The fishing quarter of Menton is one of the most picturesque on the whole Riviera, with its _rues-escaliers_, its vaulted houses, and the walls and escarpments of the old military fortification coming to light here and there. It is nothing like Martigues, in the Bouches-du-Rhône, really the most picturesque fishing-port in the world, nor is it a whit more interesting than the old Catalan quarter of Marseilles; but it is far more varied, with the life of those who conduct the petty affairs of the sea, than any other of the Mediterranean resorts. Menton is something like Hyères, a place of villas quite as much as of hotels, though the latter are of that splendid order of things that spell modern comfort, but which are really most undesirable to live in for more than a few days at a time. Not every one goes to the Riviera to live in a villa, but those who do cannot do better than to hunt one out at Menton. Menton is almost on the frontier of Italy and France, and that has an element of novelty in every-day happenings which would amuse an exceedingly dull person, and, if that were not enough, there is Monte Carlo itself, less than a dozen kilometres away. When one thinks of it, a villa set on some rocky shelf on a wooded hillside overlooking the Mediterranean, with an orange-garden at the back,--as they all seem to have here at Menton,--is not so bad, and offers many advantages over hotel life, particularly as the cost need be no more. You may hire a villa for anything above a thousand francs a season, and it will be completely furnished. You will get, perhaps, five rooms and a cellar, which you fill with wood and wine to while away the long winter evenings, for they can be chill and drear, even here, from December to March. Before you is a panorama extending from Cap Martin to Mortala-Bordighera, another palm-set haven on the Italian Riviera, which once was bare of the conventions of fashion, but which has now become as fashionable as Nice. You can hire a servant to preside over the pots and pans for the absurdly small sum of fifty francs a month, and she will cook, and shop, and fetch and carry all day long, and will keep other robbers from molesting you, if you will only wink at her making a little commission on her marketing. She will work cheerfully and never grumble if you entertain a flock of unexpected tourist friends who have “just dropped in from the Italian Lakes, Switzerland, or Cairo,” and will dress neatly and picturesquely, and cook fish and chickens in a heavenly fashion. To the eastward, toward Italy, the post-road of other days passes through the sumptuous faubourg of Garavan and continues to Pont Saint Louis, over the ravine of the same name. Here is the frontier station (by road) where one leaves _gendarmes_ behind and has his first encounter with the _carabiniers_ of Italy.