put
their money into safe bonds of their own and foreign governments. The
woolen stocking does not give up its hoarded coins for such enterprises
as mines and domestic industries. Daughter's _dot_ must be in a form
acceptable to the prospective bridegroom's family. And then the French
do not breed the new generation sufficiently large to furnish laborers
for developing the natural resources of the country. They are hostile
to immigration. When the war came Asia and Africa were called upon to
man munition plants.

After the lesson of the war the French have tried to make their own
country give up more of its wealth. However, though they are now more
skeptical than ever of investing abroad, they still pursue an
aggressive foreign policy to open up and protect fields of capital far
from home. On the edge of the Esterel, a dozen miles away, at Frejus,
Saint-Raphael and Cannes, the people have lost much money in Russian
and Turkish bonds, Brazilian railways and coffee plantations. Their
sons go to Algeria and Morocco to seek a fortune. Is this why only the
coming of tourists and residents from a less hospitable clime has
wrought any change in the country during the nineteenth century? From
the standpoint of natural production the Riviera is relatively less
important, less self-supporting than before the railway came.

By the forester's house of Le Malpey, after an hour's descent, we
strike the carriage road. An hour and a half brings us to Valescure,
an English colony built in pine woods. Another half hour and we are at
Saint-Raphael.

The next morning we discovered that Saint-Raphael had its Old Town,
which escaped us on our trip to Frejus. Only the new name of the main
street--Rue Gambetta--indicated that we were in France of the Third
Republic. But, as in Grasse, we felt that we were really in France of
all the centuries. There was none of that unmistakably Italian
atmosphere that still makes itself felt in Nice, once you wander into
quarters east of the Place Massena. The thick walls of the old
church--far too massive for its size--bear witness to the period when
Mediterranean coast town church was sanctuary more than in name. To
the church the people fled when the Saracen pirates came, and while the
priests prayed they acted on the adage that God helps those who help
themselves, pouring molten lead from the roof and shooting arbalests
through _meurtrieres_ that can still be distinguished despite bric