loves to give to his old women.
She was a friendly soul, and did not seem amazed to find strangers
strolling late at night in her town. We were "_Anglais_," and that was
explanation enough to one who had seen three generations of tourists.
She stopped to talk with us. When had we arrived at Villeneuve-Loubet?
Had we come up from Nice that afternoon and did we plan to stay for a day
or two with Jean Alphonse at the Hotel Beau-Site? Did we not agree that
Villeneuve-Loubet was superb? Perhaps we were artists? So many artists
came here to paint and sketch the old houses. What was our impression of
her country? We knew that she meant by "country" not France but
Villeneuve-Loubet, and mustered our best vocabulary to admire the town,
the solid foundations, the houses, the protecting castle, and above all,
the unique streets of stone.

"But it must be very difficult to go up and down in winter. How do you
manage when the rock is frozen over with snow and ice?" I asked.

"It does not freeze here," she answered.

The moon-whiteness had made me think of winter, and it had not occurred
to me that there would be no snow and ice. Ideas are pervasive. We
place them immediately and unquestioningly upon the hypothesis that
happens to fit.

The church, of eighteenth-century architecture, is the last building at
the upper end of the town. It stands on a terrace outside the lower wall
of the castle, an eloquent witness of the survival of feudal ideas. In
order that the lord of the manor need not go far to mass, when there
happened to be no private chaplain in the castle, the town-folk must
climb to their devotions. I tried the church door from habit. It was
not locked. The Artist refused to go in.

"Why should one poke around a church, especially at night and this
night?" he remonstrated, and walked over to the wall of the terrace.

"There may be something inside," I urged.

"There _is_ something outside," he answered, with his back turned upon
the castle as well as church.

I could see my way around, for the windows of nave and transept were
large, and had plain glass. Moonlight was sufficient to read
inscriptions that set forth in detail the pedigree of the chatelains.
The baptismal names overflowed a line, and were followed by a family name
almost as long, MARCH-TRIPOLY DE PANISSE-PASSIS. Longest of all was the
list of titles. The chatelains were marquesses and counts and knights of
Malta and seigneurs of a d