before reaching the little station of Vence-Cagnes, we turn up into -the valley, and go gradually climbing into the hill-country. These great winding valleys are wonderfully grand ; the forms of the ground, its sweeping curves, the mountain-spurs that advance into them, the sudden corners from which some glorious mountain-view breaks in upon us, snow and purple crags, the wide slopes rich with vines and olives, and all rose- pink with almond-blossom ; here and there a river loitering down its grey. stony bed, the look of which is enough to suggest those torrents that sometimes sweep away bridges and men's lives in their wild fury; and faraway, backed by the moun- tains, standing forward proudly on what it seems still to think its own impregnable rock, such a place as Saint-Paul,—houses crowded together, church-tower rising high above them, strong walls of defence all round. One has seen such little hill-towns in the background of old Italian pictures, with a tall line of cypresses, perhaps, their stiff grey stems and pointed foliage in themselves the making of a picture. These landscapes, the landscapes of the old painters, who drew Nature as they saw her, become familiar to one's eyes on the Riviera. It is rather like making acquaintance with a real person whose portrait one has long known, and finding him or her even more striking, more engaging, than the most literal portrait.
It is not very long after leaving the high-road that one catches the first glimpse of Saint-Paul, very far off, standing -out yellow ad grey against its background of mountains, the nearer range purple, washed with rose, the further, dazzling snow. Long before it comes into sight again, we cross the Loup by a smart new bridge; the old one was washed away by the torrent some years ago. Then we pass under the pic- turesque little town and old chdteau of Villeneuve-Loubet, with a curious tower built by Saracen prisoners. This was the castle of Romee de Villeneuve, Dante's pilgrim Romeo, and for several hundred years one of the strongholds of the great Villeneuve family, still surviving in Provence. It after- wards belonged to the equally famous Lascaris, and it was one of their descendants who lent it to Francois I. Here Pope Paul III., who had once been Bishop of Vence, paid a visit to the Sing, and mediated between him and Charles V. But for the history of all this country, and the genealogy of its great families, in itself a most interesting part of history, we had better refer to those who have studied the subject; and I will venture specially to mention that charming book by the author of "Vera," "The Maritime Alps and their Seaboard," that inseparable companion of any one who really cares to know the Riviera.
Saint-Paul lies there on its rock in the sunshine, and the beauty of its situation strikes us with wonder as we come slowly climbing nearer it. After passing through the village' of La Colle, we cross a broad valley, between rich fields of olives, long grass, vines, figs, almonds, and vegetables, with the mountains towering on our left. Then, turning to the right, we pass under some trees, with stone benches, a sort of boulevard under the walls, and find ourselves at the gate of the little fortified town. There is no one to dispute our entrance now. Under heavy archways, through a sort of winding passage, where gates and portcullises once were, we walked quietly into the deserted place. It seems as if no one had touched Saint-Paul since its last siege, or since its great families went away. The old circling walls remain the same, hardly even ruinous ; they were built by Mandon in the time of Francois I. Saint-Paul has never spread outside the walls, and is not likely to do so now, for its great days are past, the days in which the seneschals of Provence lived there. It is almost too remote now to rise up again ; its few inhabitants live on the produce of their fields, and probably do not care very much about the unique beauty of their strange old town ; but in saying this, I remember something which proves the contrary, at least in one instance. After all, it is not only strangers and foreigners who go away with Saint-Paul ci la Vete. We walked through several narrow old streets and lanes of high, dark houses, and past a picturesque well, and found our way into the church, which is really fine, and very clean and well kept, like all the churches in this country. Coming out into the sunshine again, the still sunshine and dark shadows of the street, we saw a woman standing at a house-door. I mention this, because she was the only living thing we had yet seen in Saint-Paul, except a lonely hen pecking near the gate- way, and a cat that ran away from us up a dark passage. Afterwards we met a man, who looked at us with surprise. But certainly at first, it seemed as if the people of Saint- Paul had all hidden themselves, or rather, gone away altogether; for the place was utterly still, and felt as lonely as it looked. The main street leads straight from the church, through the middle of the little town, down to the ramparts on the south side, where there is now another gate, leading down into the valley towards the sea. We did not go that way, but wandered round to the eastern ramparts, and walked slowly along them, every moment more struck with the singular beauty of the place. A narrow, stony, and rather dangerous path led along close to the top of the walls, over which we looked down into a ravine full of orange and olive trees. Beyond and behind it rose the mountain-range ; here and there a village, with its tall campanile, niched in under some crag. To the right, the narrow road that circles the town divided us from gardens full of orange-trees, golden with fruit—the oranges about here are celebrated ;—beyond these, again, rose the high houses of the town and its church-tower.
Following our little path round the walls, we came at last to the south-east corner of the ramparts, where an old woman in a shady hat, with a quaint, ugly, intelligent face, was standing, eating oranges, and looking at the view. Her clothes were old and poor, but the amiable dignity of her manners seemed to show that she was a person of some note in Saint-Paul. We stood there with her, talking, for a long time. The sun was hot ; the oranges which she kindly offered us were sour; but the freshness, purity, and life of the mountain air we breathed was wonderful, and the views were glorious, whether we turned round to look at the shadows on the mountains, the glitter of the snow, the splendid sweep of the range away towards Grasse and the west, or gazed down to the sea, over the ravines and rocks below Saint-Paul, over the rich valleys, pink and shining in the sunshine, broken by hills and by towers, through which the litle rivers run and join, to the blue, bright horizon of sea and sky, Antibes glittering white, away to the south-west. The extraordinary peace and stillness, the distance, as it seemed, from the world, of this strange little town and magnificent landscape, made an impression that one is not likely to forget. Our old friend presently told us that she was a native of Saint-Paul, but her husband had been a gendarme, and they had gone away for some years to live at Marseilles. "Male favais toujours Saint-Paul it la tete :" and so, when it was possible, she had come back to her old home. And then she pointed down to a little walled square under the ramparts where we were standing,—the cemetery of Saint-Paul, with its rows of wooden crosses, and bead-wreaths, and a little new chapel that was building. She explained to us the exact spot where she was to be buried, looking gravely down, and saying, ‘• Faut penser it l'eternite." And we could hardly imagine a more beautiful place of repose.
When we had left her, and had gone through the town again, and lingered on the ramparts on the other side, and then reluctantly made our way back through the gateway again, we at last saw the population of Saint-Paul. For some time we had heard a drum beating in the distance ; we now found a cheap-jack's cart drawn up on the boulevard, and a lively sale going on in the middle of a crowd of dark, good-tempered- looking men and women. The hoarse shrieks of the seller, the rattle now and then of the drum, pursued us into the valley as we left Saint-Paul behind us. But when we look back to that day, the cheap-jack's clatter and crowd seem to fade away into nothing ; the one living figure of Saint-Paul, for us, is one old woman standing on the wall, in bright sun- shine and clear air, with that splendid landscape round her, eating oranges, and thinking of eternity.
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