instead of retracing
our steps towards La Napoule, we kept ahead, and remembered to take the
left at every cross path, we would come out at the place where the
Corniche road made its big bend before mounting to the promontory. It
was all so simple that it could not be otherwise. We were sure of the
direction, and fairly sure of the distance, since we had left the motor
road between Theoule and La Napoule.

There was an hour and a half before lunch. A lumber road followed the
brook, and the brook skirted the hill beyond which was Theoule and the
Villa Etoile. It was a day to swear by, and April flowers were in full
bloom. It was delightful until we had to confess that the hill showed
no signs of coming down to a valley on the left. Finally, at a point
where a path went up abruptly from the stream, we decided that it would
be best to cut over the summit of the hill and not wait until the
Corniche road appeared before us. In this way we would avoid the walk
back from the hotel to our villa, and come out in our own garden. But
on the Riviera nature has shown no care in placing her hills where they
ought to be and in symmetrizing and limiting them. They go on
indefinitely. So did we, until we came to feel that we would be like
the soldiers of Xenophon once we spied the sea. But the cry "Thalassa"
was denied us. Eventually we turned back, and tried keeping the hill
on the right. This was as perplexing as keeping it on the left had
been. A pair of famished explorers, hungry enough to eat canned
tuna-fish and crackers with relish, reached a little town inland from
Mandelieu about seven o'clock that night with no clear knowledge of
from where or how they had come.

Between the town of Theoule and the belvedere of the Esquillon, down
along the water's edge, one never tires of exploring the caves. Paths
lead through the pines and around the cliffs. The Artist was attracted
to the caves by the hope of finding vantage points from which to sketch
Grasse and Cannes and Antibes and the Alps and the castle on
Saint-Honorat. But he soon came to love the copper rocks, which pine
needles had dyed, and deserted black and white for colors. When the
climate got him, he was not loath to join in my hunt for octopi. The
inhabitants tell thrilling stories of the monsters that lurk under the
rocks at the Pointe de l'Esquillon and forage right up to the town.
One is warned to be on his guard against long tentacles reaching out