But in 1884 a fire broke out in the shrine itself, which wrecked almost irreparably the sumptuous edifice. The statue of the Virgin still crowns the façade, to be sure, and the chapel still shows up bravely from a modest distance; but within, all the glory has faded away, and the interior of the church is no longer accessible. Nevertheless, the visitor who stands upon the platform in front of the doorway and gazes down upon the splendid panoramic view that stretches before him in the vale beneath, will hardly complain of having had his stiff pull uphill for nothing. Except the view of Montreal and the St. Lawrence River from Mont Royal Mountain, I hardly know a town view in the world to equal that from Notre Dame de la Garde, for beauty and variety, on a clear spring morning. Close at our feet lies the city itself, filling up the whole wide valley with its mass, and spreading out long arms of faubourg, or roadway, up the lateral openings. Beyond rise the great white limestone hills, dotted about like mushrooms, with their glittering _bastides_. In front lies the sea--the blue Mediterranean--with that treacherous smile which has so often deceived us all the day before we trusted ourselves too rashly, with ill-deserved confidence, upon its heaving bosom. Near the shore the waves chafe the islets and the Château d'If; then come the Old Port and the busy bassins; and, beyond them all, the Chain of Estaques, rising grim and gray in serrated outline against the western horizon. A beautiful prospect though barren and treeless, for nowhere in the world are mountains barer than those great white guardians of the Provençal seaboard.