frock coat shows improvement, while his apparent intention to spring from the sofa conveys the idea that the final cure has been sudden. There are very many sick-room scenes, complete with puzzled doctors and weeping relations around the bedside. In certain of these illustrations individual and unpleasant symptoms are depicted with so conscientious a determination and so complete a disregard for the feelings of the onlooker as fully to support the dictum that “Art is Truth.” One picture may have puzzled the hanging committee of Laghet. It depicts a smiling man being released from prison. The occasion is one that no doubt evoked thankfulness on the part of the captive, but the inference that his incarceration was an “accident” opens up a legal point of some delicacy. Curious presents have been bestowed upon Laghet. Among them is the gift of the Princess Maria Josephina Baptista. It consisted of a silver leg of the same size and weight as her own leg which was happily cured at the convent. In certain places on the walls of this strange Cloister of Calamity hang crutches and sticks, discarded surgical appliances, boots for deformed feet, spinal supports and splints. They speak for themselves. The little crutches and the little splints speak with especial eloquence; while, as a most pathetic object amid the grosser implements of suffering, is a small steeled shoe which must have belonged to a very tiny pilgrim indeed. On the cross-piece of one crutch a swallow has built a nest. The crutch and the swallow may almost be taken as symbolic of Laghet—the crutch the emblem of the halting cripple, the swallow of the joyous heart winging its way through the blue of heaven. ----- [46] “The Rivieras,” by Augustus J. Hare, London, 1897, p. 80. XXXII THE CITY OF PETER PAN BETWEEN Monte Carlo and Mentone is the little town of Roquebrune. It stands high up on the flank of that range of hills which follows the road and which shuts out, like a wall, all sight of the world stretching away to the north. Certain conventional phrases are used in describing the site of a village or small town. When it lies at the bottom of a hill it “nestles” and when it approaches the top it “perches.” Roquebrune is distinctly “perched” upon the hillside. Indeed it appears to cling to it as a house-martin clings to sloping eaves and to keep its hold with some difficulty. The town looks unsteady, as if it must inevitably slip downwards into the road. At some little distance behind Roquebrune is a great cliff from the foot of which spreads a long incline. It is on a precarious ledge on this slope that the place is lodged, like a pile of crockery on the brink of a shelf and that shelf tilted.