On the summit of this stupendous barrier and at a height of 1,574 feet is La Turbie. Gazing up from the streets of Monte Carlo the place can be located, although neither its walls, nor its houses nor any part of it are visible; but it is indicated by two remarkable objects which stand out clear on the sky line. They are strange and ill-assorted. One of the objects is a vast pillar or tower of stone, of the colour of a wheat stalk. From the Casino garden, half a mile below, it looks like a gigantic brick standing on end and turned edgeways. This is the Roman monument of Augustus erected over 1,900 years ago. The other object, placed by its side, is a coral pink hotel that may have sprung up in the night. Its outline is intentionally fantastic for it is built in “the Oriental style” in the belief that the simple might mistake it for a mosque or a palace of the caliphs. In spite of its appearance it is popular and well esteemed. It is a theatrical creation as gaudy as if it were flooded by a rose-tinted limelight and as out of place on the top of the stately cliff as a cheap Paris bonnet on the head of the Venus de Milo. [Illustration: LA TURBIE: THE ROMAN MONUMENT.] There are many ways of reaching La Turbie from the lower ground. For carriages there is the Cemetery road. It is so called, not because it is dangerous to motorists, but because it passes a cemetery. It winds in and out among the prehistoric fortifications of Mont des Mules and Mont Justicier, but is so irresolute, so capricious, so inclined to go any way rather than up hill to La Turbie that the route is exasperating. The track of the road is like the track of a drunken man who has become obstinate and deaf to all persuasions to go straight home. There are two mule-paths up to the town, one on either side of the Vallon des Gaumates, the Moneghetti path on the west and the Bordina on the east. These paths are at least direct and know where they are going. They are paved with cobble stones, are arranged in long steps, are as monotonous as a treadmill and probably as tiring. They are paths that might have climbed up the penitential heights in Dante’s “Purgatorio.” Still they pass by pleasant ways among the shadows of the olives and the slips of garden piled one above the other on green ledges. Moreover they are the old primitive roads of the country, the roads trod by the mediæval pedlar, by the wandering monk and by the errant knight. Of all works of man throughout the ages they are among the oldest and the least disturbed by change.