When, finally, she returned to Provence it was to ruined Mirabeau. The
castle had been wrecked, but she contrived to have a cottage built out
of the ruins for herself and for her husband, who had sunk into dotage.
The brother of the great orator and of Louise de Cabris was André
Boniface, Deputy to the Estates-General for the nobility of Limoges.
His excesses at table, and his corpulence, procured for him the
nickname of Mirabeau Tonneau. Gabriel Honoré reprimanded him for
ascending the tribune when he was drunk. “Why,” he replied, “you have
monopolised all the vices of the family, and have left but this one
to me.” “In any other family but ours,” he said, “I would pass as a
disgrace. In mine, I am its most respectable member.” He emigrated to
Germany. An epigram was composed on him:—
“L’horreur de l’eau, l’amour du vin
Le retiendront au bord du Rhin.”
Grasse, as already said, is an admirable centre for excursions, and no
excursion is finer than that up the Gorge of the Loup. It is not often
that commercial enterprise adds to picturesqueness of scene; but this
it has at the entrance to the Gorge. There the railway makes a bold
sweep over a really beautiful viaduct, this itself an addition to the
scene. But further, in order to supply electric force to Nice for its
trams and lighting, a canal has been bored in the precipice on the
right bank of the Loup, at a great elevation, to bring the water from
an upper fall, so as, by means of a turbine, to accumulate the required
power; and the falls of this stream at the opening of the ravine are of
great beauty.
It is hard to decide which is most beautiful, the view of the mouth of
the ravine, with the waterfall foaming down the cliff beside it, as
seen from the hill-side as the train swings down from the direction of
Nice, or whether from the side approached from Grasse, whence up the
Gorge is obtained a glimpse of snowy peaks.
[Illustration: CASCADE, GORGE OF LOUP]
[Illustration: FALL IN THE GORGE OF THE LOUP]
There are views one sees that never leave one, that fix themselves in
the mind indelibly; and the view of the mouth of the Loup Gorge is
certainly one such scene.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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