Climbing up and around these various streets, peering in at the meager little windows where tobacco, fruit, cheese and modest staples were sold, we reached finally the summit of Eze, where for the first time in Italy--I count the Riviera Italian--the guide nuisance began. An old woman, in patois French, insisted on chanting about the ruins. Sir Scorp kept repeating, “No, no, my good woman, go away,” and I said in English, “Run, tell it to Barfleur. He is the bell-wether of this flock.” Barfleur clambered to safety up a cracked wall of the ruin and from his dizzy height eyed her calmly and bade her “Run along, now.” But it was like King Canute bidding the sea to retreat, till she had successfully taken toll of us. Meanwhile we stared in delight at the Mediterranean, at the olive groves, the distant shepherds, at the lovely blue vistas and the pale threads of roads. We were so anxious to get to Nice in time for dinner, and so opposed to making our way by the long dusty road which lay down the mountain, that we decided to make a short cut of it and go down the rocky side of the hill by a foot-wide path which was pointed out to us by the village priest, a haggard specimen of a man who, in thin cassock and beggarly shoes and hat, paraded before his crumbling little church door. We were a noble company, if somewhat out of the picture, as we piled down this narrow mountaineer’s track--Barfleur in a brilliant checked suit and white hat, and Sir Scorp in very smart black. My best yellow shoes (ninety francs in Paris) lent a pleasing note to my otherwise inconspicuous attire, and gave me some concern, for the going was most rough and uncertain. We passed shepherds tending sheep on sharp slopes, a donkey-driver making his way upward with three donkeys all heavily laden, an umbrella-tree sheltering a peasant so ancient that he must have endured from Grecian days, and olive groves whose shadows were as rich as that bronze which time has favored with its patina. It seemed impossible that half way between Monte Carlo and Nice--those twin worlds of spendthrift fashion and pampered vice--should endure a scene so idyllic. The Vale of Arcady is here; all that art could suggest or fancy desire, a world of simple things. Such scenes as this, remarked Sir Scorp, were favored by his great artistic admiration--Daubigny.