sometimes glimpses make more vivid memories
than longer acquaintance. At the end of our hour we left Vence and
hurried down the broad road of red shale past meadows thick with
violets. We went through the deep pine-filled ravine over which we had
crossed on the viaduct. Then the climb to Saint-Paul-du-Var.

[Illustration: "Down the broad road of red shale past meadows thick
with violets."]

We might have taken our time. Christine and Lloyd and Mimi came
running to greet us, bringing with them little friends who had probably
never before played with children from Paris. We did not need to ask
what kind of a time they had been having. Children are the true
cosmopolitans. Hope lay under a tree on her blanket playing with her
pink shoes. Nearby, at a table in front of the Cafe de la Porte,
Leonie was treating the _cocher_ and the postman to a glass of beer.

"I got bread and honey and milk for the children's _gouter_," explained
Leonie, "and _Monsieur le cocher_ and I are having ours with _Monsieur
le facteur_."

As the children did not seem to be tired and the _cocher_ was in no
hurry, Helen and I made a tour of the walls, and took a photograph of
our handicaps and their faithful attendants in front of the great gate
built by Francis I, who prized Saint-Paul-du-Var as the best spot to
guard the fords of the river against Charles V.

A reader of this manuscript declares that the chapter on Vence ought to
be struck out.

"They [I suppose she means the home folks] will never understand," she
insists.

I am adamant.

"When they come to the Riviera, they will understand," I answer.

Between Saint-Raphael and Menton the most sacred responsibilities do
not weigh one down all the time.

CHAPTER VI

MENTON

In architectural parlance the cornice is the horizontal molded
projection crowning a building, especially the uppermost member of the
entablature of an order, surmounting the frieze. The word is also used
in mountaineering to describe an overhanging mass of hardened snow at
the edge of a precipice. In the Maritime Alps it has a striking
figurative meaning. There are four _corniches_--the main roads along
the two sections of the Riviera, Menton to Nice and Theoule to
Saint-Raphael, where the mountains come right down to the sea and
nature affords no natural routes. The Grande Corniche and the Petite
Corniche run from Nice to Menton, and the Moyenne Corniche from Nice to
Monte Carlo. The Cornich