remain at the Riviera level. In the little museum under those cliffs by the sea, where the Grimaldi caves are, I found myself lately together with a young French couple, newly married. The little bride was vastly interested in the attendant's explanations of the habits of those remote folk, but, as I could plainly see, growing more and more distrustful of his statements as to what happened all those hundreds of thousands of years ago. "And this, Messieurs, is the jaw-bone of a cave-bear--the competitor, one might say, in the matter of lodging-houses, with the gentleman whose anatomy we have just inspected. Here are bones of hippopotamus, and rhinoceros, which he hunted with the weapons you saw. And the object on which your arm is reposing, Madame, is the tooth of an elephant. Our ancestor must have been pretty costaud to kill an elephant with a stone." "Elephants?" she queried. "Did elephants scramble about these precipices and ravines? I should like to have seen that." "Pardon me, Madame. He probably killed them down there," and his arm swept over the blue Mediterranean, lying at our feet. "Do you mean to say that elephants paddled across from Algiers in order to be assassinated by your old skeleton? I should like to have seen that." "Pardon me, Madame. The Mediterranean did not exist in those days." The suggestion that this boundless sea should ever have been dry land, and in the time of her own ancestors, was too much for the young lady. She smiled politely, and soon I heard her whispering to her husband: "I had him there, eh? Quel farceur!" "Yes. You caught him nicely, I must say. But one must not be too hard on these poor devils. They have got to earn their bread somehow." This will never do. Italiam petimus.... Levanto I have loafed into Levanto, on the recommendation of an Irish friend who, it would seem, had reasons of his own for sending me there. "Try Levanto," he said. "A little place below Genoa. Nice, kindly people. And sunshine all the time. Hotel Nazionale. Yes, yes! The food is all right. Quite all right. Now please do not let us start that subject----" We started it none the less, and at the end of the discussion he added: "You must go and see Mitchell there. I often stayed with him. Such a good fellow! And very popular in the place. He built an aqueduct for the peasants--that kind of man. Mind you look him up. He will be bitterly disappointed if you don't call. So make a note of it, won't you? By the way, he's dead. Died last year. I quite forgot." "Dead, is he? What a pity."