Formerly the port of Toulon was closed by sinking a great chain across the harbour-mouth. It went down with the sinking of the sun and only rose at daybreak. The guardianship of this defence was given to some “_homme de confiance_” of Toulon as a sort of deserved honour or glory. This was in the seventeenth century, and to-day, though the guard-ships and the search-lights of the forts do the same service, the name “_Chaine Vieille_” is still in the mouths of the old sailors and fishermen as they make their way to and fro from the Grande to the Petite Rade. Toulon has among its great men of the past the name of the Chevalier Paul, perhaps first and foremost of all the seafarers of France since the day of Dougay-Trouin. He had fixed his residence in the valley of the Dardennes, with a roof over his head “_tout à fait digne d’un prince_.” In the month of February, 1660, the celebrated sailor received Louis XIV., Anne of Austria, the Duc d’Orléans, Cardinal Mazarin, “la grande Mademoiselle,” innumerable princes and seigneurs, four Secrétaires d’État, the ambassador of Venice, and the papal nuncio. This royal company was splendidly fêted, much after the manner of those assemblies held in the previous century in the châteaux of Touraine. The Chevalier bore until his death the title of supreme “Commandant de la Marine,” and when his death came, at the age of seventy, he made the poor of the city his heirs. One memory of Toulon, which is familiar to students of history and romance, are the prisons and galleys of other days. Dumas draws a vivid picture of the life in the galleys in one of his little known but most absorbing tales, “Gabriel Lambert.” To be sure, those who were condemned “_à ramer sur les galères_” were mostly culprits who deserved some sort of punishment, but the survival of the institution was one that one marvels at in these advanced centuries. Really the galley, and the uses to which it was put at Toulon in the eighteenth century, was a survival of the galley of the ancients. It was a long slim craft, of light draught, propelled by a single, double, or treble bank of oars, and sometimes sails. The punishment of the galleys, that is to say, the obligation to “_ramer sur les galères_,” was applied to certain classes of criminals who were known as _forçats_ or _galériens_. The crime of Gabriel Lambert, of whom Dumas wrote with such fidelity, was that of counterfeiting. In 1749 there were sixteen _galères_ here, eight of them at “_practice_” at one time, giving occupation to thirty-seven hundred convicts who were quartered on old hulks moored to the quays or on shore in a convict prison. [Illustration: _Toulon to Frejus_]