The way up to the old town is by the steps of the Rue des Logettes. The first street encountered is the Rue de Bréa. It is a mean street, but it is occupied by houses which have been, at one time, among the most pretentious in Mentone. At No. 3 Napoleon lodged during the Italian campaign. It is a large building of four stories with a fine doorway in white stone. It is now given up to poor tenants who hang their washing out of the windows. At No. 2, a private house in comfortable state, General Bréa was born in 1790. He was one of Napoleon’s generals, was at Leipzig and Waterloo and was assassinated in Paris on June 24th, 1848. On the wall of a garden in the Rue Bréa is a marble tablet to commemorate the visit of Pius VII in 1814. The Pope was returning to Rome after his long exile in France and it was from the terrace of this garden that he blessed the people crowding in the street. While dealing with famous people it may be noted that in the Rue St. Michel (No. 19) is the house in which the Chevalier Carlo Trenca was born, the president of the short-lived Republic of Mentone. The most important and most interesting street of old Mentone is the Rue Longue. It runs athwart the east side of the hill, mounting very easily to the St. Julien Gate which is just below the old cemetery. The street is paved, is some twelve feet in width and is entered from the Logettes by a dim passage. The street is a little dark, because the houses on both sides of it are tall. This Rue Longue follows the route of the old Roman road. Until 1810 it was the only carriageable street between the East and the West Bays and the only coast road between Italy and Provence. It was the Park Lane of Mentone, the fashionable street in which were the palaces of the nobles and the houses of the rich. The humbler dweller in Mentone would hardly dare put foot in it, because it was so grand and so exclusive. Here “before the great Revolution, the ladies of Mentone used to sit out and work in the open air, just as the peasants do now, before the doors of the houses or (one is expected to say) palaces. A letter of the last century describes the animated appearance which this gave to the place in those days, the gentlemen stopping to chat with each group as they passed . . . while the nights were enlivened by frequent serenades, which were given under the windows of pretty girls by their admirers.”[53]