ks
and plaster. This is the Saint-Raphael that Napoleon knew when he
returned from Egypt and, fifteen years later, sailed for his first
exile at Elba.

But we found much that was attractive in the new Saint-Raphael, which
is as French as the old. The English keep themselves mostly at
Valescure. Tourists come on _chars-a-bancs_ for lunch, and hurry back
to Nice. Saint-Raphael has developed as a French watering place. It
does not have the protection of the high wall of the Maritime Alps.
When the mistral, bane of the Midi, is not blowing, however, you wonder
whether the native-born have not picked out for a seashore resort a
more delightful bit of the Riviera coast than foreigners. A Frenchman
once told me that Saint-Raphael was the logical Riviera town for the
French simply because the night train from Paris landed a traveler
there in time for noon lunch.

"This fact alone," he declared to me, "would induce me to choose
Saint-Raphael in preference to Cannes and Nice. You know that when
twelve o'clock has struck the day is ruined for a Frenchman if he is
not reasonably sure of being able to sit down pretty soon to a good hot
meal. The P.-L.-M. put Cannes and Nice just a little bit beyond our
limit."

As you emerge from the Old Town, at the harbor, you pass by a large
modern church in Byzantine style, whose portal shows to excellent
advantage six porphyry columns from the nearby Boulouris quarries.
Along the sea is the Boulevard Felix-Martin, which runs into the
Corniche de l'Esterel. For several miles you feel that there is
nothing to detract from the spell of the sea. Elsewhere on the Riviera
you have promenades embellished by great buildings and monuments and
forts and exotic trees. You have coves and capes and villa-clad hills
with the Alpine background. You climb cliffs and see the Mediterranean
at bends, through trees and across luxurious gardens. Panorama after
panorama with distractions galore react on you like a picture gallery.
But at Saint-Raphael the sea dominates. The Mediterranean alone holds
you.

This is why you cannot endorse the bald statement flung at you by the
famous sundial of the Rue de France at Nice:

"Io vado e vengo ogni giorno,
Ma tu andrai senza ritorno."

It may be true enough of Nice that you will not go back. One has the
confusion of human activities everywhere and tires of it everywhere.
But just the sea alone is always new. Of course in the end the
immortal