ur wealth and our skyscrapers. I am
not altogether sure that I set her right about her fabulous
misconception when the Artist's drawing was completed.

Mougins lives in medieval fashion, if not wholly in medieval houses.
Dependent upon occasional water from the heavens for carrying sewage
down the hillside, Mougins has no use for gutters and drains. Rubbish
is thrown from windows, and tramped down into last year's layer of
pavement. Goats enjoy the rich pasturage of old boots and cans and
papers and rags and vegetables that had lived beyond their day.
Although, as we walked through the alleys, we saw no one, heard no one,
the houses were inhabited: for much of the garbage was painfully
recent, and clothes flapped on lines from window to window over our
heads. The Artist suggested that the townspeople might be taking a
siesta. But it was late in the afternoon for that. Then we remembered
that Mougins was an agricultural community, and that the work of the
town was in the fields. This explained also why we saw no shops and no
evidences of trade. Olives, flowers, wine, fruit and vegetables are
taken to the markets of Cannes and Grasse, and the people of Mougins
buy what they need where they sell. Mougins has only bakeries and
cafes. Bread and alcohol alone are indispensable where people dwell
together.

We circled the city, and came out on the promenade across which we had
entered Mougins. Every French town has an illustrious son, for whom a
street is named, on whose birthplace a tablet is put, and to whom a
monument is raised. Our tour had taken us through the Rue du
Commandant Lamy. We had read the inscription on his home, and were now
before his monument, a bust on a slender pedestal, with the glorious
sweep of La Napoule for a background. The peasants of Mougins, as they
go out to and return from the labor of vineyard, orchard and field,
pass by the Lamy memorial. Even when they are of one's own blood, is
there inspiration in the daily reminder of heroes? How many from
Mougins have followed Lamy's example? I have often wondered whether
monuments mean anything except to tourists.

As I had recently been writing upon French colonial history, Lamy's
daring and fruitful journeys in Central Africa were fresh in my mind,
and I remembered his tragic death in the Wadai fifteen years ago. An
old man had just come up the hill, and was dragging weary legs encased
in clay-stained trousers across the promenade.