the French occupation.
There is a replica of the church of Saint-Paul-du-Var in a thousand
Italian cities. When you enter the colorless building from the plain
curved porch, the chill strikes right into your bones. Windows do not
compete with candles. You have to grope your way toward the altar.
Unless you strain your eyes, or lamps are burning, side chapels pass
unnoticed. If you are looking for inscriptions or want to admire the old
master's picture, with which every church claims to be endowed, you must
get the verger with his taper. Altars are gaudily decorated and statues
bejeweled and be (artificial) flowered in Hispano-Italian fashion. The
_mairie_, reconstructed from an ancient palace or castle, was more
interesting. Beside the mairie a medieval square tower, which may have
been a donjon, was occupied on the ground floor by the _gendarmerie_.
Bars on the upper windows indicated that it was still the prison.

We tried the alleys that led off from the street, thinking each might be
a thoroughfare to take us back to the ramparts. They ended abruptly in a
_cul-de-sac_ or court. The _culs-de-sac_, uninviting to eye and nose,
were as Italian as the church. The houses in the courts were stables
downstairs. Man and beast lived together. Flowers and wee bushes grew
up around the wells in the center of the courts. Everything was built of
stone and red-tiled. But there was none of the dull gray-and-red
monotony of northern towns near the sea or of the sharp gray-and-red
monotony of towns of the Mediterranean peninsulas. Grass sprouted out
between the stones of the walls and the tiles of the roofs. From
window-ledges and eaves hung ferns. A blush of moss on the stones added
to the green of plant life, and softened the austerity of the gray.
Nature was successful in asserting herself against man and sun and sea.

[Illustration: "The houses in the courts were stables downstairs."]

We were expressing our enthusiasm in a court where the living green
combined with age to glorify the buildings. We did not see the
dilapidation, we did not smell the dirt, we did not feel the squalor. A
woman was lighting a fire in a brazier on her doorstep. She looked
hostilely at us. We beamed in counteraction. She looked more hostilely.
As the Artist wanted to sketch her house, some words seemed necessary. I
detailed our emotions. Was not her lot, cast in this picturesque spot,
most enviable?

"We want to take away wit