It seems probable that the original name of the town was Telo, which in the itinerary of Antony is given as Telo-Martius, from an ancient temple to Mars, thus distinguishing it from a similar name applied to many other places in the Narbonnais. Finally Toulon emerged from its semi-obscurity, and Guillaume de Tarente, Comte de Provence, in 1055, surrounded with wall “the place called Tholon or Tollon.” Until the tenth century Toulon’s ecclesiastical history was more momentous than was its civic. It had been the seat of a bishop for a matter of six centuries, with St. Honorat, St. Gratien, and St. Cyprien as bishops, all within the first century of its existence. The plan to make Toulon one of the great fortified places of the world was carried on assiduously by Richelieu, who commanded a certain Jacques Desmarets, professor of mathematics at the university at Aix, to make a plan which should show the Provençal coast-line in all its detail. The instructions read, “..._sur vélin, enluminé en or et representant la côte jusqu’à deux ou trois lieues dans les terres_.” The general scheme was carried out further by Mazarin, the wily Italian who succeeded Richelieu. In company with Louis XIV., Mazarin visited Toulon, and then and there decided that it should take the first place in the kingdom as a stronghold for the navy. Toulon then became the greatest naval arsenal the world had known. In 1670 it armed forty-two ships of the line, among them many three-deckers, which all lovers of the romance of the seas have come to accept as the most imposing craft then afloat, whatever may have been their additional virtues. Among those fitted for sea and armed at Toulon was the _Magnifique_, a vessel which excited universal enthusiasm all over Europe, not only because it mounted a hundred and four guns, but because the sculptor Puget had designed her decorations, and decorations on ships were much more ornate in those days than they are in the present vagaries of the “_art nouveau_.” Puget lived at Toulon at the time, and had indeed already designed the caryatides which stand out so prominently in the Toulon’s Hôtel de Ville. His house in the Rue de la République, known by every one as the “Maison Puget,” is one of the shrines at which art-worshippers should not neglect to pay homage. It has some remarkably beautiful features, a fine stairway in wrought iron, an elaborate newel-post, and many similar decorations. Back of Toulon is the great gray mass of the Faron, fortified, as is every height and point of view round about. From the summit of this great height (546 metres) one may see, on a clear day, Corsica and the Alps of Savoie. The fortifications are too numerous to call by name here, and, indeed, they are uninteresting enough to the lover of the romantically picturesque, regardless of their worth from a strategic point of view. Like the cannon, the forts are everywhere.