27

IN THE GROUNDS OF THE NEW VILLA OF THE EMPRESS OF AUSTRIA 331

ALBANIAN MALE COSTUME 335

ALBANIAN FEMALE COSTUME 339

GALA COSTUME, CORFU 343

OLIVE GROVE, CORFU 351

AT MENTONE

I

"_Kennst du das Land wo die Citronen bluehen?_"
--GOETHE

It is of no consequence why or how we came to Mentone. The vast subject
of health and health resorts, of balancings between Torquay and Madeira,
Algeria and Sicily, and, in a smaller sphere, between Cannes, Nice,
Mentone, and San Remo, may as well be left at one side while we happily
imitate the Happy-thought Man's trains in Bradshaw, which never "start,"
but "arrive." We therefore arrived. Our party, formed not by selection,
or even by the survival of the fittest (after the ocean and Channel),
but simply by chance aggregation, was now composed of Mrs. Trescott and
her daughter Janet, Professor Mackenzie, Miss Graves, the two youths
Inness and Baker, my niece, and myself, myself being Jane Jefferson,
aged fifty, and my niece Margaret Severin, aged twenty-eight.

As I said above, we were an aggregation. The Trescotts had started
alone, but had "accumulated" (so Mrs. Trescott informed me) the
Professor. The Professor had started alone, and had accumulated the
Trescotts. Inness and Baker had started singly, but had first
accumulated each other, and then ourselves; while Margaret and I, having
accumulated Miss Graves, found ourselves, with her, imbedded in the
aggregation, partly by chance and partly by that powerful force
propinquity. Arriving at Mentone, our aggregation went unbroken to the
Hotel des Anglais, in the East Bay--the East Bay, the Professor said,
being warmer than the West: the Professor had been at Mentone before.
"The East Bay," he explained, "is warmer because more closely encircled
by the mountains, which rise directly behind the house. The West Bay has
more level space, and there are several little valleys opening into it,
through which currents of air can pass; it is therefore cooler, but only
a matter of two or three degrees." It was evening, and our omnibus
proceeded at a pace adapted to the "Dead March" from _Saul_ through a
street so narrow and walled in that it was like going through catacombs.
Only, as Janet remarked, they did not crack whi