and berries that
grew without restraint or guidance. "Nature is at her best," he
explained, "when you do not try to exploit her. Compare wild
strawberries and wild asparagus with the truck the farmers give you. Is
wisteria useful? What equals the color of the judas-tree in bloom? Do
fruit blossoms, utilitarian embryo, compare for a minute with real
flowers? Just look at all these flowers, born for the sole purpose of
expressing themselves!" All the while we were sniffing orange-blossoms.
I tried in vain to get his honest opinion on horse-chestnut blossoms as
compared with apples and peaches and apricots. I called his attention to
the fact that the ailanthus lives only to express itself, while the maple
gives sugar. But you can never argue with the Artist when he is on the
theme of beauty for beauty's sake.

From the fairyland of the valley we came suddenly upon the Grasse railway
station, from which a _funiculaire_ ascends to the city far above.
Thankful for our carriage, we continued to mount by a road that had to
curve sharply at every hundred yards. We passed between villas with
pergolas of ramblers and wisteria until we found ourselves in the upper
part of the city without having gone through the city at all.

We got out at the promenade, where a marvelous view of the Mediterranean
from Antibes to Theoule lies before you. The old town falls down the
mountain-side from the left of the promenade. We started along a street
that seemed to slide down towards the cathedral, the top of whose belfry
hardly reaches the level of the promenade. Before we had gone a block,
we learned that the flowers through which we had passed were not blooming
for pure joy. Like many things in this dreary world of ours, they were
being cultivated for money's sake and not for beauty's sake. Grasse
lives from those flowers in the valley below. We had started to look for
quaint houses. From one of the first doors in the street came forth an
odor that made us think of the type of woman who calls herself "a lady."
I learned early in life at the barber's that a little bit of scent goes
too far, and some women in public places who pass you fragrantly do not
allow that lesson to be forgotten. Is not lavender the only scent in the
world that does not lose by an overdose?

The Artist would not enter. His eye had caught a fourteenth-century
_cul-de-sac_, and I knew that he was good for an hour. I hesitated. The
vista of the stree