Fréjus is prolific in quaint customs and legends too numerous to mention, though two, at least, stand out so plainly in the memory of the writer that they are here recounted. On a certain occasion in August,--not the usual season for tourists, but genuine travel-lovers, having no season, go anywhere at any time,--as the town was entered by the highroad, our automobile was abruptly stopped at the _barrière_ by a motley crew clad in all manner of military costumes, like the armies of the South American republics. Firearms, too, were there, and when a grenadier of the time of Louis-Philippe let off a smoky charge of gunpowder under our very noses, it was a signal for a general _feu-de-joie_ which might have rivalled a Fourth of July celebration in the United States, for the disaster which it bid fair to bring in its wake. As a matter of fact, nothing happened, and we were allowed to proceed in peace, though the sleep-destroying cannonade was kept up throughout the night. The occasion was nothing but the annual celebration of “_Les Bravadeurs_,” a survival of the days of Louis XIV., when the town, being left without a garrison, raised a motley army of its own to serve in place of the troops of the king. There is a legend, too, concerning the landing of St. François de Paule here, which the native is fond of telling the stranger, but which needs something more than the proverbial grain of salt to go with it, because St. François is claimed to have first put foot on shore at various other points along the coast. The story is to the effect that the ship which bore the holy man from the East having foundered, or not having been sufficiently sea-worthy to continue the voyage, St. François stepped overboard and walked ashore on the waves. He did not walk on the waves themselves in this case, but laid his mantle upon them and walked on that. What he did when he came to the edge of his mantle tradition does not state. The ecclesiastical and political history of Fréjus is most interesting, though it cannot be epitomized here. Two significant Napoleonic events of the early nineteenth century stand out so strongly, however, that they perforce must be mentioned. In 1809 Pope Pius VII. stopped at Fréjus when he was making his way to Fontainebleau, more or less unwillingly, as history tells. Five years later the Holy Father again stopped at Fréjus on his return to Italy, and Napoleon himself, on the 27th of the following April, awaiting the moment of his departure for Elba, occupied the very apartment that had received the pontiff.