mailbag. We told him that the kiddies were coming, and slipped him ten
francs to look after them until our return.

"_Soyes tranquilles, M'sieu-dame,_" he reassured us. "_Moi, je suis
grand'pere._"

Beyond Saint-Paul the tramway left the road and climbed over a viaduct
to Vence.

Ventium Cassaris was a military base of great importance in the days of
imperial Rome. It was the central commissariat depot for the armies in
Gaul, and had a forum and temples. During the Middle Ages it was a
stronghold of the Holy Roman Empire. It stands on the side of a
fertile hill more than a thousand feet above the sea. The site was
probably chosen because of the wall of rocks on the north which shelter
it from the mistral, a wind that the Romans found as little to their
liking as later interlopers. In peace as in war the outside world has
never been able to keep away from the Riviera.

The Artist announced his intention of spending a couple of days
sketching, and left us to seek a hotel. Helen and I found that there
was no tram to Saint-Paul-du-Var that would enable us to pick up the
children in time for the train to Theoule unless we returned without
seeing Vence. So we decided to give an hour to the town and walk back
to Saint-Paul.

As at Grasse a boulevard runs along the line of the old fortifications.
Some of the houses facing it have used the town wall for foundations or
are themselves remnants of the wall. But at Vence the _boulevard de
l'enceinte_ is circular--a modest _Ringstrasse_, marking without
interruption the old town from the new. We dipped in and out of alleys
under arches, and made a turn of the streets of the old town. Much of
the medieval still survives in Vence, as in other hill towns of the
Riviera. But only behind the cathedral did we find a remnant of
imperial Rome. A granite column supporting an arch, and reliefs and
inscriptions built in the north wall of the cathedral, are all that we
saw of Vence's latinity.

The cathedral, however, is the most interesting we found on the
Riviera. It is a Romanesque building, built on the site of the
second-century temple, and its tall battlemented tower harks back to a
tenth-century _chateau fort_. The interior is striking: double aisles,
simple nave with tiers of arches of the tenth century, a choir with
richly carved oak stalls, a fourth-century sarcophagus for altar, and a
font and lectern of the Italian Renaissance.

It was just a glimpse. But